Senlin Ascends by Josiah Bancroft
Senlin Ascends is a fantastically high quality read and completely different from anything I’ve ever picked up. I was bewitched by it from start to finish and at a time where a book normally takes me a week or more to read I had this finished in three days after making excuse after excuse to dive back in.
It is the story of a man who must climb the Tower of Babel in order to find his wife but it is also so much more than that. Tom Senlin is our reluctant protagonist and begins his journey as a nervous wreck, completely bound by the customs and niceties of his small town life as a headmaster not remotely realising he has stepped into what might as well be another plane of existence. His precious guidebook is darkly inaccurate and he must discover for himself that the rules of the Tower are different. Like the Nigerian email scammer who sees his mark as deserving and there for the taking with little to no conscience or connection to the victim so does the Tower chew up and spit out the clueless tourists who mistake her for a simple holiday destination. Senlin and his wife are two such unsuspecting folks and when the two part ways for a spot of shopping and Senlin starts seeing subtle warnings signs like couples tied together by rope, a sense of dread begins to build.
His immediate quest is to get to the third floor where their hotel is, but this seems an ocean away when he discovers what he must contend with to simply gain entrance to the basement. Along with Senlin the reader really starts his or her own journey here as well. Little details ensure the absolute awesomeness of the size of the Tower is ever present and it is easy to feel as overwhelmed as Tom himself when trying to imagine the scale the book is working with.
Personally I can’t wait to see just how high this thing goes.
Bancroft’s prose is beautiful, haunting and poetic. Here are a couple of favourites pieces.
On finding that one.
“You’ve made it impossible for me to read a book in peace. When you’re not here, I just gaze at the words until they tumble off the page into a puddle in my lap. Instead of reading, I sit there and review the hours of the day I spent in your company and I am more charmed by that story than anything the author has scribbled down. I have never been lonely in my life but you have made me lonely. When you are gone, I am a moping ruin. I thought I understood the world fairly well/ But you have made it all mysterious again”.
On the Tower
“He looked at Senlin with his one good eye that was the color of dead grass and said, “My arm was branded. I was taken into the wall where the hods are. Tom, there are places in the dark of the Tower, places I hope you never see, where men and women are put in pens like cattle. The bones are pounded to dust and become part of the road”.
I really couldn’t recommend Senlin Ascends highly enough. This is an absolute ten, a magnificent book for all readers and a real gift to the fantasy community. I already ordered Arm of the Sphinx and cant wait to see what more Bancroft has in store for the future.
Senlin Ascends is available in both hard and soft cover through Amazon and Book Depository and Josiah Bancroft can be found on Twitter @thebooksofbabel
