Josiah Bancroft

I picked this novel up in the library on impulse as I was intrigued by the Tower of Babel concept. My mind went to the [a:Ted Chiang|130698|Ted Chiang|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1399023404p2/130698.jpg] short story about the tower being built, which I read in [b:Arrival|31625351|Arrival|Ted Chiang|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1478010711l/31625351._SY75_.jpg|216334]. 'Senlin Ascends' is also concerned with a man climbing the tower and centres upon his growing comprehension of its political economy. The titular Senlin is an outsider, visiting the tower on his honeymoon. Thus the reader discovers the place through his eyes, as he searches for his lost wife. The great strength of the book is its world-building, which is ingenious, original, and careful to show the systematic exploitation behind Senlin's initially naive view of the tower's magnificence. It also leaves plenty of mystery to be explored in further volumes, by raising questions about the higher levels of the tower, or 'ringdoms'. Their number and the overall purpose of the tower remains unclear. The tension between co-operation and self-interest in a situation of low social trust and lax rule of law is shown effectively. The plentiful action scenes are exciting.

The main disappointment, for me, was the presence of female characters who had the potential to be very interesting but took only marginal roles. Senlin's perspective is, at least initially, very patronising and would have been improved by a second protagonist, ideally his wife. She remains an attractive phantom throughout, a victim to be saved, and Adam's sister is very much the same. Both are threatened with sexual exploitation, depressingly. Edith and Iren have more agency, while remaining equally enigmatic. The majority of the book involves Senlin bonding with men, to the extent that I wondered whether his marriage was a sham and he was actually gay. I don't think that was the author's intent, however. I have no objection to reading about male protagonists, of course. In this case, though, the story felt incomplete because the reader only gets half of it. The contrast between Senlin and Marya's experiences would have been much more interesting, I think. Senlin himself becomes a bit tiresome after a while. At first his parochial stuffiness is quite fun, but once he settles into New Babel and becomes more confident he loses his distinctiveness. While the world-building was certainly enjoyable, I don't really want to read another entire book from Senlin's perspective. If the next in the series is from Marya's perspective, though, I'll gladly read it.… (more)

I am a little mixed on this one. Overall I enjoyed it, enough to finish it but it had flaws that annoyed me.
It started out strong, but quickly became a book I could easily put down and pick up to read days later and parts of it dragged on for so long it would take me days to get back into it. It's a 303 page book and it took me over a month to finish it. I can read that many pages in a couple of days when inspired.

For one, there was so much detail and so much world building crammed into this book that it often drowned out the main plot of the book and it definitely dragged out the story way to long.

And the main characters often felt more like caricatures instead of real people.
I found the supporting characters, and the world as a whole way more interesting and believable than Isolde and Warren Wilby. I didn't dislike them, I just couldn't get that invested in them.
And unfortunately this book had several instances of one of my least favorite tactics of some authors, that of having otherwise highly intelligent seeming characters make stupid mistakes in a way that feels forced just so the author could move the plot along, or to justify a scene.
Some of their mistakes made sense with how the story played out but others were them being idiots and somehow walking away unscathed, which often felt incredulous to me.

For positives, even though I found the world building to be overwhelming, I have to say it worked.
I found this world incredibly fascinating and engaging, it had depth and felt real. At times I could feel like I was there.
And I found the magic systems to be fascinating, nothing earth shattering new, but I loved how the author wove them together and it felt like he never broke his own rules.

The main mystery driving the story at first felt a bit cliched, but not in a bad way, just in the way plots involving royalty often do. But there were enough twists and turns here that I did not see the ending coming but it felt earned in the end.

Overall, the pros outweighed the cons, I would definitely recommend reading this book and I am very interested the next book a chance and seeing where he goes with this.… (more)