★ 03/26/2018
Bancroft’s brilliant second installment in the Books of Babel, following Senlin Ascends, continues Thomas Senlin’s desperate quest to reunite with his wife, Marya, whom he lost in the crowd at the base of the unknowably high and teemingly crowded Tower of Babel. Now the captain of a ragtag pirate airship, Senlin (using the name Mudd) must find some way into the aristocratic and well-armed ringdom of Pelphia, where the latest rumors indicate Marya is. But Senlin is a wanted criminal, fewer and fewer ports are open to his crew, and his first mate owes a mysterious debt to the Sphinx, a creature of myth and whisper whose marks are stamped all over the Tower. Bancroft’s world continues to teem with explosive energy, and he ranges ably from the transcendent to the vicious in an instant. The unchecked splendor of the scenery is balanced by the complicated, sympathetic characters, and the plot maintains a steady stream of surprises without ever wearying. This volume not only matches but adds to the notable achievements of the first. (Mar.)
Imagine, for a moment, a world in which ancient universities are closed and remade as Colosseums. Halls of learning are transformed into quarters for fighting slaves. Consider a world in which lords and ladies cosplay as prison inmates for want of something—anything—better to do. Finally, if you can, picture a world with a population full […]
One of our favorite new fantasy series of 2018 (and many years before that, to be honest), is Josiah Bancroft’s The Books of Babel, a deeply original adventure-cum-exploration of the titular fictional edifice. And one of the defining features of the series shows up on the first page of Senlin Ascends, before the story proper […]
As the real world grows each day stranger by leaps and bounds, the skewed secondary worlds, fantastical lands, and alternate histories that are the realms of science fiction and fantasy have only grown more vital, not only as a means of escape from blaring headlines, political turmoil, and the crescendo of climate change, but as […]
In an interview last month with the B&N Podcast, Hugo-winning author John Scalzi posited that we are currently in a new Golden Age of science fiction and fantasy, and it’s hard to disagree with him. Never before within the genres have their been so many excellent books on offer to so many different types of […]