#senlin ascends

[ashestoashesjc]

way way back in far distant year of 2025 i read senlin ascends, the first book in josiah bancroft's the books of babel series, about a headmaster who travels with his new wife to a giant tower in the desert where each floor constitutes its own society, called a ringdom.

really liked the writing and totally love the concept, even if the first book doesn't explore quite as much of the tower as i would have liked. i'll at least pick up the second book

[haveyoureadthisbook-poll]

Have you read Senlin Ascends by Josiah Bancroft (2013)?

yes

no

I didn't finish it

I've never heard of it

Voting ended onMay 11, 2025

[oftenbucket]

Love, as the poets so often painted it, was just bald lust wearing a pompous wig. He believed true love was more like an education: It was deep and subtle and never complete. - Josiah Bancroft, Senlin Ascends

[waitafrikk]

"its an emu"

"how can you tell?" "

"it has 3 toes, an ostrich only has 2"

"how in the world would you know that?"

"i had a student ask me once what the difference was, and so i went home and read everything i could find on emu and ostrich anatomy"

[blogishdaj]

I'm five chapters into Senlin Ascends and loving it. The premise is basically "nerd loses wife on honeymoon to tower of babel which also happens to be several kingdoms stacked on each other." The worldbuilding is fascinating and I'm loving every tidbit that drops of what seems to be alt-history world. Thomas Senlin himself radiates pathetic meow meow energy and the plot is like if the author was microwaving this poor guy. The mystery I'm most invested in is how this emotionally constipated dude who carries himself with the air of a frail victorian maiden managed to get married in the first place. There's a flashback where his wife is flirting with him by asking him architecture facts. Incredible.

[tpfw01]

"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 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. And it's unnerving and frightening and wonderful, and I want it to continue. I want all your mysteries." - Thomas Senlin, Senlin Ascends.

[justmymycelium]

All those adventure books I used to read - you know what they all got wrong? The nature of survival. The heroes who survived their ordeals always came out the other end unchanged. Maybe they walked away with a nice little scar on their cheek or a fitting shock of grey hair. But essentially, in all the ways that matter, they emerged the same as they were before. That's not how it is though, is it? Survival makes you a stranger to yourself. Senlin - The Fall Of Babel - Josiah Bancroft.

[opewritingtheater]

Worldbuilding in Layers: The Setting of Senlin Ascends

The tower of Babel is as wide as a city, but no one knows how tall; when airship pilots fly toward the top they are shot out of the sky. Thick clouds cling to its higher levels, hiding them from view. People come from across the world to throw themselves into its lower levels and climb, earning it its nickname “the sink of humanity.” It’s in the nature of humankind to gravitate toward the tower, to be swept up in its chaos, often never to return.

Josiah Bancroft chose a wonderful stage for his novel to play out on. There is inherent gravity to a setting like this, it has a way of drawing people in. The tower is a structure so immense that it becomes the defining feature of its world. It is the hook that will catch a reader’s attention, it’s the centerpiece of the elevator pitch, it’s the main gimmick. It might have ended there, have served as only a gimmick, but in Senlin Ascends, it does more.

The tower makes such a strong first impression because of its scale. Its size makes it unmistakably important, and implies plenty of space for mysteries and wonders within. The tower makes a promise to the reader that the rest of the story, which will take place in and around it, will match that initial sense of awe.

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(Image generated using Midjourney AI)