Senlin Ascends

Starred review from October 30, 2017
Bancroft’s brilliant debut fantasy, first in a planned series, stars the eponymous Thomas Senlin, a provincial schoolmaster. Thomas and his wife, Marya, honeymoon at the Tower of Babel, a notable tourist attraction. No one knows how high the tower is, as its upper stories are hidden behind a permanent fog, and many other things about it are also mysterious and dangerous. Upon losing Marya in the massive crowd around the tower’s base, Thomas begins to climb in the hope of meeting her again. Every one of the tower’s staggeringly original individual rooms, many of which have their own cultures, could make a setting for a novel all by itself, and the suspenseful plot and cleverly handled side characters add to the surfeit of riches. The relationship between Thomas and Marya is touching, well-established, and, most importantly, egalitarian. At once steampunk and epic, surreal and yet grounded in believable logistics, this novel goes off like a firework and suggests even greater things in the author’s future. Agent: Ian Drury, Sheil Land Associates.

December 1, 2017
In his debut novel, Bancroft takes readers into a steampunk world revolving around the great attraction and mystery that is the Tower of Babel--a colossal structure rising up into the heavens that devours the unwary with intrigue and danger.One such unwary is Thomas Senlin, a school headmaster from a small fishing village, whose rosy ideas of the Tower lead him to honeymoon there with his young bride, Marya. But the two villagers are unprepared for the "big city"--especially a city so capricious and indifferent as the Tower turns out to be. Thomas loses track of Marya before even making it inside the Tower's gargantuan walls, and from there he begins his desperate quest to find her within the Tower's heights. The naive and awkward headmaster is thrust into a world of treachery, drugs, hedonism, art, theft, airships, political feuding, soul-numbing violence, and above all secrets--secrets that he begins to see form a whole and a clue to the Tower's true nature. Will Thomas be able to keep his soul as he learns the Tower's often deadly rules, or will he simply be one more person broken by the Tower? (The true import of Thomas' quest won't be found here--there's a sequel coming, naturally.) Through it all, Marya seems to drift just out of his grip--but in her place, Thomas painstakingly assembles a ragtag team of allies and friends, if friendship can ever be true in a place where loyalty is just another currency and the powers that be have placed a price on Thomas' head.The lush setting holds the reader through a slow start, but once the plot gets going, it ticks along with the tight precision and artistry of a well-wound watch.

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November 15, 2017
This series opener follows the transformation of judgmental headmaster Thomas Senlin, tourist, into something entirely different. He and his new bride, Marya, begin on their honeymoon, traveling to the fantastic Tower of Babel. Almost immediately, Marya is whisked away by the crowds. As Thomas journeys through the drama and pitfalls of the tower, from the beer pits of the first level to the theater of the second and beyond, he learns that perhaps the world is more complicated and messy than he'd thought. Senlin is something of a bumbling rube, which allows the reader to learn about the world as the lead character does. The Tower of Babel holds great promise: there is clearly more going on there than meets the eye, even as Thomas becomes aware of more and more of its nuances. The pacing seems slowthere is a long, long buildup as Thomas tries to find any trace of Marya and a whirlwind conclusion leading into the next phase of Senlin's storybut it allows for in-depth development of the setting.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)