He soon discovers that theory has left him ill-equipped to face practice, that books seldom tell the whole or even a partial truth, and that there are few more unworldly people than those who are over-read and under-travelled.īut he journeys on, he learns lessons, many lessons – some of them quite painful – and he grows as he climbs, so much so that the Thomas Senlin on the last page of the book would be quite unrecognisable to the one on the first page.

A man who thinks being learned makes him worldly. A teacher, headmaster and man of letters, he is a character who has travelled far in his mind through the medium of books. Thomas Senlin himself is the most unlikely yet likeable hero since a certain hobbit rushed out of Bag End leaving his second breakfast half-finished and entirely unwashed-up. However, like the Tower of Babel itself, the story soon drew me in and swallowed me whole, until I was cantering through the last quarter of the book in a single sitting. I began by dipping my toe somewhat carefully into the seductive prose, allowed myself to gradually soak in the ambiance of the disparate worlds – or ringdoms – that Bancroft has created on each level of his extraordinary tower. I feared this book – with its poignant central premise – would seize me and not let go, and so it did. Against the anxiety such a kind of separation provokes, threats of global disaster and the collapse of civilisation as we know it pale into justified irrelevance. For a terrifying handful of minutes, my wife and I once lost our youngest daughter (then aged four) at Disneyland Paris. The simple disaster that all but overwhelms Senlin was almost too personal, the pain and despair of his predicament too credible.

The wonderful honeymoon they planned rapidly turns into an extended nightmare as Senlin navigates the tortuous ringworlds of the tower in a bid to find his missing spouse.ĭespite the high (and entirely justified) praise for this book from Mark Lawrence and others – I hesitated to throw myself into it. Thomas Senlin has got separated from Marya – his wife of a few short days – on the very threshold of their once in a lifetime trip to the legendary tower of Babel. The engine of the fantastic story is a terrifyingly ordinary dilemma. A depth of imagination married with a poetic turn of phrase and an engaging cast of characters (both those we meet and those who keep us waiting) conspire to deliver an epic story soaring high above the clouds.

Tower of babel josiah bancroft