It's a bizarre tale that at times feels like one of those strange, suffocating dreams where everything is familiar but also not. The writing is gorgeous and oh so very compelling. Concluding that she must have entered the Tower, the book chronicles his ascent through the ringdoms of the Tower - each a unique, dazzling and completely weird world of its own - on a mission to find his beloved Marya. Senlin Ascends is about a man who loses his wife on their honeymoon to the Tower of Babel. As I said, it's unlike anything I've ever read. Just so you know: it's nothing like Mark Lawrence's work. The ringdoms of the Tower share only two things in common: the shape of their outermost walls, which are roughly circular, and the price of beef, which is outrageous. “Newcomers may expect the ringdoms of the Tower to be like the layers of a cake where each layer is much like the last. It is both a masterfully-crafted work of art AND an addictive pageturner. However, I took a chance on this because it came so highly recommended by Mark Lawrence, and I didn't come up for breath until I'd finished the final page. And, to be honest, I didn't expect Senlin Ascends to be any different. I rarely make it past the first chapter and, if I do, the story quickly loses my attention. I usually take a glance at the first few pages and am almost always put off by the poor grammar or writing. Requests for indie/self-pub reviews come to me all the time. And yet, I have never read a book like this one. I've picked my way through the so-called 'Classics', got lost in Fantasy and Science-Fiction, been taken to other times by Historical Fiction, stayed up late to find out the answers in the latest Psychological Thriller, fallen in love with Romance, and rode the wave of every YA trend. Over the years, I have read a lot of books.

We MUST talk about this hidden indie treasure. The first book in the stunning and strange debut fantasy series that's receiving major praise from some of fantasy's biggest authors such as Mark Lawrence and Django Wexler. This quiet man of letters must become a man of action. But if he hopes to find his wife, he will have to do more than just endure. He must survive betrayal, assassins, and the long guns of a flying fortress. Senlin is determined to find Marya, but to do so he'll have to navigate madhouses, ballrooms, and burlesque theaters. Soon after arriving for his honeymoon at the Tower, the mild-mannered headmaster of a small village school, Thomas Senlin, gets separated from his wife, Marya, in the overwhelming swarm of tourists, residents, and miscreants.

It is a world of geniuses and tyrants, of airships and steam engines, of unusual animals and mysterious machines. Immense as a mountain, the ancient Tower holds unnumbered ringdoms, warring and peaceful, stacked one on the other like the layers of a cake. The Tower of Babel is the greatest marvel in the world.

Tower of babel bancroft