I have a lot of feelings about finishing the Books of Babel. Josiah is sort of /r/Fantasy’s “local boy made good.” He was in self-published obscurity for years after first publishing Senlin Ascends. It had been rejected by pretty much everybody, and he was (I understand) discouraged and pretty much ready to give up on being a writer. But Mark Lawrence read and boosted him, and he got a surge of popularity as word of just how awesome Senlin Ascends was spread around /r/Fantasy, and now he’s writing for Orbit. Like I said, local boy made good.
Plus I get lots of hipster satisfaction by being able to say “Oh yeah, I read the Books of Babel before they were cool.”
I’m not going to make any particular effort to sell the series here. If you’ve read books 1-3, you know what you’re getting. What I will say is that The Fall of Babel was an immensely satisfying conclusion to what has proved to be a totally unique journey.
We get answers to all the big questions. We learn what the deal is with the Tower of Babel itself. The love triangle gets resolved in a way I found very satisfying (which is saying something, because I despise reading about love triangles). There’s satisfying character growth all around. Nothing feels cheap or unearned. Things are exactly as easy (or as hard) as they should be. No one gets a Disney-esque “happily ever after,” because such a thing doesn’t exist. Everyone’s journey continues; everyone has more struggles on the horizon. But it all feels right.
Part of me really wants a sequel series to find out what’s next for Tom, Edith, and the rest. Or more than one sequel series; anyone who reads the book will know why just one won’t cut it. Another part of me (a bigger part, I think) wants to leave what happens to them all purely in my imagination. But whatever Josiah has planned for his next book, I can promise you I’ll be reading it.
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