The Fall of Babel
The Books of Babel series, Book 4
Josiah Bancroft
Orbit
Fiction, Fantasy
***+ (Okay/Good)
DESCRIPTION: The great Tower of Babel has stood for centuries, and though the people come and go and ringdoms rise and fall within its walls, it has been as enduring as a mountain... but even mountains may fall. Now, as the monstrous machine known as the Hod King - constructed by renegade Luc Marat and crewed by zealot followers culled from the enslaved hods - begins its destructive ascent, and as the enigmatic Sphinx goes silent in their high lair, the unthinkable might be possible. As the ringdoms fall into squabbling and war, the Sphinx's agent, Captain Edith of the advanced airship State of the Art, has her hands more than full, even if there weren't a war engine gnawing its way to the heart of the Tower like a great metal termite. She managed to rescue Thomas Senlin's wife Marya and their infant daughter from the evil Duke of Pelphia, but Senlin himself is now lost, last seen on the deadly Black Roads as a hod. Young daredevil Voleta has finally woken from near-death, but has returned changed in ways none of the crew understand or trust. And Voleta's brother Adam is still somewhere at the top of the tower, last seen in the company of the lightning-bearing guards of the highest and most aloof of the ringdoms. Edith races to collect the paintings that will reveal the key to the locked "bridge", and with it the purpose of Babel's construction (and, hopefully, the means for its salvation), but Marat's agents always seem to be one step ahead of her. And if he succeeds in taking over the tower, all hope will be lost.
Senlin thought he could infiltrate Marat's hod rebellion and sabotage the madman from within, but now he's trapped by his own deceit inside the Hod King, helpless to stop the horrors to come. His ruse worked too well, as he finds himself drawn into Marat's secret inner council of former Wakemen: those who were saved by the Sphinx's unusual devices in exchange for becoming agents, but who turned on their distant master in favor of Marat. As the shape of Marat's ambitions become more and more clear, Senlin's resolve to stop him - even at the cost of his own life - only grows more certain.
Meanwhile, at the top of the tower, young Adam is mystified to be heralded as a celebrity among people whom he's never met. The city of Nebos is every inch the paradise he'd imagined: beautiful gardens, golden houses, all dominated by a great pyramid of awesome size, peopled by artists and scholars and more, living a life of unimaginable luxury. It is also, as he soon learns, hiding dark secrets beneath its immaculate streets, and a betrayal that dates back to the final days of the enigmatic Brick Layer who designed the great tower itself. As much as Nebos considers itself above the troubles plaguing the rest of the tower (literally and figuratively), it, too, is threatened by the crumbling beneath... and it may hold the key to saving the Tower of Babel, or destroying it utterly.
REVIEW: As the rating reflects, I had mixed feelings on this final volume in the epic Books of Babel series. It almost feels like it wanted to be two books, and again like it should've been only half as long. That sounds contradictory, but it's what I'm left with as I consider how some plot points and character arcs come to conclusions (if sometimes prolonged conclusions) and others feel like they've just been introduced or are only half-finished by the time the tale finally, eventually, almost exhaustedly comes to a halt.
Things start more or less where the previous volume ended, at least storywise. The Sphinx has gone silent and their lair sealed off, the crew of the State of the Art deal with onboard tensions (such as Captain Edith's mixed feelings over having Marya aboard, after her brief affair with Senlin) and external threats, and Luc Marat's great siege engine the Hod King begins its slow-motion assault on the tower, on its way to lay siege to the Sphinx and thence to claim power of the whole of Babel, while Adam at the top of the tower finally learns just why everyone in Nebos knows so many details of his life. As the story moves between the now-scattered characters, it sometimes feels unevenly paced, shifting from meandering and sight-seeing to high tension and action almost at random. The Tower of Babel itself remains massive and enigmatic and full of wonders and horrors beyond imagination, while also serving as a condensation of humans being human in all the best and worst (especially the worst) ways possible. More is revealed about the Brick Layer and the Sphinx, as the true purpose of the tower - so long a matter of debate - eventually is revealed... and here is one of the stumbles that wound up costing it in the ratings, as I felt myself fighting to not roll my eyes at some revelations and other incidents that sometimes felt less like clever solutions and more like out-of-the-blue twists made up on the fly to shock and awe the reader.
On the character side, nobody is who they were when the reader first met them, and their development continues through the tale as they're all put to the test in various ways. Senlin and Marya have been through so much in their separate, harrowing journeys that reconciliation may not even be possible at this point, not even with an infant daughter binding them; long gone are the happy, naive small town man and wife who stepped off the train in the first book, replaced by weathered, more worldly people who both have seen their own weaknesses and dark sides. Edith, having had leadership thrust upon her unexpectedly by the Sphinx, must learn to fill the shoes last filled by the absent Senlin. Former bodyguard Iren still struggles to deal with her own changing life and her first real brush with romance, while Voleta's changes make her do some growing up (but not a ton of it, as she's still a bit prone to recklessness, if in different ways than before). The former Red Hand, the only one who can relate to her new experiences, becomes a sort of ally and mentor as she deals with the mind- and time-bending effects of a bloodstream full of red "medium", the miraculous glowing fluid that powers the Sphinx's contraptions. This also allows Voleta to become a bit of a plot device, as part of the medium's properties involve a sort of astral time travel... but I can't elaborate without spoilers.
The whole has a lot of moving parts and a lot of balls in the air to juggle, and it doesn't always feel like those balls get caught; one or two seem to have disappeared by the end of the story, while others went through a lot of frantic actions yet didn't necessarily go anywhere far at all. The ending almost feels like it wants to segue into another book or series, though I'm not sure if there's enough steam in the world or plot. (There are also at least a few worldbuilding points that felt handwaved or inadequately addressed.) Even with that, though, there are plenty of solid moments and memorable writing throughout. I liked it more than I didn't, but I still can't quite shake the sense of something out of kilter, something either not quite finished or carried a step or two too far past the natural end point.
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