Senlin Ascends by Josiah Bancroft - Recaptains

The basics

Title: Senlin Ascends

Author: Josiah Bancroft

Series: The Books of Babel #1

- Senlin Ascends (2013)
- Arm of the Sphinx (2014)
- The Hod King (2019)
- The Fall of Babel (2021)

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Goodreads Summary:

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

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.

Senlin is determined to find Marya, but to do so he'll have to navigate madhouses, ballrooms, and burlesque theaters. He must survive betrayal, assassins, and the long guns of a flying fortress. But if he hopes to find his wife, he will have to do more than just endure.

This quiet man of letters must become a man of action.

Here is a spoiler summary of what happened in Senlin Ascends by Josiah Bancroft to help refresh your memory before you read the sequel. If you need help remembering what happened in Senlin Ascends then you’re in the right place.

What happened in Senlin Ascends?

• Thomas Senlin, a bookish and awkward schoolmaster, marries Marya, a lively woman ten years younger. This surprises everyone in his village because of the aforementioned awkwardness.
• Thomas and Marya choose the Tower of Babel for their honeymoon, a place Thomas has studied obsessively. Upon arrival, Thomas loses sight of Marya, breaking a key rule in the Babel guidebook.
• After days of searching the village around the tower, Thomas can only assume that Marya has entered the tower.
• Thomas enters the tower at the basement level, where he is robbed by a young man named Adam. Thankfully Thomas retains his hidden money so he only loses his luggage.
• Thomas buys some new clothes and encounters a peddler selling one of his stolen bags. The peddler returns the bag, and they drink together, but the peddler refuses to escort Thomas through the tower, insisting that each man must navigate the tower alone.
• Thomas ascends to the second level of the tower, where everyone is both an audience member and cast member in a play. He is cast as a butler and must perform the role flawlessly for a week in order to ascend to the third floor.
• Thomas finds an unlocked door, which indicates that a troupe still needs a butler, and joins the play.
• The play involves a household where the wife is having an affair with her husband’s co-worker. The play turns violent as the husband seemingly kills his wife’s lover with real weapons.
• Thomas and the wife, Edith, escape together, locking doors behind them as they flee through the set. They are reprimanded for breaking the play’s rules and meet an arbitrator to explain.
• While the arbitrator decides, Senlin and Edith spend a cold night in a metal cage outside the tower, growing closer.
• The next morning, Senlin is cleared, but Edith is expelled from the tower and branded to prevent her from ascending again. Senlin accompanies Edith to her branding, where a nurse marks her arm; Edith passes out from the pain.
• As Senlin leaves, a man mistakenly assumes Senlin is praising his acting, hinting that the events may have been staged.
• Senlin reaches the third floor of the tower, which seems to be based around a luxury retreat as it contains baths and spas. This matches Thomas’s idealized vision of the tower.
• The level is filled with elegant people, and Senlin subtly inquires with them about his wife following the peddler’s advice. He searches various hotels for Marya but is unsuccessful.
• Hotel keepers quickly recognize what Thomas is up to and dismiss his daily inquiries about Marya.
• Senlin briefly checks the seedy district but concludes Marya wouldn’t stay there. He spends his days lounging by fountains with his new friend Taru and enjoys nightly meals with him.
• Realizing his funds are running low, Senlin sets a deadline to end his search for Marya. He witnesses two disturbing events: a public execution and a postal clerk reading rules about forcing women to be mail-order brides.
• While at the post office, Senlin mails a letter to his cousin, asking her to find a substitute for him at school and informing her of his delay, as he hopes to retain his teaching job.
• Taru gets drunk one night and realises that he needs to go home. Taru asks Senlin to go to the train station with him the next morning to see him off.
• As Taru leaves the restaurant, he bumps into a bunch of paintings and falls over. Senlin notices a recent painting of a lady with a red hat resembling Marya. Senlin asks the painter, Ogire, about the painting and accompanies him to his apartment.
• Senlin shares the story about Marya with Ogire, hoping for clues to her whereabouts. Ogire shares that he painted Marya after she asked to be a subject, paying her for a topless portrait, which shocks Senlin.
• Ogire offers more information if Senlin steals back a prized painting from the Commissioner, who had stolen it. Senlin agrees and convinces Taru to join him at a ball at the Commissioner’s house.
• The plan goes slightly awry, but Senlin convinces the Commissioner that the painting might aggravate his allergies and offers to fumigate it.
• Senlin works on the painting in the Commissioner’s private solarium, guarded by an older guard. Senlin gets the guard drunk and swaps the original painting with a copy, and hides the original by wrapping it around a bottle as a fake label. The guard wakes up, realizes Senlin’s deceit, but lets him go in exchange for money, feeling mistreated by the Commissioner.
• Senlin sees the Commissioner turning someone into a hod in the town square and realizes it’s Taru, punished for his debts. Taru pretends their friendship was a farce to protect Senlin. The Commissioner notices Senlin and schedules a meeting at 8pm for the art essay interview.
• Senlin reaches Ogire, who confirms Senlin has the real painting and reveals what he knows about Marya. Marya entered the tower a few days before Senlin and was also mugged, leading to her posing for nude portraits to earn back stolen money. She believed a man could help her find Senlin, but Senlin fears she encountered someone who preps women as mail-order brides.
• Ogire suspects Marya is engaged or married to a man whose initials are JWP, and he is from an elite family living in a higher level of the tower.
• Ogire escorts Senlin to the port, where he boards an airship filled with women being sold to men on the elite level.
• Senlin signs his name, and a woman called Iren recognizes it and chases him. Senlin seeks refuge in what he believes is a hotel or restaurant but discovers it’s a drug den, where he gets high on a substance called crumb.
• Iren and a guy called Finn Goll are there when Senlin wakes up. Finn offers Senlin a job as port master, managing books and dock workers; Senlin accepts, needing the money but intending to find Marya.
• Senlin reunites with Adam, another of Finn’s employees, forgives him for the past robbery, and they become friends. Senlin reads mail to the workers each night. Senlin reads about a performing girl named Volita, sensing Adam’s discomfort and realising she’s the sister Adam was searching for when they first met.
• Senlin discovers a hidden aero model of the tower under his desk, which he and Adam examine together. The model has notes from at least three different people, with some levels labeled, including Pellham City, where Senlin believes Marya is.
• Senlin notices the impact of illiteracy on the people around him and decides to teach Iren to read.
• Adam shares his backstory: after his father’s death and his mother’s illness, he followed his dream of going to the Tower, leaving with his sister Volita. Adam’s first job on the parlor level involved spying on actors, but he was tricked into a contract where he owed money instead of being paid. After attempting to escape, Adam was branded and lost an eye, while his sister Volita was forced to perform as an acrobat for a whoremonger, Rodion. Volita is currently the star of Rodion’s show, the only one not required to perform additional duties after the show, but Adam realizes he’ll never earn enough to free her.
• Senlin devises an escape plan, secretly increasing workers’ wages to gain their loyalty, making the port more efficient without affecting Finn’s profits. Senlin plans to find a ship, recruit workers, and escape with them.
• The Red Hand, the Commissioner’s executioner, finds Senlin in the middle of the night demanding the painting. Senlin uses the key-gun from Ogire to shoot at the Red Hand, who escapes. During the scuffle, the frame of the nude painting of Marya is damaged, revealing Ogire’s prized painting hidden behind it with a note stating it is the key to the Tower and happiness.
• Adam hears the commotion, arrives with a gun, but the Red Hand is already gone. Senlin suspects an accomplice on his level and cuts the rope that the Red Hand used.
• Senlin tests the air currents with a kite to find the best escape route.
• Adam is upset as Volita starts receiving marriage proposals, forcing him to pay Rodion to fend off suitors.
• Finn confronts Senlin about teaching Iren to read, fearing she’ll read confidential notes. Iren proves her loyalty by striking Senlin as instructed in a note.
• Senlin searches for a ship, sensing Finn and Adam’s patience is running out, and decides to steal the Stone Cloud, a pirate airship commanded by Edith.
• Senlin shares his plan with Adam, who questions Edith’s trustworthiness, but Senlin believes they can trust her.
• Senlin visits Edith, confides his entire plan: to pit Finn and Rodion against each other at the dock and escape during the chaos. Though she thinks it’s risky, Edith agrees to the plan.
• Senlin prepares for his final 8 o’clock report to Iren, and she instructs him to accompany her. Iren allows Senlin to keep the key as he empties his pockets, aware of the rolled-up painting hidden in his coat.
• During their carriage ride, Senlin shares his theory that each tower level secretly powers a larger mechanism, with tourists unknowingly contributing to it. Senlin believes activities like biking for beer pull up water, stoking fires generates heat energy, and the baths might dispel steam for some unknown purpose.
• They arrive at Finn’s house, where Iren advises Senlin to let Finn do the talking. Finn asks Senlin to reduce employees’ wages again, planning to deduct it from Senlin’s pay until fully reimbursed.
• Senlin considers using the key gun on Finn but refrains due to the presence of Finn’s children. Before leaving, Senlin mentions checking a ship’s manifest to see if Adam succeeded in his part of the plan, noting Finn’s immediate interest and wondering what Rodion believes is on the ship.
• Upon reaching the ship, a fight breaks out after Rodion shoots the captain, Billy Lee. Edith nearly falls off the ship.
• Finn arrives as the battle intensifies.
• Senlin learns that Adam betrayed him to the Commissioner and planned to send the painting to a lower level.
• When Rodion threatens Adam with a gun, Senlin prepares to kill Rodion with the key gun.
• The Commissioner and his crew arrive, revealing that Ogire was a fraud who mimicked a famous artist’s style. The Commissioner has the Red Hand open a crate, releasing hallucinogenic crumb that affects everyone, including Senlin, who hallucinates about Marya.
• A chaotic fight ensues; Iren fights the Red Hand and is seriously injured and may be dead.
• Senlin, Edith, Adam, and Volita escape on the Stone Cloud with Iren’s body, heading to the Pell level to find and rescue Marya. Senlin fears what condition his wife could be in when he finds her.

That’s what happened in Senlin Ascends! Check out our recap list for more recaps. If you can’t find what you need, you can request a recap from us!