Senlin’s transformation from a vaguely useless school teacher to a canny, Robin Hoodish con-artist was magnificent to behold. The character development and characterization in this novel is the second-best I’ve read thus-far this year. It’s not explicitly a magical place, but it’s so mysterious and the steampunk technology is so fabulous that it does fit the ‘Fantasy’ genre.

The fourth floor, New Babyl, is a zeppelin refueling station/trading hub. The Baths contain the most luxurious curative spas on the planet. For example the Parlor is filled with men and women tourists who are addicted to play-acting. The tower’s an ancient steampunk construction, created by unknown hands and maintained by strange ungainly machines. Senlin must climb the massive Tower of Babylon. Taking place in a steampunk-era Sumeria, this was a really unusual book. Spoiler for the fact that this is a trilogy: he doesn’t find her at the end. Early in the book Senlin is separated from his wife Marya, and spends the rest of the book hunting for her.

It reminded me of the mysterious, uncanny worlds of Gaiman and Mieville, where nothing is as it seems and human societies are warped and splintered along unrecognizable lines.

I loved this book by the time it was finished. When Senlin is separated from his wife, he’s seemingly doomed to never reunite with her again. Human wickedness and human wisdom thrive in the mythic Tower of Babylon. 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, assassination, 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.

Senlin ascends