The Fall of Babel by Josiah Bancroft (The Books of Babel #4)

9/10

It feels like the spirit of the Tower will continue on without us. Each floor and society will keep ticking away, producing their oddities, building and breaking relationships, creating and sharing secrets, and disrupting the roots of human nature. And the Tower will continue to reflect our own world, showing us the best and worst of us, giving us a chance to chase what is lost, build up our dreams, or providing outlets for anger and fear to take over.

My expectations for this book were astronomically high, and I'm thrilled to say that nearly all of them were met.

The Fall of Babel is a freight train of story threads finally coming to a head, but it is also a love letter, saying goodbye to this weird and endearing group of adventurers and castoffs, far removed from where they all started, now so much further along the journeys of their lives.

For years I had pondered the mystery behind Adam's disappearance and what the surrounding clues meant. Bancroft wrote an original and immensely satisfying explanation that sated my curiosity. The Edith & Marya conundrum was one of the biggest plot points to the story, and its resolution was one of the most heart-wrenching and ultimately human conclusions I could have asked for. And the story ends just as it began: full of mystery, wonder, excitement, and promise.

There are passages that have dug trenches in my mind. In particular, when a character emotes love for the first time. Or when a long-teased action piece culminates into a terrifying, beautiful, and wonderfully sad denouement. But most of all, the simple conversations that feel so impeccably human: words full of fault, grief, apologies, and glimmers of hope. Bancroft's soaring prose and heartfelt characters have restored some of my faith that there is more good than bad in this world.

The Books of Babel is an original and brilliant saga that is even better on the second read-though. It has left an unmistakable footprint in the self-published and traditionally-published world of storytelling. There's nothing else quite like it.