"The Hod King" by Josiah Bancroft

Note: This review contains light spoilers for Senlin Ascends and The Arm of the Sphinx by Josiah Bancroft.

Thomas Senlin’s on an assignment from The Sphinx: infiltrate the ringdom of Pelphia, find out why her messengers are being hunted, report back to her, and stay away from Marya. That sounds like an easy enough job, but Senlin has always struggled to follow the instructions of others in the tower, so hatches a plot to lure the Duke into a business arrangement that would bring him closer to his lost wife. While Senlin attempts to make contact with Marya, Edith and the rest of the crew are on a mission to use The State of Art, The Sphinx’s flagship, to collect the paintings of the Bricklayer’s Daughter in order to open the Bridge of Babel hoping to preserve it against the onslaught of Marat’s coalition of Hods.

The Hod King by Josiah Bancroft is the third installment of the Books of Babel series, and continues to expand the world of the ringdoms he began laying out in Senlin Ascends and The Arm of The Sphinx. The novel builds on the meditation begun in the first two books about how people change in the face of pressures from class differences, hardship, and difficulty by exploring in greater detail what happens when Senlin does eventually come into contact with Marya. The reunion isn’t as positive as he initially imagined, but it does highlight two things that end up creating an intriguing tension outside of the potential for civil war across the Tower’s ringdoms: Senlin may not deserve Marya, but he may also not want her the same way he did when the ideal of her has to face up against reality.

Along with this relationship tension comes a plot to steal schematics and create a massive siege engine for Marat to pursue his designs to become the ruler of the tower through the Hods, which is managed as deftly as most writers who deal in mystery and political intrigue, and offers more ways for someone to enjoy the novel outside of an interest in the genre itself.

If you’re looking for an enjoyable read, The Hod King would likely appeal to you if the other books in the series were enjoyable, if you find yourself drawn to books that deal with critiques of wealth inequality, or if you’re interested in stories that explore how growth changes someone’s self-identity over time. Senlin as a character has become significantly more interesting as time has gone on, even as he’s taken a seat further away from the direct action, but the question that’s worth asking — and other books have asked before this — is if that increasingly interesting character will still help someone salvage the parts they loved about their own life?

Bancroft’s series has offered a wonderful case study of how to portray economic inequality and build characters that are simultaneously empowered to make their own decisions but are still beholden to the conditions they find themselves in. These complexities create tension points throughout the narrative that Bancroft’s use of humor has sometimes accentuated and sometimes eased, making The Hod King a book that can keep the audience’s attention through the constant novelty of the circumstances portrayed in the book. For that reason, it’s worth a read for every writer, because the ability to manage audience expectations and introduce enough excitement to keep them reading is a skill every storyteller needs to be successful.

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