The book opens with a lengthy chunk of storytelling about Adam, who was separated from the rest of the characters at the end of .

Bancroft has explained that the setting is "more of an alternate universe than an alternate history.The quirky premise made me immediately want to pick it up and I’m glad because this has to be the most unique fantasy book I’ve read in a long while. One such unwary is Thomas Senlin, a school headmaster from a small fishing village, whose rosy ideas of the Tower lead him to honeymoon there with his young bride, Marya. she said, passing around two heavy-set women who wore the blue and white apron-dresses popular many years earlier. Then there’s also the hallucinations, dream sequences, and also ‘time travel’ that felt out of place.

Speaking of writing – „The books of Babel“ had never been an easy read for someone who‘s not a native speaker (that's me, obviously).And other than that, the action scenes from other POV characters ran on too long for their own good. Or when a long-teased action piece culminates into a terrifying, beautiful, and wonderfully sad denouement. For a moment, you can see shapes clearly bent under their weight, mouths open in effort and teeth bared in exertion, you can see stones being passed from hand to hand.