Josiah Bancroft
Author of Senlin Ascends
About the Author
Series
Works by Josiah Bancroft
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Birthdate
- 1978-03-29
- Gender
- male
- Nationality
- USA
- Birthplace
- USA
Members
Reviews
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Awards
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Associated Authors
Statistics
- Works
- 10
- Members
- 2,824
- Popularity
- #9,085
- Rating
- 4.1
- Reviews
- 94
- ISBNs
- 51
- Languages
- 6
- Favorited
- 4
The main disappointment, for me, was the presence of female characters who had the potential to be very interesting but took only marginal roles. Senlin's perspective is, at least initially, very patronising and would have been improved by a second protagonist, ideally his wife. She remains an attractive phantom throughout, a victim to be saved, and Adam's sister is very much the same. Both are threatened with sexual exploitation, depressingly. Edith and Iren have more agency, while remaining equally enigmatic. The majority of the book involves Senlin bonding with men, to the extent that I wondered whether his marriage was a sham and he was actually gay. I don't think that was the author's intent, however. I have no objection to reading about male protagonists, of course. In this case, though, the story felt incomplete because the reader only gets half of it. The contrast between Senlin and Marya's experiences would have been much more interesting, I think. Senlin himself becomes a bit tiresome after a while. At first his parochial stuffiness is quite fun, but once he settles into New Babel and becomes more confident he loses his distinctiveness. While the world-building was certainly enjoyable, I don't really want to read another entire book from Senlin's perspective. If the next in the series is from Marya's perspective, though, I'll gladly read it.… (more)