John Mauro's Reviews > Arm of the Sphinx

My complete review is published at Grimdark Magazine.

Arm of the Sphinx is Josiah Bancroft’s swashbuckling sequel to Senlin Ascends and the second entry in his Books of Babel tetralogy. This second book has a very different feel compared to Bancroft’s debut, which focused almost exclusively on its lead protagonist, Thomas Senlin, a small-town schoolteacher whose honeymoon at the Tower of Babel turns into a Kafkaesque nightmare as he searches for his lost wife, Marya, across stratified layers of absurdity. In contrast, Arm of the Sphinx adopts a more conventional narrative structure, with multiple points of view from Senlin and his companions.

Arm of the Sphinx opens with Senlin in the guise of Captain Tom Mudd, an airship pirate causing fear and disruption outside the walls of the Tower of Babel. Senlin’s motley crew includes the scrappy fighter Iren and siblings Adam and Voleta Boreas. Adam is an engineer of questionable loyalty who committed the original sin against Senlin upon his initial entry into the Tower. His adventurous sister, Voleta, is a delight and proves to be one of the highlights of the book.

However, the real star of Arm of the Sphinx is Edith Winters, Senlin’s friend who lost an arm due to an infection in the first book. Edith is a beacon of feminism, refusing to be put down in this male-dominated world. She turns her disability into a strength with a steampunk prosthetic arm. However, a question arises about whether Edith controls her arm or the arm controls her.

Senlin himself has grown significantly since the first book, where he was a mostly passive character falling victim to the schemes of the Tower. Senlin’s new take-control attitude in Arm of the Sphinx is welcome character development, although his assertiveness diminishes some of the Kafkaesque aspects of the story that I thoroughly enjoyed in the first book. It’s also frustrating that he makes at least as many bad decisions as good ones.

Plotwise, there is plenty of adventure but less vertical ascent in Arm of the Sphinx. Much of the book is spent trying to regain access to the Tower so that Senlin can resume the search for his missing wife, Marya. The focus on piracy in this second volume recalls a similar approach taken by Scott Lynch in Red Seas Under Red Skies, the follow-up to The Lies of Locke Lamora in his Gentleman Bastard series. While I’m personally not a fan of the pirate trope, I found the pirate adventure more convincing in Arm of the Sphinx compared to Red Seas Under Red Skies. Also, as a longtime Final Fantasy fan, I must say that airships are objectively cooler than the normal seafaring variety.

While I personally preferred the Kafka-inspired absurdities of the first book, I believe fantasy fans will find Arm of the Sphinx more immediately accessible than the labyrinthine Senlin Ascends. Arm of the Sphinx offers more straightforward adventure thrills while also providing new perspectives on this dark world. The Books of Babel tetralogy continues with The Hod King and finally The Fall of Babel.