Wednesday 24 August 2022

Page 1 critique - "Senlin Ascends" by Josiah Bancroft

This continues the reprisal my series of page 1 critiques - you can read about the project HERE, and there's a list of all the critiques so far too.

I'm also posting some of these on my Youtube channel (like, subscribe yadda yadda).

I turn this time to one of my favorite books: Senlin Ascends, by Josiah Bancroft.

I have reviewed the book.

First of all I'm going to cut and paste the disclaimers, and anyone prone to outrage really should read them:

It's very hard to separate one's tastes from a technical critique. There are page 1s from popular books with which I would find multiple faults. I didn't, for example, like page 1 of Terry Goodkind's Wizard's First Rule (I didn't pursue the rest of the book). But that book has 150,000+ ratings on Goodreads, a great average score of 4.12 and Goodkind is a #1 NYT bestseller. His first page clearly did a great job for many people.

I'm not always right *hushed gasp*. You will likely be able to find a successful and highly respected author who will tell you the opposite to practically every bit of advice I give. Possibly not the same author in each case though.

The art of receiving criticism is to take what's useful to you and discard the rest. You need sufficient confidence in your own vision/voice such that whilst criticism may cause you to adjust course you're not about to do a U-turn for anyone. If you act on every bit of advice you'll get crit-burn, your story will be pulled in different directions by different people. It will stop being yours and turn into some Frankenstein's monster that nobody will ever want to read.

Additionally - don't get hurt or look for revenge. The person critiquing you is almost always trying to help you (it's true in some groups there will be the occasional person who is jealous/mean/misguided but that's the exception, not the rule). That person has put in effort on your behalf. If they don't like your prose it's not personal - they didn't just slap your baby.


I've flicked through some of the pages looking for one where I have something to say - something that hopefully is useful to the author and to anyone else reading the post.


I've posted the unadulterated page first then again with comments inset and at the end.

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It was a four-day journey by train from the coast to the desert where the Tower of Babel rose like a tusk from the jaw of the Earth. First, they had crossed pastureland, spotted with fattening cattle and charmless hamlets, and then their train had climbed through a range of snow-veined mountains where condors roosted in nests large as haystacks. Already, they were further from home than they had ever been. They descended through shale foothills, which he said reminded him of a field of shattered blackboards, through cypress trees, which she said looked like open parasols, and finally they came upon the arid basin. The ground was the color of rusted chains, and the dust of it clung to everything. The desert was far from deserted. Their train shared a direction with a host of caravans, each a slithering line of wheels, hooves and feet. Over the course of the morning, the bands of traffic thickened until they converged into a great mass so dense that their train was forced to slow to a crawl. Their cabin seemed to wade through the boisterous tide of stagecoaches and ox-drawn wagons, through the tourists, pilgrims, migrants, and merchants from every state in the vast nation of Ur.

Thomas Senlin and Marya, his new bride, peered at the human menagerie through the open window of their sunny sleeper car. Her china white hand lay weightlessly atop his long fingers. A little troop of red-breasted soldiers slouched by on palominos, parting a family in checkered headscarves on camelback. The trumpet of elephants sounded over the clack of the train, and here and there in the hot winds high above them, airships lazed, drifting inexorably towards the Tower of Babel. The balloons that held the ships aloft were as colorful as maypoles.

Since turning toward the Tower, they had been unable to see the grand spire from their cabin window. But this did not discourage Senlin’s description of it. “There is a lot of debate over how many levels there are. Some scholars say there are fifty-two, others say as many as sixty. It’s impossible to judge from the ground,” Senlin said, continuing the litany of facts he’d brought to his young wife’s attention over the course of their journey. “A number of men, mostly aeronauts and mystics, say that they have seen the top of it. Of course, none of them have any evidence to back up their boasts. Some of those explorers even claim that the Tower is still being raised, if you can believe that.” These trivial facts comforted him, as all facts did. Thomas Senlin was a reserved and naturally timid man who took confidence in schedules and regimens and written accounts.


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It's worth noting that this page one does not do one of the main things I suggest for a page 1.

It doesn't give us a problem, and as such there's almost no tension in the piece. 

So, let's look at the page and see what's going on. 


It was a four-day journey by train from the coast to the desert where the Tower of Babel rose like a tusk from the jaw of the Earth.


It's not a spectacular line 1. It does, however, quickly establish a potential setting (on a train - confirmed on line 2) and offer a nice simile, which in a 'start as you mean to go on' opens us up to the idea that the quality of the prose is going to be a selling point here.


 First, they had crossed pastureland, spotted with fattening cattle and charmless hamlets, and then their train had climbed through a range of snow-veined mountains where condors roosted in nests large as haystacks. 


We're pretty sure we're still on this train now. We're getting the romance of travel, combined with a touch of character delivered via the description. "Charmless" is judgemental. Already we're getting a taste of the as yet unseen point-of-view character. The eponymous Senlin.


Already, they were further from home than they had ever been.


This is really the only hint of tension in the page. For me it echoes a moment in first Lord of the Rings film:

Sam: This is it.

Frodo: What?

Sam: If I take one more step, I'll be the farthest away from home I've ever been.

Frodo: Come on, Sam. Remember what Bilbo used to say: "It's a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don't keep your feet, there's no telling where you might be swept off to."


- Intentional or not, this echo allows that one short line to punch above its weight.


They descended through shale foothills, which he said reminded him of a field of shattered blackboards, through cypress trees, which she said looked like open parasols,


And here, again, Bancroft does that thing I bang on about with regards to description. Senlin is an introverted school teacher - he sees blackboards, Marya is more gregarious, she sees parasols. The description cuts both ways. That's good writing.


The characters are introduced as 'he' and 'she' - curiosity draws us on, we're not burdened with information, names, especially full names, can wait.


 and finally they came upon the arid basin. The ground was the color of rusted chains, and the dust of it clung to everything. The desert was far from deserted.


Nice flexing of the language. Playful in places.

Note: we don't have a 'problem', but we do have 'action' of a sort, we have motion, a sense of direction, the excitement of arrival. This carries the load, allowing the characters to integrate themselves gently. No "Thomas Senlin, a thin, schoolteacher in his mid thirties." hitting you in the face before you give a damn. 


 Their train shared a direction with a host of caravans, each a slithering line of wheels, hooves and feet. Over the course of the morning, the bands of traffic thickened until they converged into a great mass so dense that their train was forced to slow to a crawl. Their cabin seemed to wade through the boisterous tide of stagecoaches and ox-drawn wagons, through the tourists, pilgrims, migrants, and merchants from every state in the vast nation of Ur.


Nice imagery, a boisterous tide. A building sense of excitement - a convergence, arriving at last.


Thomas Senlin and Marya, his new bride, peered at the human menagerie through the open window of their sunny sleeper car. Her china white hand lay weightlessly atop his long fingers. A little troop of red-breasted soldiers slouched by on palominos, parting a family in checkered headscarves on camelback. The trumpet of elephants sounded over the clack of the train, and here and there in the hot winds high above them, airships lazed, drifting inexorably towards the Tower of Babel. The balloons that held the ships aloft were as colorful as maypoles.


A diverse crowd, feeling as if people from all corners are converging. No urgency but an inevitability. Drifting inexorably - not just the airships.


Since turning toward the Tower, they had been unable to see the grand spire from their cabin window. But this did not discourage Senlin’s description of it. “There is a lot of debate over how many levels there are. Some scholars say there are fifty-two, others say as many as sixty. It’s impossible to judge from the ground,” Senlin said, continuing the litany of facts he’d brought to his young wife’s attention over the course of their journey. “A number of men, mostly aeronauts and mystics, say that they have seen the top of it. Of course, none of them have any evidence to back up their boasts. Some of those explorers even claim that the Tower is still being raised, if you can believe that.” These trivial facts comforted him, as all facts did. Thomas Senlin was a reserved and naturally timid man who took confidence in schedules and regimens and written accounts.

And here we get dialogue - or really monologue - Marya doesn't speak until page 5. 

It's a miniature info dump but it's educating us, and it's a teacher doing the educating. It tells us more about Senlin and about the dynamic between him and his younger wife. If prompts a number of questions both about the tower itself - how can people not know this stuff? And about the nature of the two characters' relationship - how did this reserved and timid school teacher end up with a young wife?


All in all though, despite being really well written on a line by line basis, this isn't - for me - a great page 1. Which goes to show that you can start a fabulous book with a fairly modest page one.


On the other hand, frequent criticisms, among the small minority who really didn't like this book, include the idea that it's slow, and that they didn't warm to the main character.

The answers here are that in some senses it is slow, and the lack of strong hooks on page 1 are an indication that Bancroft isn't playing that game. The hooks are the prose, and the idea of the tower. If those aren't sufficient, you may be in the wrong place.

Senlin is on a journey - we see it here, literally, in the title, and through the book. If he started as a simple, loveable character then there wouldn't be much of a journey to make, or it would have to be a downhill one. 

This is an excellent read and I commend it to you!







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