Before settling down to write fantasy novels, Josiah Bancroft was a poet, college instructor, and aspiring comic book artist. When he is not writing, he enjoys recording the Crit Faced podcast with his authorial friends, drawing the world of the Tower, and cooking dinner without a recipe. He lives in Philadelphia with his wife, Sharon, their daughter Maddie, and their two rabbits, Mabel and Chaplin.
After reading "Senlin Ascends," the first book in Bancroft's Books of Babel series, I was hooked on the story of Thomas Senlin and his quest to rescue his wife from the perils of the Tower of Babel. "Arm of the Sphinx" picks up where the first book left off, and as a good sequel should do, it manages to sprinkle little reminders of key events from the previous book without overwhelming the reader with a ham-fisted summary of what happened in the last episode or a painful re-introduction of characters that the reader should already remember. Also, with "Arm of the Sphinx" Bancroft manages to preserve continuity from his previous volume while also introducing new characters and further developing new twists and turns in his epic.
If you haven't read "Senlin Ascends" check out my review of it and then do yourself a favor and read it. If you've already read it, enjoyed it, and can't get enough of the Books of Babel, you will not be disappointed by the first installment of "Arm of the Sphinx."