This confused and anti-heroic intelligent with no purpose in life rises and then falls, only to climb up again, but not to greatness, to mediocrity instead. Her favourite authors include; Tolkien, Jen Williams, John Gwynne, Joe Abercrombie, Alix E Harrow, and Fonda Lee.

Although Orbit has picked up the rights and this will be re-released next year by the home of Brent Weeks, RJ Barker and Nicholas Eames. 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. I kept asking myself these questions as I read the opening chapters of the last book of The Books of Babel.

Over the years, humankind learned and discovered new secrets of the world and pursued civilisational progress and the desire to know. It was not so much a question of a rebellion as of recognising that the everyday, the ordinary and the obvious can be fascinating, that the apotheosis of the average can be delightful. Senlin tried to calm her by example, but couldn’t stop himself from yelping when the camel snorted, spraying them with warm spit.

So defying all his doubts and apprehensions he enters the first ringdom where he immediately discovers the Tower is nothing like it seems. Other than the path of the train tracks, there were no clear roads, no cobblestones, no curbs, only the rust-red hardpan of the Earth beneath them. Even before, a lot of the things that the Sphinx did and didn’t do have not made any sense, but here, we learn Sphinx is more of a role, less of a person. They responded with slight maternal smiles that made him feel belittled, “We’re far past our holidays,” one said. The "Books of Babel" are something you hope to see perhaps once a decade — future classics, which may be remembered long after the series concludes.They would have to fabricate some fable of luxury to tell their friends, and he would, of course, make it all up to her with a quiet weekend in a pastoral cottage, but for the rest of their marriage she would remember what a terrible trial their honeymoon had been. Bancroft succeeds amazingly in creating a baffling world that offers little tenderness or hope, but in which the pursuit of instinct and love, dedication and shared sacrifice can overcome barriers . It is a classic biblical motif indicating, on the one hand, the attitude of human rebellion against the power of God (the tower itself was supposed to encroach on the divine realm with its immensity), and, on the other hand, a reminder that all of mankind’s ‘sky-high’ endeavours are doomed to inevitable failure (through the inability of all men to communicate - the confusion of languages - their common deed is thwarted).