The novel does stand up to critical reading. In bringing to a close all the storylines, ideas, character developments, foreshadowing, etc., of this detailed constructed world, in one, final book, and in ways that would pass the scrutiny of his fandom, I feared that Bancroft would lose the plot, pardon the pun, but he did not. Was it worth the wait? Yes, it is engrossing, thrilling, clever, and well written, but make no mistake, it is epic. The Fall of Babel finally hit the shelves on November 9, 2021, and I was pleased to find a fresh-off-the-press copy at my local bookstore. 4 sounded like a portent for a plot in which terrible things happen and no happy outcomes can be expected. So ever since The Hod King came out in January 2019, and it became known that, in fact, there would be four, not three books, readers have been hurrying up and waiting.

People nagged him, fans mobbed him, he had to keep explaining that he would rather do a good job and publish the last book later than rush it and have a less than perfect product. The wait was not made easier by the face that the previous novel in the series, The Hod King, ends with a life-or-death cliffhanger. Fans of Josiah Bancroft’s popular series, The Books of Babel, had to wait two long years for The Fall of Babel, the last one in the set of four novels.

Josiah bancroft books of babel