The Hod King

Two things were immediately apparent to me as soon as I finished this book. First, this is the best book in the series yet. And second, this will be the most divisive book in the series so far. The former is just my opinion, but the latter seems to be coming up in many of the reviews I've seen.

So why the division?

The Hod King has an unusual narrative structure. Instead of going linearly from start to finish, we get the story told from three distinct POVs. We start with Senlin entering the ringdom of Pelphia on a mission for the Sphinx, rewind to show the same time period from Voleta's perspective, and then rewind once more to see what Edith is up to. While we don't experience the exact same timeframe with each head hop, there is a good bit of overlap.

This slows down the pacing a bit, but I loved every moment of it. I'm a sucker for revisiting a scene from another POV and having to readjust my entire understanding of what actually went down. Plus I've always seen the Babel books as more character-driven than plot-driven, so there was no retreading the same ground from a character arc point of view.

Picking up immediately after the end of the second book, The Hod King follows Senlin and the others on a series of misadventures in Pelphia. Marya has never been so close to being rescued before, though Senlin is plagued by doubt as to whether she desires rescue in the first place. Voleta and Iren are sent in to infiltrate high society, and Edith is charged with the duty to collect Pelphia's Ogier painting for the Sphinx. Things don't go easy for any of the crew, and it's almost always their fault.

Whenever gray morality is mentioned, it's often referring to grimdark antiheroes who are willing to commit heinous acts of violence to accomplish their goals. This has always seemed a narrow application of the term to me. There are more variations than good, bad, and halfway between.

Take Thomas Senlin, for instance. Some readers love him, finding him a relatable everyman hoping to rescue his wife. Others hate his self-absorption and harmful naivete. Neither are wrong, and that's one of the reasons why I love Senlin as a character. As the story progresses, I don't know if I can call him “good”, but I certainly wouldn't label him “evil”. He's somewhere between, but bears no resemblance to the gritty antiheroes that rose to popularity in recent years.

The same is true for most of the other characters. They're all complex individuals with flaws they struggle to overcome. Well, it might be more fitting to say their flaws propel them through one unfortunate turn of events after another, and if they grow from their mistakes it's because they've somehow survived. When the characters are unlikable, it's not because they're acting in ways that are utterly repulsive. It's because we as readers can see in them our own shortcomings, and their mistakes could easily mirror our own. With a bit of dramatization, of course.

Rather than eliminating players once they've been taken off the board, Bancroft simply slips them back into his pocket to be brought back out again later. But rather than this feeling like cheating, we simply realize that the game being placed is different than what we though all along.

This was also my first experience with the Books of Babel series in audio. John Banks captured the essence of each character in their voices, building them up in a way I hadn't experienced in the text alone. And for a series with characters as brilliant as the Books of Babel, that's saying a lot.

The Hod King was a strong addition to the series, and I'm thrilled to see where the final book goes.