Book Review: Foundryside
A few years ago, Robert Jackson Bennett earned my undying love with his Divine Cities trilogy - an entertaining and engaging fantasy romp that I still return to once a year as comfort reading. I was understandably excited when he released Foundryside, the start of a wholly new trilogy. I read Foundryside when it initially came out during my review hiatus, but I was inspired to re-read by the release of the sequel, Shorefall. So let’s chat about the Founders trilogy.
Sancia Grado is a thief in the city of Tevanne, where merchant companies rule and scriving is both the magic and the business of choice. Sancia’s special abilities make her a superb thief, but when she takes a job for a campo client, her world is turned upside down. Now on the run and in possession of an ancient hierophantic artifact, Sancia must unravel the mystery of who hired her to steal it — and what they ultimately intend to do with it.
Since this is a re-read, I have the benefit of knowing the ending to see how well-threaded this book is. It ticks along like a well-oiled machine, with ideas and concepts seeded at the beginning for payoff later. Much like the Divine Cities trilogy, it starts with a compelling character and a good mystery, and it spirals out from there. And if you like reading about thieves, this will absolutely float your boat. There’s lots of heists and spying and general skulduggery. In fact, the plot absolutely rockets along — it’s the kind of book you want to finish in one sitting, even though it’s rather long.
On top of that, Sancia is exactly the sort of character I love as a protagonist. She’s tough and smart, but carrying some pretty deep emotional baggage. Her relationship with Clef, the sentient artifact she steals, carries the book. She’s able to empathize with him due to her own situation, the specifics of which unspool slowly throughout the novel as we see her central conflict: Sancia still sees herself as a slave, a thing, a possession. The inner conflict dovetails beautifully into the bigger stakes surrounding her, and you’ll want to root for her.
The supporting cast is also A+. Gregor Dandolo is idealistic and oddly wholesome, desperately trying to be the white knight he knows in his core that he’s not. His strong sense of law and justice is the perfect foil to Sancia — and he’s not even aware of just how much he has in common with her. Their enemies-to-reluctant-co-conspirators-to-friends relationship is delightful.
Orso, hypatus of the Dandolo campo, is the snarky genius with the heart of gold. He reminds me a lot of Rodney McKay in Stargate: Atlantis, in that he’s actually a good person buried beneath some egotism and arrogance. He also has THE BEST dialogue in the book. I wanted to hate him initially, but after a few chapters I just couldn’t anymore. And Berenice is wonderful — a female genius in a world of men, patient, passionate, who makes no apologies for herself, whose sheer competence proves her worth. Orso would be fucked without her, and he knows it.
If the Divine Cities trilogy taught me anything, it’s simply this: Robert Jackson Bennett is a master of worldbuilding, and he especially excels at creating fantasy worlds that still maintain something of a modern feel to them. (The best analog I can probably give is Max Gladstone, though their writing styles are quite different). Tevanne and its surrounds feel fully fleshed out, somewhere more advanced than your standard fantasy because scriving literally is technology of a kind. He’s given thought to all manner of things, including the broader ramifications of the economy he’s created.
And while the trap here is to only flesh out Tevanne and ignore the rest of the world, Bennett mostly manages to avoid it. Sancia comes from the islands on the Durazzo sea, so there’s a lot of discussion about what happened there. Gregor has a murky military past as the so-called Revenant of Dantua, so we learn more about Tevanne’s wars. Plus, there’s the constant discussion of hierophant history. Taken together, these threads keep us from getting stuck in Tevanne too much.
Also on the worldbuilding front, the magic system is genius. I’m a big fan of Sanderson-style magic systems, with clearly defined rules and limitations. Scriving fits right along those lines. Scrivers use sigil strings to reprogram reality, to convince an object it is something it’s not or weighs more than it does, etc. They load those definitions into engines called lexicons and use them to power all kinds of “magic.” (As I said above, you could call it technology too — it rides the line). Scriving has so many applications, and yet its limitations, especially as they relate to lexicons and what can/cannot be scrived easily, have huge plot ramifications.
In short, I frigging loved this book the first time I read it, and I loved it again this time. The sequel Shorefall has been top of my “excited for” list for a while now, and I’ve finally gotten my hands on it. Keep an eye out for that review soon!
Grade: 5/5 stars
Memorable Quote:
“Each one showed an altar, always an altar, positioned at the center of each paper. Floating above the altar was the image of a prone, sexless human body—perhaps it was an artistic rendition of someone lying on the altar’s surface. Floating above the human body was always an oversized sword or blade, several times the size of the altar or the person. Written inside the blade were any number of complicated sigils, which varied from engraving to engraving, but all of them had these three things in common: the body, the altar, and the blade.
There was something gruesomely clinical to it all. They did not depict some religious rite, it felt. Instead, they seemed like...
Instructions, she thought. But instructions for what?”
