Foundryside

I found the concepts in this book and the “magic” system to be very unique. IMO this is secretly a sci-fi book masquerading as a fantasy. Overall some neat twists and ends the book off in a satisfying way yet promises even more to come.

The Divine Cities trilogy is one of my favorite reads from last year and probably one of the most impactful fantasies I have ever read. Though I never went back to reading RJB's earlier works, I knew I would want to check out his upcoming books. When I realized the ARCs for his latest were available, I had my fingers crossed and I can't describe the elation I felt when my request was approved. Foundryside is another amazing action packed new fantasy series with interesting characters, a corrupt city and a rich history full of almost godlike beings.

Sancia Garbo is a master thief in the city of Tevanne who is on her way to her latest job, which might just provide a solution to all her troubles. When she realizes the object she has stolen might lead to devastating consequences in the wrong hands, it's obvious that she might not be safe anymore. Captain Gregor Dandolo is a righteous war veteran who just wants to bring some law and justice to his city where none exist and wants to start that by bringing the thief who stole from his warehouse and burned half the waterfront to justice. What starts off as a typical cops and robbers type of chase turns into much more when assassins start looking for Sancia and Gregor is caught in the crossfire. Both of them join hands with an unlikely crew to dig deeper and figure out the conspiracy that might have far reaching consequences to their world.

The worldbuilding here is rich and masterful and it comes alive in the skilled hands of RJB. Tevanne is a city divided between the four merchant house compounds who are law unto themselves. Anyone who can't afford to live in the campos has to make do living in the slums between the compounds called The Commons where there is hardly any food or work and every day is a struggle to survive. The merchant houses have become all powerful and rich using the magic system called “scriving”, which is a way of writing sigils on objects that make them slightly sentient and change their reality – like making a carriage believe it's always going downhill so that it goes faster and without a driver (or) making an arrow believe it has been falling down from a much longer distance so that it hits with a very high velocity. As the story progresses, we get to know about more complicated scrivings, the scrivers who are responsible for imagining new possibilities while keeping ahead of the rival merchant houses and the washed out scrappers who work the underground market to provide some comfort to the poor people living in the Commons.

Sancia is an excellent protagonist. She is fiery, angry and pragmatic, her survival skills are top notch and she is extremely brave. Her past as a tortured slave still haunts her, leaving her with some form of PTSD. Her special talents also make her a unique being in the city, someone who could be used for nefarious purposes but the way her character is written is very realistic and likable and she never falls into the “special snowflake” trope. Gregor starts off as the stereotype of a soldier – proper, polite, righteous, thinks he can bring about a change by just instituting laws – but he quickly sees through the rampant corruption of the merchant houses, especially by listening to Sancia's history and resolves that the city needs a revolution. Orso is the master scriver of Dandolo house and comes across as a pretentious academic, but he is ultimately just a seeker of knowledge and has his heart in the right place. His assistant Berenice is talented and confident and can think on her feet even in dire situations rigging up scrived objects to get them out. Claudia and Gio are scrappers but are quick to help Sancia not just for the money, but also the opportunity to do more with their scriving talents. And most important and my favorite is Clef, the artifact that Sancia initially stole who is so much more than just a key and the one around whom much of the story revolves.

The story is full of action packed heists and chases, planning daring adventures and figuring out the history of the ancient hierophants, who did much more than just bending the reality of objects. The world and magic system is very original and unique and thoroughly detailed and I loved getting to know more about it. The writing is also very easy to read and not as intimidating or dense as other adult fantasies and I couldn't put it down once I started. Between all the life and death stakes that the characters are fighting, we also get some wit and humor – I especially enjoyed the conversations that Sancia and Clef had with scrived objects to make them do things they didn't want to.

Just like I expect from RJB, we get some subtle commentary on the effects of slavery, how rampant and unchecked capitalism concentrates wealth and power in the hands of the few and lets the ordinary people suffer, how the pursuit of knowledge run amok can blur the lines of morality. The parallels to our world are uncanny because these are all questions we do ponder on frequently, especially with the rising wealth gap and extreme advances in biotechnology and genomics. The magic system of “scriving” and the way Sancia uses her talents to get around the loopholes in scrived objects is also eerily similar to computer programming, hacking and artificial intelligence and how the creations might get ahead of the creators one day. The author actually calls it “the magic equivalent of database management” and I think that's a brilliant analogy.

The city of Tevanne is so dependent on scriving and rigged objects that even a minute failure in an essential component can bring down the whole infrastructure; this is a direct parallel to our over dependence on technology in everyday life and the constant threat of cyber warfare and collapse of our technological infrastructure. On the other hand, the slavery in the plantations is an essential component of trade and wealth for Tevanne and none of the merchant houses care for the conditions of the slaves or how they are tortured, which is again how our world works; in most cases, we live in our own bubbles while human rights are violated every day in other parts of the world and we believe that it would never affect us. The deft way that the author incorporates all these themes into a fantasy heist story just shows his amazing talent as a writer.

I'm so much in love with this book and it's characters and I'm definitely looking forward to reading it again. This would be a delight for all Robert Jackson Bennett's fans and anyone who enjoys reading about well developed fantasy worlds with unique scientific magic systems.

Thanks to Crown Publishing and Netgalley for proving me with the advance copy of this book. All opinions expressed are solely mine.

This book was great! I liked most of the characters and felt like the magic system was extremely believable - a cleverly twisted fantastical take on the role computers play irl. It reminds me of the Legend of Eli Monpress, but not so much as to detract from its originality. The plot overall wasn't exactly mind bending, and things played out more or less as expected, but I was easily carried away by the story and the pacing is on point. A cleverly portrayed glimpse at the nominal freedom of modern society. There is a touch of romance that seems somewhat sudden and shoehorned in, but there are only so many pages a book can have and it really isn't the point of the story anyhow. Extremely compelling ending; I can't wait for the next one.

This book has its flaws (and they're glaringly obvious too) but damn if the world and the magic system doesn't pull you in. In most other books displaying the storytelling problems that this one does, I'd probably have rated this much lower, if not completely DNFed long ago. Foundryside had the huge, huge advantage that it has such a compelling and fascinating world, lore, and magic system that it managed to get away with its problems and still shine.

With a tragic past behind her, Sancia Grado makes her way being a sneak thief in the seedy underbelly of Tevanne. What enables her to have survived so long and be so good at what she does are certain talents that she possesses. When she touches an object, she feels everything they do, so touching a building allows her to instantly know how many guards are positioned within it and where, and where the weaknesses in its defences are. Things go wrong in Sancia's latest job, however, where she had been instructed to steal a precious cargo from a safe. Out of curiosity, Sancia opens the parcel that she has just stolen and her life is never the same again.

Probably one of the main attractions of this book to me is the world and the magic system. Tevanne, and indeed the world that Sancia lives in, is fascinated by scriving, a process in which objects can be “re-written” to believe in a different reality from its own. Wheels can be scrived to believe they are rolling down a hill even while they are on flat ground, essentially propelling it forwards. People have also found ways to control such scrivings, thus being able to maneuver the wheels in certain directions given by a lever - essentially inventing driving by magic instead of by fuel and engine. That's really just the start of it. We learn more about this vast and complex magic system along the way, and it only gets crazier and crazier. Most stories rely on plot alone to provide a hook for readers to keep on reading until the end (and there's nothing wrong with that), but in this one I felt that, while the plot had some hook to it, the revelations of how the magic system worked also kept me going. I wanted to know more and find out more.

It's odd that in a book where there are a number of main characters running around doing things, I found myself more endeared to the number of semi-sentient inordinate objects like Clef and the Mountain in particular, but sometimes also all the random scrived objects that they talk to and befuddle. Because Tevanne is basically a shit hole of a city, it makes complete sense that all the people in it are either really jaded or really corrupted, or both. However, it doesn't make for very endearing characters that I can get attached to. The death(s) of any of the main characters may not have made me blink an eye.

A major problem of the book that was immediately obvious from the beginning chapters was Bennett's storytelling style. Instead of the classic “showing, not telling” approach, Bennett constantly adds info-dump after info-dump into his narrative. The first few chapters were a fairly obvious set-up for him to explain this world and magic system to us - it felt almost like a tutorial sequence in a video game. There were actual paragraphs where Bennett just ruminates about how Sancia's talents worked, exactly what she can sense and what she can't, and it's all done in an expository way instead of us seeing it play out in the plot or in a relevant scene. It felt a little unpolished and jarring, but Bennett had the advantage of having also built a really compelling world to distract me from those flaws.

A lot of things also happened illogically or way too conveniently. One point I noted was how Sancia, a hardened and jaded street urchin who has survived a lot of violence and treachery, also seems to scream at every thing that shocks her, even during an adrenaline-charged situation where people are firing bolts at her. That's not really how I'd expect someone whose entire means of survival is steathily infiltrating into places and stealing things to behave. I particularly had issues with the bit in Ch 26 when Sancia gets her body taken over by Clef, and he starts having a very interesting discussion with Orso about the nature of scriving, and Sancia just randomly starts fading in and out of consciousness even though there is no good reason for her to do so, and she only catches very convenient snatches of the conversation between Clef and Orso as this happens. I was so mad at this part!! Especially when she finally regains consciousness permanently just at the bit where she miraculously figured out and had to make a dramatic announcement to the party that Clef must've been a person before this. And then she never faints again even though they have a somewhat lengthy discussion about Clef's previous identity after that.

The book has a lot of flaws, and a lot of them are glaringly obvious. I wouldn't fault someone who chose to DNF because of them, especially if the world and magic system doesn't compel them. Personally though, I thoroughly enjoyed the setting so much that I was able to just glaze over the flaws (which would otherwise have driven me close to DNFing too). I'd continue the series just because I really want to know more about the lore of this world.

Foundryside is a fun book brimming with discovery with its creative magic system and mysteries. I enjoyed reading it and following Sancia especially, although I thought it lacked in-depth characterization and could be too exposition-heavy at times.

My Rating: 7.5/10 (I kept going back and forth between 7 and 7.5 so I rounded up)

Review on My Website

Hard to believe this is by the same person who wrote the various City Of books. Got about a third of a way in before having to give up due to extreme annoyance at the complete lack of a feeling of place. And also the fact that the talking magic item sounds like any internet commenter 2018. And the main character about the same. And we were starting a quest for the lost ancient magics just stop. Reread any “City Of” book instead.

Very cool book. I loved the concept of scrived things. I am still a bit confused about the world and how it looks, but I hope to finish this trilogy soon.

Very interesting story and unputdownable at times.

The story follows a young thief named Sancia, who after doing the biggest heist of her life, finds herself involved in something far worse than she could ever imagine.

‘Grudges,' said Sancia, ‘are a privilege I can't afford.'

Characters - it didn't take long to be invested in Sancia's story. RJB done a fine job in making you root for Sancia from the minute the story started moving. A likeable rouge, who is fighting her own demons, amongst the houses of Tevanne.
The other side characters were likeable also, however not as much as Sancia. The bond the characters start building is enjoyable to read. My favourite of them all has to be Clef but the less said about him the better!

Magic / Worldbuilding - the magic system is fascinating. I personally haven't read anything similar and would say it is unique. It does sit amongst the likes of Brandon Sanderson, I feel both writers have similar skills of building their magic systems.
The world of Tevanne is very though out. From the slums all the way up to the main houses, each area designed differently, with separate states of residents and their own personal agendas.

The plot moves along nicely, keeping at a decent pace. The pay off is great at the end and makes you excited to read the second of the trilogy - Shorefall.
The heist set up is nice, I've not read much heist stories but would like to read more after this.
It does leave on a sort of cliff hanger, so be prepared to be invested in the full 3 books.

Overall 4/5 - enjoyable read throughout. Recommend for anyone who enjoys their heists with a side of magic and likeable characters.

My favorite part are all the plannings involved in each mission, even when they don't turn out as expected.

4.0 out of 5 stars

My thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an advanced reader copy in exchange for an honest review.

Fresh off his brilliant Divine Cities trilogy, author Robert Jackson Bennett is back with Foundryside, the first book in The Founders trilogy. If this first installment is any indication, readers are in for another great fantasy series.

Set between the massive walls of four merchant house cities, Foundryside follows Sancia Grado, a street urchin whose unique relationship with scriving, the magic that fuels Tevanne's industry, causes all sorts of issues...but also opportunities.

This book has pieces of everything I want in a fantasy novel — an intriguing magic system, rich worldbuilding, interesting characters, humor, and heart. Those pieces coalesce into something really interesting and make for an enjoyable reading experience. Bennett has done an impressive job building the framework of this world, from the physical structure of Tevanne, to the types of characters that inhabit it, as well as the magic system that makes unexpected things possible.

That said, the explanations and complexities of the magic system were sometimes confusing to me and took time away from developing the cast of characters that will need to be further fleshed before I'm fully committed to their plights.

Luckily, Foundryside is swiftly paced, has great action, and features loads of sharp, snappy dialogue. It's a fun ride that I won't be getting off any time soon. I'm very much looking forward to the next book, even though the wait will be longer than usual since this book doesn't technically come out for another 112 days!

2.5. My attention kept wandering.

I got this book from Del Rey publishing at Denver Pop Culture Festival through their “Book Wizard” program. I was extremely excited to read it since the Divine Cities trilogy is one of my favorites. This series plays out very differently, but still has RBJ's skill for extremely tight plotting and world-building. Basically, this is a fantasy novel for coders. The entire magic system is basically divine coding, and I think it would be a great gift for anyone in IT. It's also a superbly plotted heist that really never stops and has a Divine Cities hint of the gods walking among us, which is always a favorite theme of mine.

That said, I didn't like it as much as Divine Cities, and part of that was the characters who just weren't as vibrant as in that novel. These feel a bit more stock, and there is an extremely ham-fisted lesbian romance just kinda thrown in. Granted, I'm happy that we've progressed as a society where ham-fisted romantic subplots can also be gay, but this felt very much like a straight white man throwing this into a book to prove he's inclusive, and it just didn't develop enough for me. I usually don't care for romance sub-plots, and this one was just no exception. When facing the end of the world, I just can't see getting a date as a the top priority.

I love RBJ and will probably continue on when Shorefall comes out next year, but yeah straight male writers, beware of token lesbian romance syndrome.

City of Stairs is what got me into my current reading groove. I had never read more than a handful of books for my own personal pleasure over the years. Something felt special about the whole world Robert Jackson Bennett built.

I won’t go as far to say he’s done it again but it’s fun to see the motifs he plays with. This time being a magical coding world. Mostly threads the needle of the fun of a heist and playing with a somewhat complicated magical system.

It does take a good chunk to get going as I think action is not where RJB excels. Or I’m just dumb. Logistically his writing always makes me feel like I’m missing one piece of the geography to fully map it. That pops up a couple times in the book. But once they get into the actual systems and how that shapes the world we are really cooking.

I picked this up because it fit into my request for more fantasy with lgbt characters. While there are lgbt characters, it's not a theme of the book, and it takes up so little of it that it's barely even there. I'm surprised how much that disappointed me. Maybe it's because Foundryside has many great things to offer, and the lgbt aspect would've perfected it for me? Maybe.

The worldbuilding is magnificent. The concept of magic isn't really magic, but something akin to symbol-writing overriding laws of logic and reality. It's hard to explain ??? Bennet does a very fine job at it, though. There are elements of AI in this, but it's not technology as we know it... I haven't read anything like it before.

The characters are easy to love, even the villains. In fact, there's a very fine line between villains and heroes and at some point you'll realize Bennett has woven his plot masterly to the point where your own concept of right and wrong has been tampered with.

For all the great things that is Foundryside, I don't really care to mention the little things that annoyed me. They don't really matter when I've had to force myself to put down the book and go to bed the past two nights.

I was drawn to this book by the description of the magic system. It sounded interesting and flexible and something I hadn't really seen much of, almost like combining magic with science and computer logic/language. But the further the book progressed the more layers were added until it became overly complicated and turned into a lingo salad whenever anything needed explaining (which happened frequently).

I also didn't really connect with any of the characters. The main character is flawed and dramatic, the side characters are sort of flat and one dimensional. I didn't see much development of either the main character or the side characters honestly, and was a little let down. The dialogue between characters also felt a little stale, and the author switches frequently between using common English swear words and made up or repurposed swear words seemingly at whim.

Overall I was a little let down by this book, I completed the book but likely will not continue with the series.

This was such a pleasant surprise. The world and magic system is so unbelievably innovative and unique. The pacing was excellent and the characters were very likeable and realistic given their circumstances. I cannot wait to see where this story goes in the next books!

The city of Tevanne is divided into Merchant Houses. They hold the cities magic, wealth, and power. If you don't belong to one of these Houses, chances are you are probably poor.
The magic is called scriving. Scriving is using codes to make an object sentient. Only the Houses are allowed scrived objects. If the poor have these objects, they probably stole them, or made them illegally.
Sancia is a thief. She has taken a very dangerous job, but the money is worth it. At least she thinks it is. She is sent to steal an artifact from a safe on the waterfront. She has no idea what she's stealing or what she's gotten herself into until numerous parties try to kill her. She has a lot of questions, but the first one is who hired her. If she can figure that one out, that will be a good starting point to figuring out what the hell is going on.
I really enjoyed this story. I loved Sancia and Clef. I thought it was a very unique and fun read.
I received a copy from NetGalley. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

An interesting story, decent characters, the world building and magic system really stand out. If I had to describe the world-building, I would say it's Arcane and Fable smashed together.

DNF @10%

I had been wanting to read this for such a long time that when I finally got a hold of it at my library, I was disappointed with it. It wasn't what I had expected going in, which is too bad because I know that a lot of people really love this book (and series). I'm not much one for grunge fantasy, so maybe that's why it didn't appeal to me. Maybe I'll give it another shot at some point, but it's unlikely.

Executive Summary: Another excellent book by Robert Jackson Bennett. He's up there with [a:Django Wexler 639491 Django Wexler https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1357865518p2/639491.jpg] for best fantasy author you're probably not reading but should be.Audiobook: Tara Sands does a fine job, making the audio a decent option. Her normal reading voice seems like a good fit for the protagonist and does some additional voices that adds that little extra something to the book.Full ReviewI'm typically a big fan of thief protagonists, and heist stories, so it's no surprise that I was excited to see how RJB tackled the genre. I really loved his Divine City books, especially the first two and I was looking forward to read a story in a different setting.Sancia is a pretty good protagonist, although I didn't connect to her right away. Once things finally got going with the magic key however, things picked up quite a bit for me.The story in this book was enjoyable, but for me the best part was the excellent magic system. I'm a sucker for a well thought out and detailed magic system. I'm a software engineer by trade. The details of how scriving works reminds me a lot of how software is built. You start with a foundation of lower level language and build higher level languages on top of that.I loved, loved LOVED this system, and I'm hoping we continue to get some more interesting details about it as the series progresses.Overall this was a pretty solid start to a new series that only got better as the book went along. I'm really looking forward to seeing where he takes things next. If you haven't read anything by Robert Jackson Bennett, I highly recommend it. His Divine cities books are excellent, and this one is right up there with them.

I found this book quite a mix of good and bad. When I reach around 2/3 of the way through any book I start thinking about how I'm going to rate it. In the case of Foundryside, I found it much harder than other books to determine how I would rate it.

The plot concerns Sancia and her unique ability to hear scrivings. Scrivings are the language that is engraved onto objects which can alter reality and change how these objects work. Sancia uses this skill to steal objects because she is desperate to change her life. It is definitely changed when she steals a talking key called Clef and discovers the job she was doing is so much more than it seemed.

I found the plot fairly fast paced and for the majority of the book it was really easy to read. I got fatigued with the plot in a way I've never experienced before and would end up skim reading every 40 pages or so. The world was fleshed out, but I found the set up quite info-dumpy. While this initially didn't bother me it did become repetitive throughout the book. I lowered the rating a star also in part due to fact that the book read partially like a young adult novel and partially adult.

My biggest issue concerns the rules of the city the story takes in. The city has four merchant houses with large compounds and the poor slum areas fill the gaps between the compounds. Early on in the book, Sancia mentions that there are no rules that govern the city and the individual merchant houses enforce their own rules within their compounds. It is mentioned at least twice later on, however, that certain things are illegal or prohibited in the city. I found this contradiction distracting, so I lowered the rating a star partially for this reason. It could have been my fault for misinterpreting or misreading the initial comment in the book, but I can't check now as my library comment has been returned now.

I would recommend Foundryside to readers of YA fantasy or any readers of fantasy in general. It was a quick, fun read and the characters were enjoyable. A few twists towards the end kept me engaged and interested and I'm definitely going to keep an eye out for the sequel.

Pros: unique magic system, intricate world-building, fascinating characters, interesting plot

Cons:

Three years ago Sancia Grado was a slave. Now she's a skilled thief, hired to pull off a very difficult job. The payout means she can finally get a physiquere to fix the scar on her head and remove the metal plate beneath it that was scrived to allow her to hear the thoughts of every object she touches. But the item she steals is connected to the Occidentals, also known as hierophants, those who became like gods, able to use scrivings to change reality itself. Suddenly the plate in her head's the least of her worries.

This book was amazing. I've only mentioned Sancia's plot thread, though there are several others that intersect with hers once the book gets going. She's a thoroughly engaging protagonist, and while her scrived state makes her fairly powerful in some respects, that's balanced by the pain speaking with objects causes her.

I absolutely loved Clef. He's such a fun character, coming out with all the sarcastic, swearing, responses people would love to use but don't because they want to be polite. The book does have quite a lot of swearing, which I sometimes found jarring and other times thought fit the situation nicely.

The worldbuilding was intricate and detailed, with several layers to it. The main setting is the city with it's four campos and the commons, but other locations are mentioned. History comes mostly in the form of mythology - which different sources report in different ways.

The magic is unique and hard to describe in few words. It's remarkably... logical, though it takes some time to wrap your brain around what the people are doing.

The plot is interesting, with several threads wrapping around each other. There is some downtime to get to know the characters and let them figure out their next moves, but the majority of the book is one daring break in or escape after another.

As I said, it's an excellent book. If you're looking for a unique fantasy novel, I highly recommend this.

I DNF'd this book at 35%. The premise was interesting, but I found that I was not that invested in the story or characters. I may get back to it at some point.

I have been so excited to read this book because I have seen so many book reviewers raving about it. However, it fell short for me.
Let me start off by saying that the world building and the magic system are some of the most interesting I've read in the fantasy genre. Bending reality to do certain things is bizarre and hard to wrap your mind around while reading, but ultimately is so fresh and interesting.
However, because of the complexity of this world, half of the book felt like an instruction manual to me. I felt like I was just trying to learn how everything works with a little bit of a story sprinkled in through much of the beginning of the book. Sancia as a character is fun, and I love heist stories, but I just couldn't get behind some of these characters. They were entertaining, but I didn't feel emotionally connected to them in any way.
The ending really turned much of this book around for me. I texted my husband as soon as I finished and was like “I take back everything I said I loved it”. Now that I've sat with it, I still agree with my critiques, but the ending really was suspenseful and super fun. I'm excited to read the second, and I hope that now that we've learned how a lot of the world works, we will be able to dive right into the story.

4 stars. I really like this one and I'm excited to see where the series will go. Thematically, this is my bread and butter. Im an IT nerd so all of the programming and AI undertones in this really piqued my interest and it was well executed. Hoping book 2 and 3 expand on that and get better