Foundryside

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.