Tuesday, October 16, 2018

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Foundryside by Robert Jackson Bennett



Foundryside is the first of a new fantasy trilogy by Robert Jackson Bennett (author of "The Divine Cities" trilogy).  The Divine Cities was an absolutely fantastic work of worldbuilding, creating a fantasy world with very different magical rules that consistently fascinated as new aspects of it got introduced.  The trilogy also featured some fantastic characters, with their own brilliant traits and traumas that made them incredibly easy to like/root-for.  So after burning through that entire trilogy in a total of four days earlier this year (the whole book was in the Hugo Packet), I was really looking forward to what Bennett would put out net.

Foundryside does not disappoint.  The worldbuilding is even more fantastic than in The Divine Cities - here we have a world where technology is based upon inscribing symbols onto objects to "convince" those objects they're actually something else - essentially altering reality.  The implementation of this is so incredibly clever, especially as the book goes on, and the book adds in top notch characters nearly up to the standards of the previous trilogy.  And like the prior trilogy, this story weaves in serious themes - such as oppression, discrimination, and class struggles - seamlessly to create a more resonant story.

Definitely recommended.

More after the jump:

------------------------------------------------Plot Summary------------------------------------------------------
The City of Tevanne is built upon a magical technology known as "Scriving."  By carving a sigil into an object, a Scriver can convince that object to believe it is something else or that some attribute of it is different than reality - so for example, to have a car move forward, its wheels can be scrived to think that it is on a downhill, so the wheels will always move forward.  However, the common people of Tevanne generally live in poverty and don't have access to scriving except for what can be made by underground scrivers with scrounged parts - while proper scriving "technology" belongs to the four powerful Merchant Houses that control most of the city.

Sancia is a thief with a dark past who has made her life doing small jobs to get by, using a special power she barely understands to help her along the way....but this special power makes it impossible for her to feel things - or god forbid, people - for any length of time and she would do anything to have it removed.   And when a job comes along paying a ton of money for her to steal an object from a waterfront safe, she sees her opportunity to come up with the funds to finally achieve this.

But when the object Sancia steals turns out to be a sentient key named Clef, who Sancia can hear in her thoughts, Sancia realizes this job is far worse than she could ever have imagined.  For Clef seems to have the power to bend reality itself unlike any scriving anyone has ever seen before, and Clef's wielder could potentially have the power to alter reality itself to their whims.  And the person behind the job request will stop at nothing to obtain Clef and this ultimate power....and Sancia, and her unlikely allies, will find themselves against the mightiest forces imaginable on all sides as they work to save the world they know from utter destruction.
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The worst thing about writing this review is that I know I cannot explain adequately (and definitely haven't above) how fantastic the idea of Scriving is, and how Bennett uses that idea and how he comes up with more and more complex and fascinating explorations of that idea as the book goes on.  It allows Bennett to create a fascinating fantasy world, which he combines with real world concepts to form an amazing background (and foreground really, since as with The Divine Cities, the City is in essence its own character) to the story.

And damn what a story.  Obviously, as with most books, that starts with the characters.  Sancia is a fantastic character, who manages to be far more than the typical "thief with a heart of gold" or the typical "thief with a magical ability that makes her super-competent more than anyone could have realized", which are the two archetypes she would seem to fit into at first glance.  Yet her tragic past, and how she views herself, and how that changes as she grows, make her far more unique and interesting - especially with how the themes of this world intersect with that background.

Spoiler in ROT13 for more specifics: Gb or zber fcbvyre fcrpvsvp - bar bs gur xrl pbaprcgf bs Fpevivat vf gung vg unf bayl fhpprffshyyl orra hfrq ba bowrpgf, orpnhfr crbcyr ner abg bayl pbzcyvpngrq, ohg punatvat.  Vg vf cerggl nccnerag sebz uvagf rneyl gung Fnapvn vf na rkprcgvba gb gung, nf fur jnf rkcrevzragrq ba naq tvsgrq ure novyvgvrf ol hfr bs uhzna Fpevivat jura fur jnf n fynir ba n cynagngvba - naq vg vf gurbevmrq gung gur ernfba guvf jbexrq jvgu ure vf gung fur gubhtug bs UREFRYS nf na bowrpg be n gbby naq abg nf n crefba....juvpu pbzrf gb n urnq va gur svanyr, jura gur znva nagntbavfg nggrzcgf gb hfr napvrag cbjre bire bowrpgf' ernyvgvrf gb pbzznaq ure, nf n gbby, gb fgbc.  Juvpu jbhyq unir fhpprrqrq ohg sbe gur wbhearl Fnapvn gnxrf guebhtubhg erfhygvat va ure erwrpgvat ure cerivbhf haqrefgnaqvat bs urefrys nf zreryl na bowrpg.

Ure ershfvat gb nyybj bguref gb pbaivapr urefrys - nf gur Pvgl vgfrys naq gubfr jub eha vg gel gb qb gb znal crbcyr - gung fur vf n jbeguyrff guvat, nyybjf ure gb gevhzcu va gur raq...sbe gur zbzrag.

The other characters are excellent too, and then there's the plot, which winds and turns in a way that is often incredibly surprising, and yet is never unfair in how it comes about: you will always find yourself realizing that the seeds for each plot twist were cleverly laid beforehand, for you to figure out.  And again, the themes involved in this plot are serious ones - issues of slavery and freedom, oppression and discrimination (these concepts are not the same thing, but are all explored here), of struggling through poverty in desperation are all explored here and done so damn well.

Unlike the Divine Cities trilogy, which was really a trio of stand-alone novels set in the same universe (with events from earlier novels affecting later ones, of course), Foundryside is clearly the first in a trilogy with a cliffhanger ending.  That said, its ending is still an incredibly satisfying resolution to the main story at the heart of this novel, so I really didn't mind it at all, and a reader could stop here and not read any future books without any problems. 

Yeah, you should read this book, it's that damn good.  Is it perfect?  No, but it's really damn close.

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