Tuesday, June 28, 2022

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Locklands by Robert Jackson Bennett

 




 Full Disclosure:  This book was read as an e-ARC (Advance Reader Copy) obtained via Netgalley from the publisher in advance of the book's release on June 28, 2022 in exchange for a potential review.  I give my word that this did not affect my review in any way - if I felt conflicted in any way, I would simply have declined to review the book.


Locklands is the conclusion to Robert Jackson Bennett's "The Founders" trilogy, which began in 2018 with "Foundryside" and continued in 2020 with "Shorefall".  The trilogy features a world in which technology has evolved based upon a magic known as scriving - in which certain glyphs written on objects will convince an object that reality is not how it really is, causing the object to react differently (so for example, wheels can be scrived to think they're on a downhill, causing them to roll forward).  Bennett has used this world and its characters to tremendous effect, telling a story with strong themes of people recognizing they are people instead of mere tools, about inequality of resources and power, and how attempts to universally spread power around may or may not simply result in new people being oppressed rather than a more egalitarian world - and the importance of empathy in ensuring that such a bad outcome doesn't happen.  As with RJB's "The Divine Cities", this series has been utterly tremendous through two books and I was incredibly eager to dive in to the finale.  

And Locklands remains a fascinating thriller novel, as - eight years after the last book - the protagonists attempt to save the world from the disasters they helped unleash in the last book, and to keep together the new society they've built with their twinning technology in the face of impossible odds.  Bennett really takes the (kind of well worn SF/F) trope of "Society would work better if people's thoughts were all connected so that they knew and felt the impact of their actions on others" in interesting directions, really exploring how that might look here rather than simply just assuming the concept.  And the main characters remain excellent, between Sancia, Berenice, and Clef, as they try to deal with aging, remedying their own mistakes, and tremendous grief for each other and those they have previously lost.  Oh and as usual, this is a hell of a thriller plot along the way too.  I'm not sure I'd rank this above The Divine Cities trilogy, but it's certainly close at the very least, and that's saying a lot.  

Note: Spoilers for Shorefall and Foundryside are inevitable below:  

--------------------------------------------Plot Summary---------------------------------------------------
Eight Years has passed since Sancia, Berenice, Orso, Gregor, and Clef attempted to save all of humanity from the Hierophant Crasedes and his immortal creation Valeria, who each sought to use their unthinkable powers to their own ends: Crasedes to subjugate all humanity, Valeria to send humanity back to the stone age and destroy all human process.  But in doing so, they created a new nightmare: Tevanne, a being made of a combination of human and hierophant, who is capable of using the Scriving power of Twinning to enslave humanity like no force ever before, and who is willing to sacrifice its captives to alter reality in horrible horrible ways.  

Even within all that, Sancia, Berenice, and Clef have formed something unthinkable - a society of humans using scriving and twinning to share thoughts and feelings in ways like never before, to use power for the benefit of all, in a society that actually helps each other progress and be happy.  And they've even managed to rescue thousands from Tevanne's clutches to live with them.

Yet their new society may not last for long, as Tevanne is closing in on something long lost - a doorway to the key to reality itself, from which it can change the world in an instant, wiping away all that progress and humanity's future in and of itself.  To stop Tevanne, Sancia and her friends will have to risk everything - including their own futures with each other....and it might not be enough....
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Foundryside used the fascinating mechanic of scriving and its great characters to tell a really strong story about power, about what it means to be a person rather than a tool, no matter what someone else tells you.  Shorefall continued that theme to some extent, and tried to go into the theme of whether the use of new technology or powers can ever result in a better society, or if it will only shift the balance of who oppresses whom.  It then sort of concluded with an idea that I've seen in more than a few works - that a solution to that problem could be the linking of people's thoughts and feelings through twinning, and that shared empathy could stop the cycle of oppression.  That said, it didn't really explore that idea too strongly, and instead got a little bogged down with the magical powers of the antagonists (even as it was still strong) 

By contrast, Locklands does try to explore this a bit more in detail, to show how a society built upon that twinning might actually work.  And it's fascinating - with some beings finding themselves so alike they actually subsume their individual personalities into a collective of people with the same makeup (so Design is a collective of those designing new technology, Greeter is a collective of people who are dedicated to helping others adapt, etc) and others instead holding on to their individuality while still feeling the feelings of others.  You can actually sort of see how the society envisioned by RJB in this book would work - and it's really interesting....even if it may in some ways be horrifying honestly.   

Oh and yeah there's also a really well done thriller plot here with excellent characters, as Sancia, Berenice, Clef, and their allies are forced to go into dangerous enemy territory, ally with previously unthinkable enemies, and make use of scriving in new and interesting ways to survive it all.  RJB knows how to make an excellent thriller, and this is definitely one, as the characters are forced to react to new discoveries by quickly changing plans to avoid being destroyed.  And RJB does an excellent job showing the impact of each success and failure on their quest and how things can go devastatingly wrong.  And Sancia and Berenice's romance, and their struggles with Sancia's rapid aging due to the events of the last book (a plot element that I appreciated given how often that trope is used and then ignored in other works) is really really well done and just tugged on my heartstrings so so hard.  As a result it's not surprising that Lockland is an incredibly hard book to put down.  

Not everything works - the book features flashbacks to the past and features a mystery as to what really happened that feels kind of obvious and kind of like a repeat of a prior plotline in this series, and where that plotline leads - sort of an exploration of grief and how dangerously it can drive a person, among other things - just doesn't quite fit with everything else.  But even with these flashbacks taking up major space, everything else works so well, and the other themes about empathy and twinning are so interesting, that it's hard to be too critical.  

So yeah, Locklands is a strong finale to the Founders trilogy, even if the trilogy might not quite ever reach the heights of its first installments.  Definitely give this a try if you want really fascinating fantasy, just like any of RJB's other works.  
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