Foundryside: A Novel: 1 (The Founders Trilogy)

Love love love it. Super fun read. It's no science fiction, but it's a lot of super fun fiction. Waiting for the next in the series to be released

It's frustrating that so many people think sci-fi and fantasy books are badly written, infantile rubbish consumed by undiscriminating shut-ins ... but then you read something like Foundryside and understand why.I was sucked in by all the gushing positive reviews, in and out of amazon, and the idea that it's a clever cyberpunk fantasy mash-up.It isn't any of those, at any level.It turns out that it's the second mainstream publishing fantasy of 2018 I've just read that basically files the serial numbers off The Matrix - which is good news for the original IP holders, since there's clearly an appetite, but not so much for anyone who bought either Jade City or Foundryside, which are both pretty shabbyIt's not just that Foundryside is badly written, although it is, pretty much all the way through. And that's not just because the writer often uses words that don't mean what he seems to think they do. Or that he uses technical concepts he doesn't understand and confuses. Like gravity - a LOT - and momentum. And lots of really poor stuff about coding.The problems aren't even consistent. There's a lot of hold-the-plot infodumping to mansplain the terrible cod-techie magic system ... and then, once he's painted himself into a corner, there's just a hand-wave.Usually, "because gravity".There's even one hysterical sequence when the main Point of View character nods in and out of sleep to escape a numbing sequence of "as you probably already know ..." between the rest of the cast.There's also a terrible cowardice over rude words, which I can't forgive. It can only be to jump a perceived explicit content issue for the unspoken target YA audience, because by no stretch of the most elastic imagination is this a book for adults. The writer obviously wants his young readers to relate to cool-cat characters who constantly eff and blind, and fair enough because I'm an incredibly sweary old soul myself, but either be honest about it or just don't do it.I'm being made circumspect by amazon's definite issues with the language in reviews. An invented word "scrum" is a cut and paste substitute for the f-word, which is used almost constantly in dialogue, but even more irritatingly also by the "author voice", which should know better. Other literal four letter words that obviously don't trip the wary school librarian alarm, like the sh-word and the English a-word slang for "bottom", are crow-bared into dialogue like there was a sale on.All of which you might be able to overlook if the characters weren't one dimensional and off the rack. But they really, really are. The protagonist is an odd looking racially marginalised teenage outsider exploring non-binary gender relationships. Most adults are barely one-dimensional, and beyond the outsider cohort not to be trusted. The male antagonist is a joyless, predatory deviant.The protagonist's best friend is a talking amulet, and it would be interesting is they started out talking in the exact same voice because somehow it turned out they were parts of the same personality. But it isn't because they aren't. Dialogue obviously just isn't a strength.I stuck with it to make sure I wasn't rushing to judgement. I haven't. It's terrible.

Whew! I don't know what I was expecting from this, but it wasn't the fantasy with a cyberpunk plot that I got. I recommend this very highly.The setting is a city run on industrialised magic, dominated by merchant houses that rule their own areas, leaving the poorest areas to lawless anarchy. The magic based on writing complex instructions to run arcane devices is really interesting (and RJB gives a good lesson in how to 'splain without being too 'splainy) but the characters are where it shines. Initially you meet Sancia, an escaped slave who is surviving in the lawless areas by putting a unique talent for thievery to use. She's not a chirpy urban thief with a heart of gold type though - she wants a big pile of cash to fix her problem and then get as far away from their as she can.When I say it's a cyberpunk plot, what I mean is that you have a urban environment controlled by big corps, with hardscrabble thieves and other operatives running around doing jobs for mysterious (probably corporate) benefactors, getting their hands on something they weren't supposed to and getting into Big Trouble as a result.Similarly to his previous Divine Cities trology this is all in service of exploring some big themes about power, how cities and economies work - with technology in particular - oh and the nature of his world and what gods there may be in it.While this is the start of a series it definitely stands together, leading up to a very satisfying high-octane ending.

4.5 starsRobert Jackson Bennett is the author of the wonderful "Divine Cities" trilogy, so it is no surprise that this latest novel is replete with muscular worldbuilding, a fascinating system of magic and a cast of characters that we readers can root for enthusiastically.It is also no surprise that Bennett has a few things to say about the elements of freedom, about the way economic systems develop and evolve, and about who is able to benefit from economic advancement, and for what reasons. It is most eloquently shown in this story that without choices, freedom is a pretty meaningless thing to possess. Escaped slave and thief, Sancia Gordo is free enough to starve, living as she does on the chancy fringes of the Foundryside shantytown, itself clinging to the interstices between the grand compounds of the four great merchant houses of Tevanne. All of the benefits of economic advancement have accrued to these great merchant houses, not through their hard work alone, but through their ruthless application of power to crush their rivals. Gregor Dandolo, traumatised soldier is free to try to bring justice and order to the docks despite the disinterest of his family and virtually anyone else.The system of magic which drives the economic wheels of the city is based on 'scrivings'. Elaborate sigils written onto inanimate objects serve to convince those objects that their reality has changed. A wheel is convinced to roll down an imagined hill. A gate believes that it must stay closed. These scrivings are designed and created by adepts in vast foundies, jealously guarded within the great merchant houses. And the origins of these strange devices, well these are lost in the mists of time, and in the rumour and legend of a vanished civilization of hierophants, who were as gods walking the earth. Rumours of lost artifacts brought to Tevanne's chaotic dockside provide Sancia Gordo with an opportunity to obtain the desires of her heart, and freedom from her afflictions of a sort. One daring heist would do it. Only of course, nothing could be that simple. And the attentions of Gregor Dandolo are the very least of her worries.Eligible for the 2019 Hugo Award for Best Novel, and a very worthy candidate. The sequel (2nd of the planned trilogy) is titled 'Shorefall'

Good ideas derailed by bad writing.There were some good world building ideas in this book but for me, the book seemed more about its ideas and less about its story. I persevered as long as I could but constant interruptions to the storytelling for excessive info dumps, twee and generally shaky dialogue, a somewhat facile and 'shoehorned in' creation myth, a major plot hole - or plausibility issue in the best possible light - that kept repeating to irk the story finally defeated me at 42%.A few interesting ideas, poorly written, would not recommend.

I really enjoyed this read, finding it an intriguing and immersive world that uses different mechanisms than the tun of the mill fantasy. I did find the first section of the book difficult to get into but that may well have been due my headspace. It's an interesting world and one I certainly engaged with and Bennett does well at pulling you into quite a complex reality without relying overly on info dumps.I found his characterisations nothing short of excellent and I loved his characters. All of them are filled with life and verve and all of them have a very different voice. The plot starts slowly with a complex but singular theft and you feel almost as overwhelmed as Sancia as somehow things spiral out of control around her. From that point it becomes high paced and action filled, with scarcely a moment to take a breath. Bennett carries his characterisations into this action flawlessly, and characters are still tested and tried as the world erupts in chaos around them.Very well written, well paced and with excellent characters, I'm not really sure what is keeping it from a full five stars but something is. Either way, I look forward to following this author with interest.