I just finished reading Robert Jackson Bennett’s soon to be released magnificent book, Foundryside. Let me first state that I was given an uncorrected proof via Netgalley, but my opinions are my own. I love all things Sci-Fi/Fantasy so I may be a bit biased, but this book was a new experience for me. Anyone that knows me will tell you that my FAVORITE books are those that surprise me, take me to a new world, or have characters that you can’t help but root for! Foundryside had all the above! The book's main character Sancia is an escaped slave with some unusual powers that she gained in forced brain experiments much like the enslaved Jews during WWII concentration camp medical experimentation. Her powers come at a hefty prince in physical and mental pain. She is alone, a stringy, tough, hardened young woman. She hears voices in her head that come from anything she touches so she often wears gloves and can’t bear to be touched by anyone. She leads a solitary life, eking out a meager existence, alone and lonely. When she seizes the chance to do a job that could help her escape this dismal life she sets in motion an unspoken war between merchant families that live in walled campos and have all the power in this world. I loved this book, it’s characters, the process of scriving (much like coding), the intrigue, mythology, and questions yet to be answered. I will be purchasing this book for my high school library for sure. I am anxiously awaiting the next installment!

This is the first book in The Founders trilogy and I absolutely loved it. This was an amazing fantasy read. I loved the detailed world-building, the amazing characters, and the creative plot. I really really enjoyed this a ton and am so happy I got a copy to review.

Sancia is a thief and she has been sent to steal a particular and unique artifact from the docks of the city of Tevanne. Sancia has a very unique ability to help her on this mission; she’s been physically altered to enable her to sense scrivings (magical technology that convinces objects to do certain things and act certain ways). When Sancia opens the box she’s supposed to steal she ends up embroiled in a bigger political and magical battle than she ever could have foreseen.

I loved all the characters in this book (even the side characters) and really enjoyed the unique world and fast-paced plot as well. The idea of scriving items, and even people, to give them special abilities and makes them do certain things was really unique and interesting. The story has a blend of traditional fantasy and steampunk in it (the idea of scriving items is very steampunkish and there is a lot of blending mechanical/magical with biology).

Bennett’s writing style reminded me a lot of Brandon Sanderson’s writing style. I enjoyed the well balanced characters as well (there are interesting female and male characters). This book ends at a good place and had me excited to read more without ending on a cliffhanger.

Overall I really enjoyed this book a lot. I would highly recommend to fantasy fans and especially to those who enjoy a steampunk feel to their fantasy novels. I am very excited to read the next book in the trilogy when it releases. Fans of Brandon Sanderson should definitely check this series out!

A fun, quick paced fantasy novel. This has some great potential to be a lasting series. Will definitely recommend this title.

I have yet to dislike a Robert Jackson Bennett novel. The Divine Cities is probably one of the most satisfying series I've ever read.
Foundryside is a promising start of a new series. Starting out with a thief instead of politicians. I enjoyed the magic system, instead of wizards there are scrivers who make ordinary objects defy reality. The subtext of this book being more about rich hoarding the wealth.
The characters are engaging and interesting. There is a lot of action in this book compared to City of Stairs. The magic system(scriving) gets complicated at times. I couldn't put this book down and eagerly await the next in the series.

Sancia exists in the small spaces within the Tevanni Empire. While the great merchant houses keep their own states-within-a-state behind magical walls, Sancia scrambles to live as a thief in the lawless ghettos that exist outside the houses control. When Sancia is offered the chance of a lifetime; an unbelievable amount of money for a single job, she jumps at the chance to escape. Unfortunately, the item she steals is very dangerous, very valuable, and very coveted. Sancia soon finds herself fighting for her life as a highly-placed member of the merchant houses seeks to recover the stolen item and eliminate any who know of its existence.

Bennett has given us a world somewhere between a steampunk industrial revolution England and a medieval Italian city state. In this world, the powerful have cornered the market on magic, and industrialized it to suit their own ends. Those with the ability to create magical items and processes live in comfort within walled enclaves. Those who do not live a short, brutal existence in the slums just outside the wall. This story is a tale of haves and have-nots, and the extremes those in power will go to in order to keep that power close to hand.

Sancia is a fantastic heroine, flawed and broken, not doing things necessarily because they are right, but because circumstances have left her with little choice in the matter. She is a woman who has been victimized in the past, but staunchly refuses to play the victim any longer. Though she does not always win, she continues to strive forward because standing still or going back are simply unacceptable.

Make no mistake, this is a dark story, but hose who like their fantasy dark will enjoy this book. Same goes for anyone looking for a new heroine to root for.

An advance copy of this book was provided by the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review

Sancia is a thief, and a good one at that. But this job is different, it feels different, and it gets her in a mess of trouble. Her normal friends are can't help so she must find a new and unlikely set of friends to help her out of this hornets nest of trouble while she learns to harness the new power, with the help of Clef, a friend she hopes never to loose.

I don't know if this would be considered steampunk or not but the tech in this book is awesome. The characters are deep and well rounded, there is so much action and suspense you just have to keep reading to see what happens next. I really liked this book it was a different kind of book, with all the scriving tech, that made it really interesting the theory behind scriving was pretty cool. So Sancia and her special abilities with the scriving and just Sancia herself make this book really good and worth the read.


This will appear on my blog 21 Aug 18

In Foundryside, the author has created a world, like so many, where there are the haves and the have nots. The wealthy in this world - actually one city named Tevanne - live in merchant compounds where items that have been scrived (imbued with magic) make life much easier. The small area, that is not part of the 4 merchant houses are where the many have nots live including Sancia Grado, a thief and a good one.
We learn Sancia's story slowly throughout the book but as the story begins we find her on a huge job which will pay her more than any other thieving job she has taken. Sancia has some magical powers as well but they have been thrust upon her and they cause her to live in misery and she is hoping to have the operation that gave her these powers reversed after she completes this job and receives her big pay out. Of course things do not go as hoped but Sancia does retrieve what she has been sent to steal and it turns out to be an item which will change her life. Robert Jackson Bennett has created a fascinating world with enormous thought and detail and it draws you into the story. This is a book that keeps you reading and leaves you hoping that the author will write a sequel very soon.

Foundryside by Robert Jackson Bennett is excellent, well written with a unique magic system and world building, interesting characters, lots of action, and feels-real conflict.

Characters
Good fantasy needs good characters, people we get to know, people we want to succeed, people we believe could be real. The best character is Orso, the inventive genius behind much of his city’s and his employer’s success. Orso is funny yet determined. He’s loyal up to a point, and that point changes from time to time. He turned his back on his first employer (for good reasons) then we watch him working to help his current employer, the Dandalo merchant house, finally to leave Dandalo to form his own house to save his life and that of dozens of others.

Sancia, the main character and heroine, is a little too successful and survives far too much danger to be believable. She is a thief, extremely talented in part because she can touch a building and learn everything about it and who is inside.

Sancia loathes this ability because it comes from a horrific ritual that put a metal plate inside her head. Sanchia escaped the island where she was enslaved, and came to Tevanne where she survives by stealing and by her wits and strength. She is a little over the top, for instance she survives dangers that would instantly kill anyone else. She changes from solely worried about survival to worried about other people, about the rest of the world and the dangers that she and Orso and the others are trying to head off.

Magic System
The magic users in Tevanne use commands, written in a language they do not really understand, to alter reality. They create self-propelled carriages by convincing the wheels that they are going down a hill or support buildings by convincing rotten timber that it is foundation stone, dug deeply into the earth.

I’ve not seen this approach before; it is somewhat like artificial intelligence because it uses language to create the outcome in the real world. People in Tevanne create a complete society based on this magic and the “Foundry” part of the title refers to the merchant houses using foundries to produce these magic items.

World Building
The world itself is presented as-described, but it is a world that could not possibly exist. Sancia shows us campios – the protected, secure enclosed cities where the merchant houses live and operate – and the Commons where everyone else lives. Yet the merchant houses apparently buy and sell their production to someone. But who is there to buy?

A city or a world must have people produce food, others produce tables and chairs and houses and clothes, others entertain and others operate stores. Yet we don’t hear about any of this. Sancia would not herself be interested in these enterprises (other than to steal from them) which excuses the books blank spots on where the food comes from and who are the customers who are not themselves in Campios yet able to purchase goods from them.

(I always wonder about the economics and commercial underpinnings of imaginary worlds. The best imaginary worlds make and inspire a sense of awe.)

Writing
Bennet writes well with good pacing and he provides anchors to the scene when he switches point of view. We know we are with Orso or with Sancia or any of the other point of view characters because he shows us that right at the beginning of each scene. This shows real talent because he does not use the “Well Bob,….” dialogue technique where the narrator clues us in but shows clues with the setting.

There will be sequels. The book ends without a cliffhanger but with many loose ends and open problems that must be fixed.

I’m not sure whether to give Foundryside 4 stars or 5. I certainly enjoyed it and the story is novel, interesting, the characters good except that Sancia is a little too over the top. Oh, let’s be generous and go with a 5!



I got an advanced copy from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

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FOUNDRYSIDE was my first read of Robert Jackson Bennett’s and he has me intrigued. It had some talking items, channeling a la Beauty and the Beast (one of the main characters is a key called Clef), a kick butt female main protagonist, a magic “system” called scriving, some heists and a wonderful cover. I would like to check out Bennett’s backlist now., any recommendations where to begin?

There was some palpable hype about this book in my rhombus of social media, and so when I received a NetGalley, I couldn’t resist.

Because peer pressure! :D

This was quite an engrossing book, I have to say. I can see why the hype was palpable!

This is the story of Sancia, who is a thief with some pretty neat abilities. See, in this world, the art of scriving, which is using magical sigils to change the nature of an object and make it act differently than normal, is pretty commonplace. Sancia has the ability to hear objects when she touches them with her bare hands. She can feel what they are or what they think they are. This gives her insight on how to avoid magical traps and alarms, and makes it very easy for her to open safes, so she has become a capable thief.

She is hired to steal a box from a very well protected safe, and the payout is unbelievable, so off she goes, breaking into the safe and taking the loot. What she finds when she looks through the loot is a key. A key unlike any other key, with scriving on it like nobody has seen in centuries. A talking key that only she can hear. A talking key that only she can hear that can open any lock.

I really liked this story. It kept me reading well into the wee hours and well after lunch break at work. It takes place in a city that is sort of... industrial revolution era unspecified-Italian-city(™), which was really well fleshed out and easy for me to imagine. Sancia is from the Commons, a part of the city with no laws, where the lowest of the low live. There's very little clean water, and very little money to be found. It's grubby and dirty, and living there is really rough. Then we move to the campos, which are enclaves where the merchant houses and all their luxuriously wealthy people reside. Here there are beautiful gardens, and fountains that just spit clean water into the air for decoration.

I also really liked the characters. Sancia is a deep character with a rough past, and I enjoyed her story, but when Clef appeared on the scene, this book completely changed for me. Clef is everything I could ever want in a sentient talking key. The banter between Clef and Sancia is awesome and I giggled more than once in the middle of the night at the wit between them. I love a book with a rogue, and a snarky AF rogue makes that even better. A snarky AF rogue with a partner in crime that they can snark at is the ultimate triad for me, and so this one very shortly became a read that was very difficult to set aside to do other things. Clef, as a character becomes really, really quite fascinating as the story goes on, and I was glued to my seat hoping to find out the skinny on his past.

We also see things from the POV of Gregor Dandolo, who is the Captain of the guards on the waterfront (among other things). After Sancia burgles his very well guarded safe, he decides that he is going to find out what exactly it was that she stole, and why it was important. A little investigation here and there. Sometimes a little thuggery. He was an interesting character to follow around. Later on we also meet Orso and Berenice, who are basically the master scriver for one of the merchant houses, and his fabricator (not exactly an assistant, but a great help to have in his line of work). They unexpectedly make an appearance as POV characters, and though I wasn't sure at first if I would like them, I ended up really enjoying some of their dialog. Especially Orso, who is sometimes more or less a belligerent old man (with extra snark).

The best part of this book for me was the magic system though. The idea of scriving being something that just convinces an inanimate object to be something it isn't was fascinating to me. Some of the uses for scriving are really well thought out too. For example, there are a few buildings in the cheaper side of Tevanne that are being held up by wooden beams. Wooden beams that *think* they're stone beams. So, because they are obviously and absolutely undoubtedly stone beams and not at all wooden beams, things like water damage, rot, mildew and what have you are no longer a problem for them. Even if those things have happened, the beams themselves think they can't possibly have done, so they just... support an entire building as a stone beam would. As the book goes on you learn more and more things that scriving can do, and it gets really fascinating to think about the intricacies. I love a really well put together hard magic system, and this is very much that.

This system is also used to great effect as the book goes on, but especially when Clef opens locks, because when he does, Sancia can actually hear him doing it, and he does it by convincing the lock to open. Sometimes in a way that is really roundabout, and sometimes hilariously, depending on the lock. :D

The whole book was indeed engrossing and difficult to set aside, but especially the last quarter of it was a damn thrill ride of ups and downs and things coming to light so I spent the afternoon with my nose entirely in this book rather than doing actual work and other work-related activities. Whoops! :D

Anyone that regularly reads my reviews (hi mom!) knows that I love comparing things I like to other things (it's just the way my brain works, I guess). So this one is, to me, something like Mistborn and the Craft Sequence with some Gentlemen Bastards sprinkled on top. Annnnnd that sounds pretty awesome, yeah? Well, yeah, that's because it *is* pretty awesome. If you liked any of those, you're very probably going to like this one as well. I sure did!

The only complaint I had, and it is one that I have legitimately made about other books I really liked as well... the f-bomb very clearly has a stand-in in this book. It's used the same way, in the same instances, and with the same context as the f-bomb would be. It's thrown around a lot, hell, even the root of the word is even explained at one point, to give it legitimacy as a curse word, I guess. Other curse words are present (and present quite abundantly at times, which I loved... as I do ^_^). It is the only word that is changed here, and it disappointed me because, like I have said about other books that have done this, it made the whole thing seem censored for a sensitive audience, which honestly somewhat cheapened the whole experience for me at times. It made my eyes roll at other times. I'm just saying. If you mean that f-bomb, and you quite obviously do, don't tiptoe around it, just say it. It'll be okay. It's only a word (in a book where words are quite important in their way), and I'm pretty sure that using the f-bomb isn't any worse than, say... describing a human body literally exploding, for example.

But, f-bombs aside, all told I really liked it quite a bit, and I will absolutely continue reading this series as it comes out. I MUST KNOW WHAT HAPPENS NEXT! I had 4.5/5 stars of an excellent time with this book. I'd recommend it to fans of hard magic systems and thieves pulling a bit of magic-filled heists. Fun times!

I'd like to thank the author, as well as Crown via NetGalley for the review copy. :)

Enjoyable, though it definitely is not a genre I usually read. When I was contacted to see if I would like to give it a shot I jumped at the chance to broaden my horizons. While the characters were well done in my opinion I found myself slightly bored throughout. It could have been my mood while reading so I will be picking this book up when it comes out to take my time while going through it.

Highly imaginative magic using sigils(runes) on everything. These magic sigils take on a hidden life of their own to power everything. Sancia, a thief who has the power to hear/see whatever she touches, accepts a job to steal an artifact for a client from a safe on the waterfront. The chain of events from this point lead to her being hunted by assassins and a determined Captain. This thrill ride was so different and well written right down to very detailed descriptions of how some of the magical items worked. There is a major twist that I did not see coming, and that made the book for me. While it got a little word bound, and the book is big, I will purchase the next because it was so different. I would recommend this book to anyone who likes this genre. I voluntarily reviewed an ARC of this book from Netgalley.

I was asked to review this book by the publisher via NetGalley, which surprised me since I'm hardly a prolific reader of ARCs and don't have a Goodreads entourage. I assume they could tell based on prior reviews that I would respond well to Foundryside's genre. Regardless, it was a flattering enough request that I put aside the mountain of books waiting to be read and gave it a try.

This is a fun story and an excellent setup for a multi-part series and for the most part I really enjoyed reading it. Sancia (our hero) and Gregor were both very sympathetic characters. I found the workings of scriving, the world's magic system, very interesting and I thought the many action sequences were well-plotted. For the most part, the author ingeniously weaved the exposition of the characters' backstories and the basic workings of scriving into the story. I especially liked the way the author used Sancia's conversation with "Clef" to reveal the outline of his society.

I have two criticisms, which is why I thought a really good story only merited three stars. I will put these behind a spoiler alert, partially because there's a real spoiler towards the end, and partially because both could potentially be fixed before final publication.

The first is shared by several prior reviewers on Goodreads: I respectfully disagree with Brandon Sanderson that this was an exceptional example of "world building." As I said above, the basics of the world were presented very skillfully. Mr. Bennett wouldn't leave it there though, instead they insisted on proving how much detail they had built into the world and its magic system by providing way too much detail. For the most part I just skimmed over those parts but I thought they disrupted the flow of the story for little purpose. I work in a technical field, and when I'm presenting to non-technical people, there's a strong temptation to demonstrate all the hard work that went into my conclusions / recommendations. Generally if I give in to the temptation, experience tells me I'm actually taking away from the effectiveness of my argument. I think the same is true here - the author failed to resist the temptation to show everyone how much thought and effort they put into building the world. Couldn't they have woven in those details during future installments?

See what I did with that last paragraph, refusing to refer to Mr. Bennett with the singular "he" and instead using the plural "they?" It's confusing right? The book was full of similar sequences, for example (paraphrasing): 'We saw a girl running away. We tried to follow them but they escaped.' Too many times I had to ask myself "was there one person or multiple people? I thought it was one but maybe I read it too fast. I should go back and make sure I didn't miss something." Is this a form of modern political correctness? If so, it seems misplaced in this novel: a society that won't allow women to be scrivers even when they clearly demonstrate the ability is unlikely to concern itself with offending someone by using sexist or cis-gendered pronouns. If it's just poor editing, please fix it before publication.

Towards the end of the story, it occurred to me that Mr. Bennett missed a prime opportunity to use bad grammar to his advantage (here's the actual spoiler and it's a rather large one). A key plot point revolves around Sancia's subconscious belief that she's a thing (a tool, an "it") instead of a person with free will and her need to overcome that belief to prevent catastrophe. Mr. Bennett could have thrown in a few examples of seemingly bad grammar to hint at her self-conception at various points in the story rather than make it come out of nowhere near the end. I would have been annoyed when I came across the examples, but at the end I would have marveled at the author's art. Instead the poor grammar served no purpose.

The first 3/4 of this book was a 5 star fantasy book. The last 1/4 dropped to 3 stars for me because it got a bit message-y.

In this world the people have figured out how to alter reality by basically using a programming language. There are serious limits to what can be done (messing with gravity is supposed to be too complicated and altering people has met with so much disaster it's verboten.) and so they stick to simple alterations like strengthening buildings and giving extra force to weapons. To do this they have to write commands and inscribe them on the object. So a rather novel magic system for a fantasy world. The system is based on relics from an earlier generation of beings lost to history called the Hierophants who were said to have been able to do much greater things with their powers.
Enter Sancia, a thief who apparently is the only person to have ever been "scrived" and survived. This scrivening has given her the ability to know everything about an object, though with drawbacks including never being able to turn it off and getting massive headaches if she uses it to much. This ability, however, makes her a great thief, able to find weak spots in walls, handholds, and exactly how to turn tumblers to pick locks. She is hired for the job of a lifetime that will let her leave her life of crime and get her scrivening fixed.
The job goes horribly wrong and leads to a series of events that eventually threatens the stability of the government of the city and uncovers a plot to return the power of the Hierophants.
I liked the magic system, the characters and the way the plot unfolded. The ways they used the magic was intriguing and a system with serious limits gets high marks from me. At first I didn't like the sentient key Clef, it seemed a bit to jokey but then it made much more sense for the story.
I had a couple of problems with the last bit of the book. Sancia's love interest seemed tossed in and inauthentic, there to check off a diversity box rather than as a natural development of the story. The message of not letting people define who you are but define yourself was silly to be such an important part of the plot. Finally, Estelle's motives for her actions in the end were sad. With so much knowledge and ability, there had to be a better way she could have solved her daddy issues.
Overall a good book, I was just personally let down by the ending. I would still recommend it to others.

I enjoyed the premise and unique world created in Foundryside. The characters are well devised and developed and overall the story is intriguing. There were points that the story dragged and others that had me totally engrossed. Overall, a mostly good read, set up for a next book.

Review by 2shay..........

After reading and reviewing Mr. Bennett’s City Of Miracles, I vowed to never let one of his books slip by me again. That book moved me. As much as I wanted this book, I had my doubts that this author could hit all those peaks again. I should have never had a moment of doubt. This book is amazing!

Cool magic that is so well described that I felt like I was always just a little short of knowing enough to make it work! Well thought out and well explained. But, as always, some is trying to take something remarkable and turn it onto a way to gain power. Dreadful.

As the blurb explains, Sancia has been sent to steal an artifact. She gets that done with her special abilities...she can “hear” scrivings. They speak to her subliminally, telling her where the best handholds and footholds, the best hiding places or vulnerable places are as she vies her trade as a thief. She’s a terrific character who had a horrible childhood.

In escaping, Sancia runs into old friends who want to help and a few new friends who decide to help after first agreeing not to kill her. Oops. Complicated! Then there is Gregor Dandolo, son of the founding family of the Dandolo Merchant House. He’s an ex-soldier who is tired of war, tired of death and inequality. He wants to find and punish the thief who robbed a warehouse under his protection, causing a massive fire on the process. He is relentless, and maybe my favorite character in the book...aside from Sancia herself.

Foundryside is actually a section of the city of Tevanne, not a great section either. It’s where those who aren’t needed or valued by the Merchant Houses live and try to stay alive, a place where you can be killed for a piece of bread. A slum.

Mr. Bennett has created a world of magic and wonder, a beautiful place if you’re rich and privileged. A dangerous and ugly place if not. A mesmerizing and complex look at corporate power run amuck.

I recommend this book for fans of fantasy or exquisite world building. RJB is a master, letting the reader learn about the magic and the world in general as characters reveal different aspects of their lives. Buy a copy now and...

Enjoy! ARC graciously provided by Crown Publishing and NetGalley for an honest and voluntary review.

“Foundryside. The closest thing Sancia had to a home.”

This is a really hard book for me to rate. The concepts in this book are so unique and creative; I loved them so very much! But some of the banter and conversations felt so dry, boring, and sometimes even offensive. Like, two of the main characters have completely captured my whole heart! The others? Meh. I do think this is worth it though, especially if you have enjoyed Robert Jackson Bennett’s other works! I just expected more, especially after the 6/5 star beginning of this book!

In this world, four houses rule Tevanne. While those royals live like kings, the rest of the population lives in Foundryside, where crime is in high quantity and food and clean water are in low supply. And people are willing to do anything to survive.

“Four walled-off little city-states, all crammed into Tevanne, all wildly different regions with their own schools, their own living quarters, their own marketplaces, their own cultures. These merchant house enclaves—the campos—took up about 80 percent of Tevanne.”

And Sancia Grado is one of the best thieves in Foundryside. Not only is she trained, but she also is harboring a secret that enhances everything that she is able to do, while also giving her abilities that no one else has. And this book starts out with her doing a mission for a payout that will completely change her life. But once she gets the item that she is heisting, her life changes more than she would have ever guessed.

“But if you didn’t work for a house, or weren’t affiliated with them—in other words, if you were poor, lame, uneducated, or just the wrong sort of person—then you lived in the remaining 20 percent of Tevanne: a wandering, crooked ribbon of streets and city squares and in-between places—the Commons.”

The magic in this book is so damn well done. There are people who are able to perform scriving, which is a magic founded in words and language, where you can convince items to do certain tasks. Think a lock that refuses to unlock for anyone without a certain type of blood. Or think of an alarm system that only goes off when certain things happen. Or even think of a belt that tricks gravity itself so the wearing would be able to scale buildings. And these artifacts are very sought after. And maybe, our little thief has just found one that will completely change the world.

And Sancia’s path inevitably crosses many different people, and they all start to piece together that a much bigger thing is happening than any of them realized. This book has many points of view, but, in my opinion, Sancia’s is easily the best. She is truly the star of this book, and her backstory still has me feeling every emotion under the sun. Also, Clef and Sancia are everything and I’d probably die for either of them.

But like I touched upon before, this book makes some fatphobic comments. It’s so thoughtlessly done, too, that it makes me sad, because a beta reader should have noticed and corrected. The first “villain” you encounter in this story of course had to be fat, and it had to be touched upon a couple times. Then, when one of the main characters is looking at a baby picture, a freakin’ baby picture, its talked about again in a bad light. Basically, everyone and thing who is bad has to be fat. I felt like I was reading a Roald Dahl book! Like, I think at the 33% mark I had highlighted five fatphobic things, and it really made me want to DNF this book, I’ll be honest. And I hated every Gregor point of view after. But let me pull some quotes, because I guarantee someone will try to call me out on this:

“He could tell which one of them was Antonin right away, because the man’s clothes were clean, his skin unblemished, his thin hair combed neatly back, and he was hugely, hugely fat—a rarity in the Commons.”

“Gregor took stock of the situation. The taverna was now mostly empty except for the moaning guards—and the large, fat man trying to hide behind a chair.”

“Tevanne, a huge dome that reminded her of a fat, swollen tick, sitting in the center of the Candiano campo.”

“Gregor stared at the painting—especially at the woman in the chair, and the fat infant. His gaze lingered on the baby. That is how she still thinks of me, he thought. Despite all my deeds and scars and accomplishments, I am still a fat, gurgling infant to her, bouncing in her lap.”

“She was not like Torino Morsini, head of Morsini House, who was hugely fat and often hugely drunk, and usually spent his time trying to stuff his aged candle into every nubile girl on his campo.”

Like, it’s 2018. How the hell did proofreaders think those sentences were okay?

Trigger and content warnings for fatphobic comments, abandonment, torture, abuse, murder, death, sexual assault (unwanted touching), child trafficking, use of the slur word for Romani people, loss of a loved one, slavery, medical experimentation, and a lot of depictions of blood.

Overall, there was a lot about this that I enjoyed and a lot that I didn’t enjoy. I feel really torn on this one. I feel like it’s so hard to find unique concepts in adult fantasy anymore, and this book reads like a breath of fresh air. I truly did adore this smart magic system. But I could just never totally fall in love with this story! Yet, I am still curious enough to continue on! And I hope if you pick this one up, you’ll be able to get more enjoyment from it than I did. Also, everyone else I know has five starred this, so take my review with a grain of salt! Happy reading, friends!

Book #1, in the Founders series

This is one weird story that may please fans of heists and mostly those enjoying fantasies. Reading this book was a new experience for me, I did not know of Mr. Bennett and less of his works so I was eager to see what he had in store for me the main reason I accepted the invitation to read “Foundryside”.

The plot is mostly a series of heists and a cat and mouse game taking place in a city controlled by merchant houses. The setting is at the most unusual, a unrealistic vision beyond fantasy where the players use a complex magic system “scriving” for their purpose and to interact with the world…….

To be fair, this is not my preferred genre and by far. Reviews praised this book but I never finished it…I rarely do this but ¾ into it I had enough and closed it. I urge readers to see what others reviewers think before discarding this book.

What made me stop reading the book?

Too much information dumping, the author spends a lot of time describing the “scriving” on objects and tends to repeat himself. The scenes were too hard to visualize, the action too Harry Potter for my taste, the vernacular language that kept creeping at times was hard to follow. To be picky I also didn’t like the presentation: to differentiate the narrators the story is told by alternating pages some written in regular style text and others in italics. I also found the book to have a strange combination of “scriving” and politics. Finally, this story never tweaked…. definitely I am not a fan of fantasies….

On the positive side

The story is at most imaginative, the magic system quite original, the constant mystery behind Sancia’s power added suspense and some intrigue, as for the characterization: the players are fairly well-developed.

Since “Foundryside” did not strike a chord it was a hard book for me to rate. But this story may be up your alley, so take my review with a grain of salt. My apologies to the author for my unfavourable thoughts.

I'm more partial to science fiction than fantasy, but I loved Bennett's Divine Cities trilogy. I had some reservations about it in the beginning, mainly concerning the magic system introduced. By the end I was hoping I could start on the second book right now.

Thank you to NetGalley and Crown Publishing for a digital galley of this novel.

Foundryside had a little bit of a slow start for me but once it got going it had my attention fully engaged. The slow beginning had to do with the main character being immediately involved in a robbery using the magic system of this world. Once some of that magic was explained it was evident this would be a world unlike most I've encountered in the fantasy genre. I saw Foundryside as a contrast between those who had and those who wanted. The city of Tevanne is comprised of four walled-off city states, each one belonging to one of the four founding families. Outside the walls of the compounds are the slums where everyone else has to try to survive. Inside the compounds merchant families employ people to research, invent, manufacture and scrive items with the sigils which will establish how the item is to function. The story really came alive for me when the author began to reveal what instructions were being held by an object and what could be done to make that item stop acting as initially instructed.

Sanchia is twenty years old but she has no family or friends and is surviving because of a talent that helps her when she is stealing. The merchant houses aggressively compete with each other for control of the magic; those outside the walls get the magic illegally by their own inventions or by stealing from the rich merchants. I like that this author didn't make everyone who is rich a horrible person and everyone who is poor isn't a saint. This made the story much richer. This magic system is very complex and it takes quite a bit of explanation to provide the background for what has happened in the past and where this civilization is now. Thankfully those explanations were inserted throughout the novel. There is a building romance between Sancia and another woman which should help Sancia in future novels with the feelings she has about her life before she arrived in Tevanne. With a magic system this strong this series should be in for a good long run. The author has all the writing skills he needs to keep the characters and magic system fresh and enjoyable.