Review: 5 Stars

I’ve had a review copy of Foundryside forever now and jut never picked it up until now. I remember hearing great things about it after it came out, but mack then I was intimidated by longer fantasy novels. As I’ve grown as a reader I’ve really come to love epic fantasies, so I was able to appreciate this book much more than I probably would have back when it first came out. Since I waited several years to pick this one up the sequel had come out, so I was able to pick that up right after finishing this one.

Foundryside has so many elements that I love to see in a fantasy. The main character Sancia is a thief, there is a found family and there are lots of heist like adventures. The characters are all really well developed and I really loved Sancia. The group of characters that become friends over the course of this novel are all well fleshed out and each have their own personality. There was a romance between Sancia and Bernice, but it was a slow burn romance and took a backseat to the plot. Through the course of the novel the group got really close and I loved the found family they became.

I can’t talk about Foundryside without mentioning the world building. Foundryside has a magic system that is really fascinating. There were scrived objects that had magical like properties, but scriving had clear rules and endless possibilities. A lot of the plot involved scriving as a group used scrived objects in many of their schemes, so the reader learns how it all works. The concept is so unique and the whole world revolves around scriving and it is really interesting to see all of its implications. What I love most about this magic system is that it is so logical that it almost feels scientific.

The plot was really cool. There was a lot of scheming and heist like adventures. There is a lot of action and a lot happens throughout the course of the novel. The group each have different strengths which compliment each other which really solidifies them as a team. I loved that there was thieving and scheming throughout the whole book as it just made the story fun and exciting.

I can’t believe that I waited to read this incredible book for so long. I loved the found family and the adventure packed plot, but most of all I loved the intricate magic system. If you enjoy heisty fantasies or unique magic systems I highly recommend you check out Foundryside.

Woah, wait. What have we here? Um, I lost. I'm trying to engage, but I'm missing something here. It's hard to know what, because so much is repeating, but it feels like I got dropped into a show that makes about as much sense as current commercials. In the end, this wound up being almost a didn't finish. Yes, we have a strong lead, but... but... Someone tell me what I'm not getting connected here, please! 

Thanks to Net Galley for my copy of this book. This review is my own. A positive review wasn't required.

I'm going to have to come back to this but I wanted to jot down some thoughts:
-It reminded me of The Rook a bit, with the governmental structure details and because of some similarities where male authors have written female heroes (not a lot of femaleness going on in the hero, but it's not a big flaw, they are strong characters).
-Capitalism is bad.
-There were some info dumps but it wasn't too burdensome. At some point I decided to stop focusing on the details and think of it more as a superhero story, which it kind of is. I'm no comics expert but the superhero who comes to mind is Iron Man, but if he were an escaped slave who had been involuntarily subjected to modifications that gave him powers, and who made a living stealing. OK it kind of falls apart a bit.
-I loved Gregor, the veteran cop who is focused on the idea of justice in this regime with no justice system. I don't even know what kind of government this is. Government by corporation, but with no laws or enforcement?
-The magic in the story is cool but complicated, it reminded me a bit of computer code but in magic. There are a lot of rules and I'm not sure I get all of them. Decent worldbuilding, lots of potential for future directions, but really for me this story was all about action-packed heists. We even get a weird little psychic sidekick in Clef.
-Orso totally reminds me of Doc in Back to the Future, but a bit grumpier and he cusses a lot more.
-Oh hey people are not all white in this book! Thumbs up.
-THAT COVER. So good.

Hello fellow Nerds! Today, I bring you something I have not done in a very very long time. Something I never thought I would be asked to do again, by a publisher / author no less. And that’s a book review.

I do want to go over how this review happened, because I find it fascinating. Back in March 2018 I was contacted via twitter by a rep for a Publisher, asking if I wanted to get an ARC (Advanced Reader Copy) of Robert J Bennett’s newest upcoming novel, Foundryside. This would be a SUPER early copy, full of errors, and physical only.

I declined at the time. I had nowhere to put it, I still didn’t have a PO Box for these sort of things (I still don’t haha) and wasn’t sure I would have time to read a physical copy of the book, much less an unfinished one. When I asked WHY I was being contacted (I have not reviewed books in like 2 years) the rep informed me that the author himself provided a list of people to contact, and I was one of them. I am still unsure how the author even knows who I am prior to now. The only thing I can think of is I THINK I once tweeted that his previous novels, the Divine Cities trilogy, would make a fantastic Tabletop RPG setting (And I stand by that. Those books are killer, as is the world).

I ended up forgetting about the entire thing and went along my merry way, until August 2nd. Suddenly the rep contacts me again, offering me a finished Hardcover edition! I ended up saying no, but would be willing to take an Ebook copy of the novel. And I got it.

This review is going to be spoiler free, and for a TLDR Summary, here: GO BUY THIS BOOK AND READ IT SO THAT BENNETT WRITES THE SEQUEL FASTER SO I CAN GET MY HANDS ON THAT GIVE ME THE SEQUEL ROBERT I NEED IT IN MY HANDS.

*ahem*

As I always do when I review a book, let’s start with the advertising blurb:

In a city that runs on industrialized magic, a secret war will be fought to overwrite reality itself–the first in a dazzling new series from City of Stairs author Robert Jackson Bennett.

Sancia Grado is a thief, and a damn good one. And her latest target, a heavily guarded warehouse on Tevanne’s docks, is nothing her unique abilities can’t handle.

But unbeknownst to her, Sancia’s been sent to steal an artifact of unimaginable power, an object that could revolutionize the magical technology known as scriving. The Merchant Houses who control this magic–the art of using coded commands to imbue everyday objects with sentience–have already used it to transform Tevanne into a vast, remorseless capitalist machine. But if they can unlock the artifact’s secrets, they will rewrite the world itself to suit their aims.

Now someone in those Houses wants Sancia dead, and the artifact for themselves. And in the city of Tevanne, there’s nobody with the power to stop them.

To have a chance at surviving—and at stopping the deadly transformation that’s under way—Sancia will have to marshal unlikely allies, learn to harness the artifact’s power for herself, and undergo her own transformation, one that will turn her into something she could never have imagined.

First and foremost I want to talk about the world that Robert Jackson builds in this novel. In a lot of ways it mirrors a cyberpunk dystopia, where the ruling class is made up of corporations who control all the power through technology. In this case, its merchant houses, 4 of them, who control the world via Scriving. And Scriving is best described, to me, as rewriting the computer programming of reality. For example, they use Scriving to trick wheels on carriages to think they are going uphill or downhill, thus creating horseless carriages they can drive and steer. Or they use Scriving on Crossbow bolts to make the bolts think that, when fired, they were actually already falling from space 6000ft in the air, and that down is actually forward. Stuff like that. It’s a fascinating magic system that I loved, and it makes sense in that the more you try to change somethings nature the harder it becomes. Making wood believe it’s actually stone isn’t that hard. But making something defy gravity? Near impossible. And you NEVER Scrive a human. Never ever. The results are…deadly.

This is the world that our characters (Sancia, Clef, Gregor, Orso, and Berenice) are living in and working in. And I love the characters. Sancia and eventually her friend Clef are the first two we get introduced to, and Sancia reminded me very much of Vin from the Mistborn trilogy. She is spunky, sassy, and very much a broken person, trying to eke out a living on the Commons as a thief, the area outside the merchant houses where only might makes right. She meets Clef however and her world drastically changes. Eventually we are introduced to Gregor, a man who is suffering from PTSD after being the sole survivor from a horrific event, trying to reform the broken city of Tevanne by creating an actual police force. Then we eventually meet Orso and Berenice, a pair of Scrivners who work for one of the houses and they get wrapped up in the madness that Sancia and Clef discover. All end up having to work together to deal with the greatest threat their world has ever known.

The plot is something I cannot go too much into without spoiling it, and I DO NOT WANT TO DO THAT. Understand that this story gripped me from beginning to end, to the point where I started reading on Friday night, August 3rd, and was done Saturday night, August 4th. No joke, I just could not put this book down. And while it ended in such a way as to be open to the sequels (its clearly already a planned trilogy) it did resolve all the major events that were brought up within it while leaving enough open to make me wanting more.

Usually I would say what I didn’t like about a book, but frankly, the only thing I did not like was that it ended. I adored everything about this novel. The writing, the pacing, the characters, the world was all stellar and if you are a fan of unique fantasy novels you really should check this out. It’s a page turner, nothing less, and I cannot wait for the sequel to see where Sancia and her friends go. Also, can I just say how refreshing it was to run into a book with very little romance, and what romance there WAS seemed natural? Oh, and it’s not between who you think it would be. I figured Sancia and Gregor, the two intro characters, would be the ones who hooked up. But nope! Sancia and another person end up making eyes at each other. Not going to say who though.

You will just have to read this to find out.

If other words, if you want a fantasy novel with a unique setting, fantastic characters, and a gripping story that will leave you wanting more then look no further than Foundryside.

Foundryside can be picked up at Amazon.com for $13.99 in Kindle, and $21.60 in Hardcover. It releases August 21st 2018. And if you want more of Robert Jackson Bennetts work I really suggest you look at his Divine Cities trilogy, starting with City of Stairs. It’s another EXCELLENT series.

Thanks for reading, and remember: Get those Crits, Take those Hits, Keep Pushing Through and remember to STAY NERDY EVERYONE!

Also, hey, if you wanna help me attend Gen Con in 2019, why not take a look at this post right here!

While I enjoyed this book to an extent, I am not sure that I would recommend it or read the next books in the series. The characterization was not well-done. I wanted to know more about the secondary characters, but I found that lacking. The world-building was great, but was so well-described that it eventually became overwhelming. I did not need 2 pages on the "science" or how a character was going to be able to fly, or turn invisible, or talk to machines. If that much detail had been devoted to characters, then this book would have been much better.

3.5ish stars.

I loved the author's Divine Cities trilogy and was very excited about this new series. It was enjoyable but the tone of the book was more juvenile than I expected, and I didn't feel for the main character nearly as much as I did for the characters in the Divine Cities books.

I appreciate having had an opportunity to read and review this book. The appeal of this particular book was not evident to me, and if I cannot file a generally positive review I prefer simply to advise the publisher to that effect and file no review at all.

Foundryside is very good. I expected just a heist book, which is interesting and would have caught my attention under normal circumstances. But this book elevated beyond that. The world the author build was wonderfully done. The cast of characters and character development was some of the best I've read recently. And the growing romance was unexpected, but not unwelcome. Really well done. Can't wait for the next one.

I was beyond excited to read this book because I had read so many rave reviews. Unfortunately, it did not work for me. I loved the unique magic system and the expansive world-building but the positives end there. The writing style was too disjointed. There were so many unnecessary section breaks that it pulled me out of the story. I could not get connected to the characters in the book either. It's a shame but I will be continuing on with the series because the magic system has so much potential and I really want to see more of the world!

<i>I received a free copy of this title from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. </i>

Robert Jackson Robert Jackson Bennet is a treasure and Foundryside is a fantastic book. Great start to a new series!

Robert Jackson Bennett is back at it with another science-fiction hit. From the author of City of Stars comes in new adventure in an otherworldly place. Heists are all the rage and this one is just as intriguing. Bennett's world building is incredible and the main plot of this book revolves around a secret war with an unlikely gang of allies. If this plot seems familiar it's because it's been done before, but this version is just as intriguing as some of the others with some new twists and turns, It felt very similar to Andy Weir's Artemis, which I loved, and I was excited to see how this one plays out.

Anyone who wants to write fantasy really should read this book. Study this book. <em>This</em> is how you capture a reader's attention, and hold on to it by building a dynamic story.

Sancia Grado is a young, tough, very talented thief. She is on a job to steal a scribed device. 'Scribing' is a cross of magic and science. It essentially convinces the properties of an object to be other than what they are. Sancia is particularly skilled as a thief because she can communicate, on a primitive level, with scribed devices. Touching a wooden floor and she might learn about a recent murder because of the blood that has pooled in the cracks. Touching a brick wall and the bricks may tell her which ones are loose enough to pull out.

Sancia doesn't know anything about the object that she steals, and in order to create enough of a distraction to make her escape, she brings about utter destruction of an entire warehouse district. This doesn't sit well with the son of one of the Merchant House leaders, and this son, a celebrated war hero isn't likely to stop searching for the thief until she's dead.

While she regularly faces dangers due to her line of work, Sancia doesn't have any idea of the value of the object she's stolen - it looks like an ordinary key - ...until it speaks to her. But the key seems more surprised that Sancia speaks back.

Unlikely partnerships will be forged as Sancia and others discover that the very forces of nature may be changed if the key falls into the wrong hands. But how do you fight an enemy that can change the properties of any and every item around you?

This book is utterly fantastic. I was drawn in with the very opening sentences and I was hooked the entire way. Author Robert Jackson Bennett is an absolute master at storytelling. Every page is filled with either heart-racing action, important character development, or story revelations. This sounds like it should be obvious in any book, but it's not, and when you read this, you will notice what you're missing in <em>othe</em>r books.

While over 500 pages in length, this book moves along so well and I was so absorbed in the story that it was over too quickly. I really wanted to stay in Tevanne with Sancia and Key. Fortunately, the next volume in the series is out and I'm really looking forward to it.

Looking for a good book? <em>Foundryside</em> by Robert Jackson Bennett is an outstanding fantasy and should be required reading for anyone who wants to write fantasy.

I received a digital copy of this book from the publisher, through Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review.

This book had so much potential but, for me, I struggled to get through it. It felt completely one-dimensional and all the telling with nothing fleshed out made it read like a rough draft.

** spoiler alert ** I received a copy of Foundryside in exchange for an unbiased review from NetGalley. I’m a little more underwhelmed than the average reader, I guess. 3 / 3.5 While the world-building was unique and a couple of the characters were exceptional, the dialogue needed help with regard to one character as well as a few dialogue-types (most notably swearing), some of the description was derivative, and, oddly, the tone almost felt like a YA novel aside from the sexual references and some of the violence. Foundryside was something of a bipolar experience for me – where it was good, it was really, really good. Where it was bad, well, I had a few evenings where I decided to do something else with my time that I count as far less fun that reading. Part of this might be that I just finished three books that were very, very good and also very consistent.
** warning, spoilers:
I’ll get my crits out of the way at the start. First, the dialogue.
Clef: The dialogue for Clef made him sound like a sidekick straight out of a Disney movie. My biggest pet peeve with this was that he’s an inanimate object for 98% of the book. With dialogue as the only driving factor for his characterization, there needed to be more variation, or at least a couple of surprises. This got especially tedious after the first few chapters past Clef’s introduction because Jackson’s conception of magic items was so fucking cool. (I mean, I once thought that my coming up with an intelligent flail that had motion-sickness in an AD&D game was pretty good. Jackson makes that look downright pedestrian.) It was obvious to me that Clef had been a person once, so I don’t think making his dialogue more person-like would have been a spoiler.

Swearing: To say that I don’t have an issue with swearing is an understatement. I’m gay, gen-x, son of a Navy vet, and from a working class Irish-American family. But the swearing in Foundryside was almost as homogenous as Clef’s dialogue. And for a society that was so plainly modeled on Renaissance Italy, I expected a lot more variety and / or creativity. Like to a Palahniuk / Wendig level. Sancia was an exception to this, but then she was exceptional throughout the book, so no surprise there.

Derivative description: Jackson’s descriptive abilities are really good. I knew that I was immersed by the author’s words when I wanted to dip myself in hand sanitizer and *then* bathe after reading about Sancia’s trip through a sewerage tunnel. Unfortunately, that worked against him when some of the stuff he was describing sounded like it came straight out of Skyrim. This wasn’t frequent and wasn’t limited to just items or characters or scenery, but it was noticeable enough that it knocked me right out of suspension of disbelief.

The tone: this is a hard one to pin down. It’s not that I don’t like YA novels – I *loved*– Leigh Bardugo’s Six of Crows, and it’s not that I have issues with fiction that straddles the line between YA and Adult (Melissa Caruso’s excellent Swords & Fire duology, anyone?), but Jackson was a little too uneven in his application of YA and Adult elements. Gregor was an excellent white knight / errant prince, but I would have liked more complexity to him if this was to be an adult novel. It’s not good when your mad-scientist overshadows one of your heroes in this department.

I put off reading this book because, while I liked the concept, I was worried that it would be tough to get in to. And, for me, it was tough. I began reading the first chapter, which was interesting, but didn't grab me right away. Moving in to the second chapter, I found some more interesting ideas, but still nothing that made me want to keep reading. I never felt a connection to the main character, Sancia Grado.

All of this disappoints me, because I really liked Bennett's Divine Cities books. While they were dense, they grabbed my attention more readily than Foundryside did. I suppose that at some point I will give Foundyside another shot, because of I did enjoy other works by Jackson, but as of right now, I'm going to hold off.

This was just a fantastic book. Fantastic worldbuilding, fantastic characters, exciting plot and I am so glad there's going to be a sequel even if I have to wait longer than I'd like for it to come out. Definitely checking out Bennett's other books in the meantime though!

Robert Jackson Bennett stays at the top of his game- I eagerly await every book from him!

This book plays with the concept of magic as a sort of source code for the universe. Once upon a time, the source code was understood and mages performed terrible works with it. However, after an apocalypse (shouldn't mess too much with the source code), this knowledge has mostly fallen out of human memory. There are people who can make magical artifacts, but they are working with an incomplete alphabet/directory, so can't make items without physically scriving them with symbols. You can't cast a spell on someone, but you can scrive a coach so that it thinks it is always rolling downhill, which makes it essentially a self-powered coach, until you tell it that it is on the flat, which makes it stop.
There are great merchant houses, based loosely on when Venice was a major power in the world, and those who live outside the merchant compounds, eking out a living on scraps and cunning. Sancia, our main character, is such a person. She has a unique ability, though- she can put her awareness into objects around her to get the layout of a room, feel footsteps on the floor to sense where people in the room are, and possibly more if she concentrates. This is a useful ability for a thief. Unfortunately, Sancia can't turn this ability off, so she covers herself with cloth that she has owned for a long time and avoids contact with new people.
I don't think I want to say anything more about the book's plot, because discovering this world is half the fun. I'll say that while it's dark, the book is also full of humor, and I found the world original and interesting. I'm ready for the next one in the series!

I received a free copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

This is my first Robert Jackson Bennett, and I'll definitely be looking up some more of his work after reading this! In an Italian city states-style fantasy world, the author offers impeccable world-building and an appealing protagonist. The style isn't dense, but certainly not the most accessible either - which happens to suit me just fine, but watch out if you're looking for a super fluid and easy-going read, which this is not. I don't love the whole "special chosen person with special magic object" trope, but the specificity of the world and the characters more or less made up for the tiredness of those plot points. I'm looking forward to the next one in the series!

A fantasy novel set in an Early Modern-ish world, where most (perhaps all?) of the characters are people of color. Oh yeah, and there's a f/f romance. Basically, this book is FANTASTIC.

To me, Foundryside's worldbuilding stood out as the most remarkable thing about it. It's wonderful and complex and extremely different from any other fantasy novel I can think of. Being Early Modern rather than Medieval or present-day is enough to stand out all by itself; this is a world with factories and colonies and sugar plantations and merchant houses and patents on inventions. I mean, when was the last time you need a fantasy novel that had insights to chattel slavery? (I don't feel Colson Whitehead's The Underground Railroad counts, since it's not a secondary world story.) Plus, as I said: it's a world where brown people are the default. I picked up a slight Southeast Asian feel to the descriptions of food and climate, but overall it's too different from any specific real-world culture to draw a direct line. In addition, Foundryside is a world with magic and I absolutely loved the rules that Bennett set up. Basically, magic works like computer coding. You write a line of logic, but for it to function you must be absolutely clear and not include any lapses that might be self-correcting to a human reader but would cause a strictly literal reader to misinterpret the whole thing. For example, let's make someone fly by reducing their gravity! Except whoops, they actually exploded instead, since there's no longer anything holding their parts together.

Our main character is Sancia, an extremely skilled thief who for some reason (even she doesn't know why) can hear magic and talk to inanimate objects. This talent obviously is very helpful for a thief, but it also makes everyday actions like wearing clothes and lying on a bed difficult, since she doesn't know how to turn it off. Sancia is hired for what seems like a simple job – steal a small box – except that it turns out whatever is in the box is immensely, world-changingly, valuable, and now everyone in the city wants to kill her to get it for themselves. She slowly gains some allies, including Gregor (quite possibly the only person in this world who believes in the concept of impartial justice and who wants to start a police force), Orso (a loud, self-involved, arrogant head magician), Berenice (quiet and competent; Orso's assistant), and Clef (a magical object who has lost his – its? – memory but who is quite literally the key to solving all sorts of mysteries). Together they have a wonderful found-family vibe, despite many overt differences.

Foundryside combines fun action and bloody battle scenes and multiple incredibly well-done heists with big questions like the concept of freedom in a capitalistic society, the veneration of war heroes in the aftermath of atrocities committed on the battlefield, if a few individuals are capable of changing the whole system, and the price of power. It's emphatic and enthralling and exciting and just so, SO good. Foundryside ends in a satisfying place, but I absolutely cannot wait to read the sequel.

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2867962392

Unfortunately, this read just wasn't for me. I really tried to get into it but I never could get hooked. Thank you to netgalley for sending this novel in exchange for an honest review.