Foundryside (Book Review)

It’s time for my first book review! I considered retroviewing an older book I had read, such as The Final Empire or The Blade Itself (two of my favorites), but it’s been too long since I read those and it wouldn’t be fair to either side of the review spectrum since I have an intensely positive bias toward both Brandon Sanderson and Joe Abercrombie, and have read those series in their entire.

So, Foundryside. This is the first book of Robert Jackson Bennett’s I’ve read. And goodness, did I enjoy it! I’ve heard about his Divine Cities series, but Foundryside really caught my eye. I just finished it last week, and this book continued to surprise me!

As this is my first book review on the website, I need to explain my rating system. The system rates seven categories, each out of seven, and then combines those categories into one final rating. There is also a weighted rating because books have different focuses depending on genre. The weighted rating is of course more arbitrary than the overall rating. I chose a seven-point system because there are misunderstandings with the /10 system that I want to move away from.

Here’s what each rating means:
7 – Excellent (near-perfect)
6 – Recommendable
5 – Satisfactory
4 – Average (neither particularly bad or good)
3 – Unremarkable
2 – Inferior
1 – Irredeemable (just plain awful)

You’ll notice I don’t have a “perfect” rating. I don’t want to be the sort of reviewer that never gives anything a perfect score because “nothing can be perfect”, so that’s not even on the rating scale.

It should also be noted that the individual categories will not have overt spoilers in them, but I’ll have a warning before the section at the end. Anyways, on to the ratings!

Characters 7/7

Sancia, Gregor, Orso, and Berenice were positively wonderful to follow. My favorite was Gregor by far, but Sancia consistently carried the plot and lots of laughs, and Orso’s character growth over the course of the book was just wonderful. You really dislike him at first, but he grows on you. It’s been a while since I’ve read punchy, realistic characters whose actions both make sense and are interesting to follow, but these four manage to keep you invested!

I’m excited to see where Bennett takes his characters in the following books, though I’ll be taking a short break to finish some of the other books on my to-read list. He left lots of room for growth, change, and inner conflict, which is a good place to be in for the end of book 1.

Plot 6/7

While characters and magic were certainly Foundryside’s strong suit, the plot for this first book is exciting! It takes a while to get going, but once you’re in it, you’re in. The ending kind of reminded my of some of the “Sanderlanches” in Cosmere books, which is always a good thing!

I did end up seeing a few of the mid-book twists coming—which was slightly frustrating when the characters weren’t as quick to pick them up—but once we reached the final quarter, I was blown away by every turn of the story. The tone was also an interesting one, but I’ll get into that in the message section.

Worldbuilding 6/7

I really enjoyed Tevanne and the frequent glimpses into the far past of Foundryside’s magic-mixed-with-tech civilization. With four merchant houses all reaching for each other’s throats across the city, the book achieves a similar feel to Mistborn with all the politics but manages to set itself apart with how unique the merchant houses are.

Each house feels distinct, and by the end you pretty much know where each of them stand and what they were known for. There aren’t eight other houses to inevitably forget. And you can’t really talk about the worldbuilding of Tevanne without…

Magic System 7/7

The magic! I love me a good hard(ish) magic system! Although I tend to enjoy writing the most solid magic systems known to man, the Scrivings of Foundryside manage to breach the gap between hard and soft perfectly. It has many rules that Scrivers must follow, but you also don’t learn how exactly the magic works until you get further into the story.

In Foundryside, anyone can “scrive” objects and essentially convince them to act in ways they usually do not. The classic example is a Scrived carriage wheel which has been told, “You’re on a slanted surface, so you should be rolling!”, and so the carriage wheel rolls forward whether it’s actually on a slanted surface or not.

Even once you get some of the rules, the scope of the magic isn’t quite set. However, where Scriving shines is its internal consistency! Once you’re introduced to a mechanic of the system, the proceeding uses all fall in line with it, creating a Sanderson-like system where you can predict and figure out how something might work. Bennett gives you the tools quite a bit slower, so it’s hard to predict some things, but I assume the further books will continue to grow on the art of Scriving.

Honestly, I loved this system. It gives me so many ideas for my own magic systems, and I loved how the act of scriving itself is a little “soft”. Every time Sancia pushed away an explanation, I grinned and wished she had let the person talk. Not only was the system wonderful, but it was tied so well into the world and story as a whole. Absolutely wonderfully done.

Cohesion 6/7

While Foundryside starts off slow, all the pieces and bits of information wrap so perfectly into one full and cohesive story. It’s nice to have all the threads pulled back together at the end, and not let much hang besides the setups for the next book.

I’m very grateful for each character’s consistency, and that while the magic played a huge role in the story it was also consistent and twists didn’t come out of nowhere. There was a logic to everything that continued on through each plot point and story beat.

Prose 5/7

Foundryside was an easy read, which is always a blessing with some high fantasy books. Its prose wasn’t particularly impressive, but actions scenes were punchy and easy to follow, which is a must-have with stories like this. I’m a fan of Rothfuss-style prose, but there’s not always a place for it.

Message 5/7

Now, you might be wondering what I mean by “message”. As you might see in my About page, the themes and messages of stories are what make them worthwhile to me. When approaching a book either to write or read, I want to get something out of it.

Of course, we don’t want our books to preach at us, but you can artfully weave in messages that speak to the art. They’re what make creation worthwhile.

For Foundryside, it took a while for the message to emerge. In the first half of the book or so, you’re mainly being led into the world of Tevanne and into each character’s life, and it doesn’t seem to focus on a major theme. But as you get to know everyone and the stakes get higher, messages of freedom, individualism, and doing the right thing regardless of the cost bubble up to the surface.

Those moments are by far my favorite, but it’s sad that they’re so few and far in-between. I hope that Shorefall and Locklands, these messages are stretched and expanded, but they were hammered home well with the solution in the finale.

Overall 6/7

Weighted: 6.12 (High Fantasy)

This was a wonderful book. There were some problems with it, of course, but it was a joy to read and had some truly ingenious twists and systems. I look forward to the next two books in the trilogy, and will be sure to pick them up once I’m through my burning to-read list. This has also made me want to go back and read his Divine Cities series.

I’ll be storing and sorting all my book reviews in a Google docs, found here! Right now it just has Foundryside, but I’ll try and go back to add the other books I’ve read.

Ahoy, there be spoilers ahead!

 

 

Here’s how these will work: I’ll rant for a while about anything in the book, so keep that in mind if you haven’t read it yet. The spoiler banner is for the entire book.

Gregor is the best. I loved his plotline of clashing moral and work-related duties, and how he has this intense need to bring justice to the world. I think it’s due to the lingering memories that have been wiped again and again because of the Scrived plate that keeps resurrecting him. I’m so excited to see where his character goes and how he finds redemption for his guilt.

Near the end of the book, Sancia uses a Scrived plate which can alter a thing’s gravity by providing it another mass (say, a hypothetical earth with 6 times earth’s mass). This obviously draws the object wearing the plate towards wherever the hypothetical mass is, and essentially allows them to fly. BUT, near the end of the book, Sancia sticks it to a building and tells the gravity plate that it is the object to affect, and tells her its gravity is essentially infinite.

This essentially makes a black hole for a very, very short period of time. It’s insane, and when you’ve been following the system, it makes perfect sense. I love those awesome, epic uses of magic systems that fit perfectly with their established rules. And we could have seen it coming!

I get the feeling that Clef is Crasedes, one of the ancient heirophants. (essentially masters of scriving that wiped themselves out) He was a great character, which I did not expect at the beginning.

I have other thoughts, but those are the big ones. Wonderful system, Gregor is the best, and I can’t wait to read more.