The publication of a new Robert Jackson Bennett has become something of an event, at least for me. I’ve read the majority of his novels and each one stuns and impresses me. With Foundryside, Robert launches a new Epic Fantasy series and he “graduates” into hardcover in the US. Set in the imagined Tevanne, where magic, or “scriving,” powers everything, Bennett lays out a fascinating world told through the eyes of several characters who get caught up in a heist that leads to revelations about the very nature of the world in which they live.
In a city that runs on industrialized magic, a secret war will be fought to overwrite reality itself–the first in a dazzling new fantasy 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.
Our protagonist, accomplished thief Sancia Grado, is hired to steal a highly-sought after box. She also receives instructions not to open this box but of course curiosity gets the better of her. When she opens the box, she sees a key. It doesn’t seem like much until she grabs it and it speaks to her. Literally. This key, whose name is Clef, connects with Sancia very strongly in large part because of the plate in her head that makes her a scrived human. That “modification” is also part of why she’s such a good thief, she is able to gain a fundamental, almost elemental understanding of anything she touches. Sancia had no choice in this “modification” so naturally seeks revenge against the larger powers that be who allowed this to happen. Those powers are the four houses, or “campos” that run everything in the Venetian inspired city of Tevanne.
Once she gets Clef, she is a highly sought-after criminal. People want the key and want her gone. Gregor Dandolo has taken it upon himself to bring justice to his world, despite coming from one of the more powerful houses. He is a one-man wrecking machine as he tears through people who come into his path. Then he finds Sancia and he may have met his match. Gregor and Sancia realize they have equally scarred pasts that have led them to their intertwined paths. To say that Clef’s past is somewhat chaotic and unpleasant is an understatement as well. Through their painful pasts, they come together and realize a powerful puppet master is trying to unleash chaos on society – imagine if somebody in our world tried to completely eradicate electricity in one fell swoop. It would be a catastrophe that could very quickly end many, many lives.
The “scriving” magic in Tevanne (one would assume the whole world, but the focus in Foundryside is Tevanne), is literally rewriting the properties of objects, making these objects think they are different than they are and encouraging these objects to behave against their nature. This “scriving” read to me like a fantasy version of computer coding; getting behind the scenes of something to affect how it performs to the outer world. There is also talk of ancient creatures of power who discovered this magic, Giants. Bennett craftily weaves this background through the plot of the story, allowing the characters to relay the critical interplay of history/myth into the events unfolding in the novel.
Although there are some long-past (centuries and millennia) events reaching to the current timeframe of the novel lending a vast epic scope, the characters ground the novel in the immediate and intimate. Sancia is such a wonderful, rough and real character that I found myself immediately on her side. Gregor, soon warmed, too. What seals it all for me, though, is Clef. For a key he’s got great depth and one thing I’m always fond of in these types of novels are when a “sidekick” and a protagonist have great back-and-forth dialogue. I’m thinking of Steven Brust’s Vlad Taltos and Loiosh and that wonderful (more) snarky banter those characters have is echoed between Sancia and Clef. When a writer can reveal the backstory and world-building of their milieu through character dialogue, then that writer has pulled off a dual accomplishment. With Clef and Sancia, I came to know and love those characters while falling under the spell of the world in which they live.
There are some fantastic, adrenaline pumping action scenes, too. I’m thinking in particular of the scene where Gregor first unleashes his powers and abilities on an unsuspecting crew of ne’er do-wells. There are also some great scenes later in the novel when Sancia and Gregor find themselves aligned against a common enemy.
Foundryside is a deft combination and weaving of story that was incredibly difficult to set aside. With heist and crime fiction elements that are reminiscent of Scorsese’s The Departed, mythic, fantastic world building that reminded me of both Brandon Sanderson and Rachel Aaron*, and characters that both shine on their own and echo some iconic characters (I found myself comparing Gregor to Batman in some scenes), Bennett has once again unleashed an imaginative epic that is a reading delight.
* Rachel Aaron is a fantastic writer and plays with similar fantastical elements of woken objects and heist-like plots in her wonderful Eli Monpress series. The first three are available in an omnibus which I reviewed here: https://www.sffworld.com/2012/03/bookreview823/
August 2018 | Crown
503 Pages | Hardcover
http://www.robertjacksonbennett.com/books/foundryside
Review copy courtesy of the publisher, Crown
Great review! I also loved this book. I thought that the magic system was one of the more original ones created recently. It was also nice to read something that was a bit lighter in tone from his Divine Cities series. Not that Divine Cities was bad, but it was just emotionally draining to read in so many ways.