Picking up a few years after the events of Foundryside (the first installment of The Founders saga), the characters introduced in that volume – Sancia, Gregor, Berenice, and Orso have established their own scriving business in Tevane. Scriving is essentially coding magic (a neat blend of fantasy and science fiction right there) when an Old God reawakens. This Old God, Crasedes Magnus, wants to change the world to his liking (and isn’t that a name with gravitas!?), which seems to be in opposition to what Sancia and her crew are trying to do. That, ladies and gentlemen, is the essential premise of the novel.
As a magical revolution remakes a city, an ancient evil is awakened in a brilliant new novel from the Hugo-nominated author of Foundryside and the Divine Cities trilogy.
A few years ago, Sancia Grado would’ve happily watched Tevanne burn. Now, she’s hoping to transform her city into something new. Something better. Together with allies Orso, Gregor, and Berenice, she’s about to strike a deadly blow against Tevanne’s cruel robber-baron rulers and wrest power from their hands for the first time in decades.
But then comes a terrifying warning: Crasedes Magnus himself, the first of the legendary hierophants, is about to be reborn. And if he returns, Tevanne will be just the first place to feel his wrath.
Thousands of years ago, Crasedes was an ordinary man who did the impossible: Using the magic of scriving—the art of imbuing objects with sentience—he convinced reality that he was something more than human. Wielding powers beyond comprehension, he strode the world like a god for centuries, meting out justice and razing empires single-handedly, cleansing the world through fire and destruction—and even defeating death itself.
Like it or not, it’s up to Sancia to stop him. But to have a chance in the battle to come, she’ll have to call upon a god of her own—and unlock the door to a scriving technology that could change what it means to be human. And no matter who wins, nothing will ever be the same.
Like the best sequels or follow-on books in a series, Shorefall reveals more of the fantastical world, specifically the locale of Tevanne and the “campos” or regions. Also with any sequel, the fallout of the events in the previous novel are a key element in the story, especially a very dire warning towards the end of Foundryside that a dire threat from one of the character’s past would return. While scriving was explored in some detail in the first book, here in Shorefall some of the consequences are explored in more detail.
As the novel begins, Sancia and her crew try yet another confidence game in the campos of Michiel, which was relatively unexplored in Foundryside. More importantly, some of the history of the world is at the forefront of the novel, how Tevanne came to be and how that history is connected to the art/science of scriving. Objects gain sentience and as a result (much like some science fictional dilemmas about robots), the idea of whether these objects are slaves is a running theme in the series and novel.
What I found most fascinating about the novel, in particular that old god, Magnus. Many fantasy writers feature gods amongst mortals as part of their story, but RJB does a great job of keeping Magnus elevated above humanity, even if Magnus does communicate with a majority of the characters in the novel. The introduction of Magnus and the air of power the narrative gave Magnus was wonderful.
While Magnus is presented as a villain, he’s one of those villains you can’t quite root against – I was reminded quite a bit of Ma’elKoth, the wizard who became god in Matthew Stover’s brilliant Caine novels, or more recently, Killmonger from the Black Panther film. Magnus is powerful like Ma’elKoth, but like both Ma’elKoth and Killmonger, Magnus’s motivations don’t seem entirely evil and he does a very good job making the case for how he wants to change the world. The assumptions about the Magnus made by other characters don’t necessarily hold up to what is revealed about Magnus. The “deconstruction of a god” is a fascinating concept in fiction and Bennett executes this concept extremely well.
While Magnus was indeed fascinating, he wouldn’t have as much weight if the characters Bennett introduced in the first book and become more familiar here weren’t so remarkably drawn. I hate to say I’ve almost come to take for granted how well these characters come alive off the page. If I have any negative criticism about the novel, it is that the middle section seemed a bit unbalanced – I found that it didn’t hold my attention as much as the early third or the final third of the novel. Some interesting things were going on in the middle section, but the introduction/first half-dozen chapters drew me in very powerfully and the conclusion made it difficult for me to stop reading.
In the end, Shorefall manages to be a fantastic second book in a trilogy and mostly avoids the “treading water” novel that so many middle books fall into the trap of being (and why I sometimes don’t finish a series!). Entertaining while probing some deep philosophical ideals makes for an impressive novel. Bennet smartly balances what we knew from the first installment of the series while revealing new elements which change the world to an even greater degree.
© Rob H. Bedford 2020
Recommended
April 2020 | Crown
503 Pages | Hardcover
Excerpt: https://www.tor.com/2020/04/17/read-an-excerpt-from-robert-jackson-bennetts-shorefall/
https://www.robertjacksonbennett.com/books/shorefall-hc
Review copy courtesy of the publisher, Crown
