Hi everyone
I just finished my first Robert Jackson Bennett novel: Foundryside. This is the first book in The Founders Trilogy, and I read this on my e-reader. I’ve seen him mentioned a lot on Goodreads and I wasn’t sure where to start, but I finally settled on Foundryside.
"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."
Foundryside was definitely enjoyable, but I don’t think I’ll be continuing the series.
Bennett’s writing is easy to read; almost YA-like in its dialogue and humor. There are modern swearwords right next to words specific to this world, which always throw me out of a book.
The magic system is interesting and different, but the infodumps (especially at the beginning of the novel) were very boring, and I’m still left with a lot of questions about how all of this could ever actually work. Some of these infodumps were in the middle of action scenes too (why would he do that?) and they completely broke the flow.
The world-building felt very minimal. We get to see a bit of the city, but that’s about it. Other people, the way others live, the land outside of this city, other countries, ... it’s all not really explored. I’m also left with the feeling that this society could never work with the few things we do know about it.
The plot is entertaining and fun to read, but never really surprising. There’s quite a bit of blood and gore and the stakes are very high, but there’s never any doubt about who will survive, which drained the tension for me. Bennett included a lot of action scenes, which were a lot of fun and definitely entertaining though sometimes events were too convenient to be believable.
Ultimately, I just didn’t feel compelled to read, invested, really interested or curious about the novel. It was too easy to put it aside, and I found my mind wandering quite often.
So yeah: Foundryside is fun and entertaining, but too shallow for my tastes.
Have you read Foundryside? Did you love it, or did you struggle with the same things I did? I’d love to hear your thoughts!
Happy reading!
Helena
