I've had a hit or miss relationship with this authors books, so I had tempered my expectations. I needn't have worried, I loved this book. It took a wee bit of time to get going, but as soon as Clef appeared I was hooked. It was one of those books where I'm reading it too fast to find out what happens, while simultaneously trying to slow myself down to make it last.

Looking forward to the sequel already.

On the whole, I really enjoyed this. It's got some extremely creative worldbuilding, and I loved the whole concept of scriving. As a form of magic, it's got limitations and potential that I haven't seen in fantasy novels before, and watching the characters circumvent those limitations (by convincing objects to reinterpret their magical instructions) was fascinating. The plot was never predictable, which was also great, and there were some seriously emotional moments relating to the main character's backstory that hit me pretty hard.

However, I wasn't a huge fan of the writing style, so it took me a while to get into the book. It's also a pretty lengthy read, and here and there I found myself drifting -- though admittedly, I'd just received a copy of a book I was extremely impatient for, so I was itching to get on with that.

The premise had me won over, though, and I can see myself picking up future books in this series to see how the author develops that next, as well as to see if any of the hints and questions about the world and characters' pasts are ever answered.

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This review is on Goodreads (but Amazon won't let me cross-post until it's been released -- I'll try and remember to do so).

What is it about?

Sancia is a thief.....a very good thief. She steals a box and against orders opens it and finds Clef. There’s magic, scriving, gruesome deaths, truly evil baddies and general mayhem.

What did I like?

Robert Jackson Bennet, the author, has created a dark and mystic world with great characters in Sancia, Gregor, Clef, Berenice and Orso, to name just a few. I read a LOT and some books are a good read, others just pass the time without really being engaging, BUT this I loved. It felt like a real world, it has an atmosphere you can almost taste..


Would I recommend?

Definitely, The writing is so good I was totally engrossed and very sad when it ended




I would like to thank the Author/the Publishers/NetGalley for the opportunity to read this book in exchange for a fair and honest review

4,5 stars

When I got the chance to participate in this blogtour for Foundryside I jumped at the chance. While I haven’t read any of his earlier books, Robert Jackson Bennett was for sure on my radar. And now I know I need to go back and read some more by him. Because Foundryside was excellent.

Tevanne has a rather complicated system with founders and scrivings but the author has a great talent for building the world without taking any of the pace out of the story. I have a rather clear image of Tevanne in my head and how some of the things look like. He certainly tickled my imagination. I also found the magic with the scrivings very interesting. Scrivings are basically magical inscriptions that make objects sentient. Carts that can drive without horses. Floating lamps. There is a lot left to discover but we get a very clear basic understanding of scrivings in this book. That is information that the author is going to build on in later books.

I was surprised with how action packed and fast paced this 500 page book is. Adult fantasy is normally not quite known for that. But there was a great balance between the above mentioned world building and action. It was a wild ride. It sucked me in and then wouldn’t quite let me go. Having said that I can’t quite give this book the full 5 stars either. The thing is that there are some easy to see plot twists coming for those of us that read a lot of fantasy. It pulled out that surprise element at the end it was banking on. It just made it lack a bit of punch.

The characters are developed quite nicely with still a lot of room to grow for all of them in the next books. They were actually characters where I wondered if I was even going to like them when I first met them. But then as we got to see more in their head and their backgrounds and their reasons, I became attached to them. They are flawed. It makes them believable. I also loved how the author slowly introduced the point of views of characters to us. We started with our main character where in a character got introduced that we then get a point of view on and so on. We don’t at random get characters thrown at us. It builds everything very nicely.

I took an especial liking to Sancia, our main character. She is smart, daring and broken. An escaped slave, she is trying to survive in a world that doesn’t seem to have a real place for her. She also suffers from PTSD from her time as a slave and the things that were done to her. The strong reactions she had at moments stemmed from that. I am glad that wasn’t glossed over. Sancia also shows interest in another female (which is recuperated) which made me so happy. She deserves some happiness. I also loved her interactions with a sentient object. That is all I shall say.

Gregor seemed like such a stiff man but he also had a background that shaped him. That changed him. As war often does to soldiers. Orso is a man that loves to curse and is perhaps a bit short-sighted in his pursuit of knowledge. Even so he grew on me as the novel continues. He does have his heart in the right place. Somewhat. Though I’m amazed Berenice (his assistant/partner I suppose) can stand working with him 24/7. I admire her for that. He is not an easy man.

The author doesn’t shy away from the tough subjects. As mentioned Sancia clearly has PTSD and is an escaped slave. I think slavery was done respectfully in the sense that there isn’t a white savior here. Sancia saved herself. And even Gregor realizes as the book continues that the justice he wants to deliver isn’t going to just roll over for him. But there is also mentioned abuse, sexual assault, torture, sex, child trafficking. So be aware of that when you go into this book.

There are a lot of morality questions also considering the scriving. Inevitably people find bigger things in history or think of new ideas that one should wonder if that is a line one should cross. Like scriving on people. How far should one go in the pursuit of knowledge and aren’t we better off leaving some things in the past?

Very interesting and hard to describe. I really enjoyed reading this. However, there are a number of caveats so this is more of a 3.5 for me.

Foundryside is about a futuristic world where people can manipulate reality using a mixture of magic and technology - called scrivings.. Someone hires a girl called Sancia to steal an artificat which turns out to be the key that could disrupt their world as they know it.

The characters are well developed and intriguing. Sancia as a protagonist is very likeable. She’s strong, smart and resourceful. Her relationship with Gregor is a bit confusing as he’s set up t9 be the male lead but then she develops feelings for a female character Berenice. Can’t wait to see where the author takes those relationships. Women are very strong characters in this story and run the show. I like the twists and turns as to who the good and bad guys are. However it was a little hard to follow what was going on in parts. I also felt that the author spent far too long explaining what scrivings are and the mechanisms of each device.

The story starts off a little slow but gets better and the end is thrilling. I think the next one needs a little more editing to make it tighter but will definitely be following the rest of the series.

Foundryside was an excellent fantasy read, enjoyable, without any of the  excesses of its genre, and with good characters, neatly distinctive, some good dialogues and much inventivity. A lot of mysteries are disclosed along the story, with various efficiency for my part (some were too evident, others were eh?... but also many good ones). The pace is good most of the times, and if the treatment of the special magic of this world may be sometimes a little overwhelming, it was always interesting.

What I particularly appreciated is that even if the world is classically unjust with people living harshly, and if some characters have suffered from some kind of horrible fate, like torture, war or isolation, the author never dwells unhealthily and unbearably on it. The story is quite comfortable to read, even for sensitive readers as I am.

Another point which is great: all the characters have they own distinctive voice and personality, which helps to create a vivid and entertaining story. The heroine's sidekick, Clef, is especially fun and likeable.

I could only maybe regret a certain lack of depth characters' development-wise, not for real lack of it, but more because of the general tone, which is generally fun and off-handly.

A good read for fantasy readers who appreciate inventivity, nice and sympathetic characters, much action and unexpected developments, humour, spectacular bad guys and sneaky acrobatic action!

Robert Jackson Bennett's deserves all of the 5 dazzling stars for this utterly gripping, epic fantasy adventure thriller, that is the first of this hotly anticipated series. Bennett engages in wonderful world building of the city of Tevanne with its 4 powerful family merchant houses and the more poverty stricken outsiders residing in the slums of The Commons. Tevanne runs on industrialised magic through the use of scriving, a specialist art that involves coding to change reality for things to ensure they do as they are bid, such as defying the laws of gravity and more. The most gifted scriveners endow wealth and power to their particular merchant house, with some dreaming of the ability to scriven like the legendary and mythical hierophants of the past, reputed to be nothing less than divine. It is a world in which there is little in the way of law enforcement despite the best efforts of Captain Gregor Dandolo, a soldier and war hero.

Sancia Grado, with a harrowing past, is an accomplished thief, she has the job of a lifetime which she has high hopes will secure her future and give her the necessary surgery she seeks. Whilst she gets her hands on what she seeks, she gets more than she bargained for, as she becomes a target to be killed by a ruthless and powerful individual connected with one of the Merchant Houses. In the meantime, she is being sought by Gregor, who wants her to face justice for setting the waterfront on fire and for stealing a box. With the help of the stolen artefact, and a group of unlikely allies, Sancia does her best to survive the dark dangerous waters she finds herself. Things get ever more urgent as it turns out the artefact and its secrets are wanted for the horrifying purpose of rewriting and changing the entire world, endangering whole swathes of the population. Incorporating all the elements of a Robin Hood heist or two, numerous obstacles and spectacular twists, it all ends in a thrilling finale with a cliffhanger.

Bennett has done a stellar job in establishing this action packed series with its fabulous world building that is done with impressive skill. I could easily imagine Tevanne with all its below the radar political intrigue and the magical power of scrivening. Where Bennett really shines is in his complex and intricate plotting and his ability to create a diverse range of characters that captured my interest, from slum girl Sancia, to the talented Berenice. Their interactions and relationships made for compelling reading. This is simply fantastic storytelling that has me waiting with much anticipation for the sequel. Highly Recommended! Many thanks to Quercus for an ARC.

I don't normally go for books which centre around characters in desperate, grinding poverty, oppressed by an uncaring and dystopian system. This is such a book, and yet, because it gave me a motivated character in a dynamic situation right out of the gate, it hooked me in and kept me reading.

It helped that the main character is a highly capable and determined young woman (my favourite type of character); she's a thief who can detect "scrived" (magical) devices and interact with them, because of a nasty experiment performed on her years before. When she gets hold of an ancient artefact that mysterious parties will do violence to obtain, she finds herself in the middle of conflicts that will leave everything changed, both around her and within her.

It's a strong concept, and it's well executed. The supporting characters are varied, with their hearts in the right place; the villains are suitably megalomaniacal and ruthless. There's amusing banter.

There's also a good deal of swearing, some, but by no means all, euphemistic, and some of it hinting at a religion that otherwise is conspicuous by its absence.

Overall, though, a fresh magical concept, complex and active characters, and a well-paced plot make this a compelling start to a series I will be watching closely.

I received a copy via Netgalley for purposes of review.

Sancia Grado is a thief by necessity, but after an elaborate heist lands a peculiar object in her lap that a lot of people seem to kill for, she realises she may have bitten off more than she can chew…

Foundryside is easily my favourite fantasy book of 2018 and I think it can also go in my top 5 books of the year as well. Everything about it is brilliantly done – all of the characters are believable and have depth – from thief with a past Sancia to warrior Gregor and even more unlikely characters such as Clef and the inanimate scrived objects – every part of the story has been carefully detailed.

I really enjoyed the magic/technology system (not sure which one scriving fits into), it’s nicely described and you learn more about both it and the history of Tevanne at such a nice pace that the progression is a joy to read. It’s an introduction to a fantasy series that neither patronises nor leaves the reader too much in the dark and expects us to catch up. It is part of a series and so does leave the ending open to another story but actually it could perhaps be read as a standalone – it certainly doesn’t end suddenly halfway through the plot. Foundryside wraps up the current story but leaves an incoming threat open for a new one to begin and I cannot wait to read it.

Overall, I can’t really expand on ‘in my top 5 favourite books of the year’ – I can’t wait for the next one and I will certainly be keeping an eye out for more books by Robert Jackson Bennett. Thank you to NetGalley & Quercus Books – Jo Fletcher for a copy of the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I couldn't put this book away. Love all the characters but Sancia is something else... She is the main character that we didn't know we needed. Get ready for many adventures in a fantasy world where reality can be changed and everyone knows more than they give away. This book is full of strong female characters. I just loved it and I cannot wait for the next one on this series

Una de las cosas que más me gusta de la fantasía es descubrir sistemas de magia. Si son atractivos y siguen reglas coherentes me encanta ver cómo el autor va buscando triquiñuelas para forzar las situaciones. El maestro absoluto de este arte es Brandon Sanderson con su famoso cuaderno, pero desde luego Robert Jackson Bennett no le ha ido a la zaga en Foundryside.

La acción tiene lugar en una ciudad dividida entre las zonas acordonadas de las poderosas familias de mercaderes y los barrios bajos que malviven entre los intersticios de los privilegiados, en una suerte de trasunto de las ciudades mercaderes italianas de la Edad Media pero con diferencias fundamentales. La principal, la tecnología basada en ese sistema mágico al que me refería anteriormente, que ha permitido una cuasi revolución industrial. Un poco a lo Las mentiras de Locke Lamora salvando las distancias.

El sistema se basa en unas instrucciones que se graban en los objetos, "convenciéndoles" de funcionar de una manera distinta a la habitual. Por ejemplo, si las ruedas de los carros creen que van cuesta abajo, no será necesaria tracción animal ya que se moverán solas. Esta flexibilidad se ve coartada por otras normas, como que cuanto más extraño sea lo que se le pide a las runas mayor dificultad habrá para crearlas y que el espacio físico para escribir es limitado. El escritor explora algunos atajos que se han ido creando, pero como el conocimiento que dio lugar a esta tecnología ya era fragmentado en un principio, las posibilidades que se esperan de la magia son mucho mayores de lo que se ha conseguido en la realidad.

Lo que más me gusta del libro es este sistema mágico, pero la narración también merece la pena. Aunque los personajes son bastante estereotipados, acabas cogiéndoles cariño porque son muy humanos. En este aspecto, no consigue alejarse de la fantasía urbana más típica, con sus pícaros y sus guardias enfrentados, en una partida de Policías y Ladrones a escala real.

No me gustaría dejar de señalar la labor reivindicativa con la que Robert Jackson Bennet ha creado el libro. Desde la lucha de clases, alegatos contra el esclavismo y la reivindicación de la igualdad de la mujer, todo tiene cabida en Foundryside, aunque no sea su principal objetivo.

La prosa del autor es muy accesible y explica con claridad tanto la magia como la situación social. Me gusta especialmente cómo entrelaza el mundo mágico con el mundo real sobre todo en las escenas de acción, que las hay y son espectaculares (imaginaos una espada que cree que pesa mucho más que su masa real y el daño que podría hacer bien manejada, por ejemplo). En ocasiones las conversaciones que tienen lugar mediante el pensamiento pueden acabar resultando confusas, pero creo que es más por un tema de maquetación que por la labor del propio escritor.

Aunque forma parte de una serie cierra bastante bien las tramas, por lo que no parece que sea imprescindible continuar con las siguientes entregas de la saga Founders. No obstante, me ha despertado la curiosidad y no me importaría seguir leyendo más cosas sobre este universo.

Robert Jackson Bennett has quietly built up a reputation as one of the best genre authors currently working. The City Of Stairs books were excellent and imaginative takes on the fantasy genre, while previous works like The Troupe and American Elsewhere were some of the strongest dark fantasy of recent years. This new novel is the opening in a new series, and at first glance appears to be set in his most traditional milieu yet, analagous to post-Renaissance Western Europe society creeping towards industrialisation. It's the cause of that industrialisation that is at the core of the novel, and I'm happy to report that it's a cracking idea, one of the best magic systems I've seen in a long time. I say magic, but it's closer to science, taking ideas from coding and quantum entanglement and refracting them through the prism of a pre-scientific society. The story around them is perhaps Bennett's most straightforward, and veers close to YA at times, with the lead character being a young girl who discovers her own amazing powers. It doesn't have the complexity of the Bulikov books, but there is enough charm and power to the writing, let alone originality of approach, to overcome this potentially hackneyed material, and we end up with probably one of the fantasy novels of the year. Can't wait for the next one.

Fantasy at it's finest! Dark, foreboding and fresh. A world, characters and lore that really bring something new to the genre. Highly enjoyable even for those for whom fantasy isn't a favorite genre. Darkly funny, witty and in places both heartwarming and brutally violent. Reminds me of ancient Rome with it's almighty powerhouses but in a whole different plane of existence. I was locked into the world and the tale from the outset. A must read.

Sancia Grado is a young thief who escaped slavery and now scratches a living in the Commons of Foundryside, the squalid shanty town that exists in Tevanne between and around the campos where the four leading merchant houses exist in their own comfortable enclaves thanks to their wealth and their magic/technology – scriving. Scrived objects are created with industrialised magical inscriptions. They power everything: carriages that move without horses, ambient flying rigs (basically targeted parachutes), and weapons that are powerful enough to shoot a bolt through metal. Sancia has a talent. She can hear the chattering and murmuring of scrived objects and by touch can learn the nature of whatever she touches. She saves this for inert objects. Touching another human is frequently too painful. When her usual fence offers her a job that will pay a small fortune the fee is simply too tempting to apply her normal caution. She steals an ancient artefact, which has some bery peculiar properties, but before she can deliver it and get paid, people start to die. From then on she's trying to get out of the resulting scrape, but she can't do it alone.
The pace is lively, the characters interesting and the magic system complex (and occasionally boggling). This is the first in a new series. It's out on 23rd August from Jo Fletcher books. I had a review copy from Netgalley.

I received an ARC from the publisher via NetGalley - thank you! All opinions are my own.

I love fantasy stories about thieves and rogues. Foundryside is all about heists, sneaky action and the fantastic protagonist Sanchia, who isn't just one of the best thieves in the city-state, but also has a spark of magic that is truely unique. Speaking of magic, the idea of magic is really well done here, fascinating and unusal. I loved the setting, this crawling city of unfortunates, loveable rogues, characters like Clef (Clef! I so enjoyed this POV)....I'm looking forward to hopefully read more stories set in this universe - it has been quite a while since I got hooked on a fantasy setting like this.

From the very beginning I was drawn into this immersive world and compelling plot. I loved the concept of this book. The world building is fantastic and the magic system is complex and unique. Both of these aspects are the main strength of this book. The characters are mostly well written, the action is so well done and the writing is great. I loved Clef as a character. Some of the secondary characters fell a little flat, but overall I enjoyed the development of the characters. I also wasn't the biggest fan of some of the dialogue - that's only a minor issue though. Although the plot is compelling, I just didn't love it as much as I thought I would. I can't put my finger on why but I didn't become fully immersed. I would still highly recommend checking this out. It's unique and fantastic world and magic system make this well worth a read.

Robert Jackson Bennet had a huge critical success with his first series, he comes back in the same genre and when I received an ENC I did not resist.

I found the universe of this novel simply fantastic. Imagine a world where you can transform, connect, program objects thanks to a hieroglyphic writing. The latter was created following a discovery of a primitive writing that gave even more power to men. However, this knowledge has been lost and what remains is only a tiny part of what could be done before. What is interesting is the exploitation of this language. This knowledge is divided between 4 large merchant houses that have a monopoly and have parts of the city that are heavens of peace while the rest of the city the law of the strongest applies. I found plenty of parallels with our current world, especially about technology or the capitalist side of our society. It is a very rich and very pleasant universe.

Our heroine Sancia has a rather unique ability she can feel the objects around her. This "power" comes from the hieroglyphs that have been engraved on a plate in her head. She is unique and it is not a choice. She had a very difficult childhood and her power was the result of an experience she was imposed on when she was a slave. It's a person who has had to fight to survive and it shows in each of her movements. I get attached to her and I am happy with her evolution and I think she will become more kick ass in the next book. The secondary characters are as well built and the group dynamics is excellent, that's another good point.

For the general plot, the book is really well done. Adult fantasy tends to be slow, but this is not the case here, at all, this aspect made me think of Brandon Sanderson's novels (yes, yes, I say so). So I come out of my reading quite please, Robert Jackon Bennet has embarked me on his story and the potential is still huge after book one. The mythology created is exciting. So if you like good adult fantasy with rich worlds, buy this book.

ARC provided by NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

3.5 stars

There was a lot that I loved about this book. In fact in many ways it was an extremely frustrating book to read because it kept shifting gears from pages of awesomeness to whole chunks of meh. Ultimately I was left with the feeling that it just wasn't quite finished - something was missing at any rate.

Sancia is an ex slave with an unsual ability - she is able to sense and to an extent interact with scrivings, which is a system of magical workings that alter reality using written sigils. Sancia's ability comes with huge draw backs however and she is forced to live a Spartan lifestyle, making her living as a professional thief. And then she takes a job that turns out to have far more trouble attached to it than she could have imagined. Thrown together with an unlikely group of allies, Sancia finds herself on a mission far grander in scope than she would have believed possible.

I love the magic system in this book. Part physics, part sorcery, part linguistics. I don't think I've ever seen anything quite like it although I was reminded slightly of Garth Nix's Abhorsen series and the charter magic, and also of the way water is taught to form a new crystalline structure as ice 9 in Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle. The world building is magnificent - a sort of post industrial slum city with very definite lines between the haves and the have-nots. Move further out and you have the horror of the plantations. Merchant houses rule the world with their secret sigil strings making them sole providers of important and essential goods and services. It's incredibly intricate and well thought out. So detailed that it could almost be real. The flip side is that every couple of chapters, the reader is treated to a long detailed explanation of how that magic system works. Some people might appreciate that. I found it frustrating. As a reader I would rather always be paid the compliment of the author assuming I understand because unless you're writing in binary or you have no mastery over things like plot and structure at all, I can assure you I <i>can</i> keep up.

The themes in this book were also excellent. Along with the scriving based magic system, the book looks at things like what does ownership ultimately do to the owner? What about to the owned? What if the owned item is in fact a person? At what point does something you create belong to itself? All the questions that are standard fare in sci-fi dealing with AI but I'd never seen it in a fantasy setting in quite the same way and it was pretty mind-blowing. Scrivings do bear some reminiscence to computer code too. And weirdly also to the structure of good poetry. It's that precise - a misstep means that at best the scriving doesn't work, often with disastrous consequences. And that's another underlying theme - that of saying exactly what you really mean and taking responsibility for it. A further theme is taking your own freedom - if you are still controlled by the circumstances of your past are you really free? All the themes were reasonably well explored and added depth to the story.

Where I came unstuck was the characterisation and the dialogue. Sancia was fairly well developed, as was Clef (my personal favourite character because he was awesome) and Berenice. But characterisation on the others was a bit patchy. I did feel it got more definite by the end but it just wasn't great. The dialogue was really awful. Flat, on the nose and sprinkled with ellipses to denote pauses except that it didn't confer emotional context, it just made you think the characters couldn't get an entire sentence out. I would rather have seen more physical tells, character in action and even speech tags. Adverbs aren't a sin if they're used correctly and I think they should have been used more here because the dialogue as it stands did my head in. Final issue, all that description carefully imparting how scriving works? Yeah totally took up space that should have been given over to showing the characters buildings bonds and conflicts. By the time they'd formed a team I had no more idea why they were working together other than the plot demanded it. It just wasn't good.

So I feel conflicted about this one. I wanted to love it more than I did. It was still something special. It was still clever and original. I will definitely read the next book and I still recommend it. I just can't rate it any higher personally.