#foundryside

[queer-book-character-tournament]

Character, book, and author names under the cut

Shang Qinghua/Mobei-Jun- The Scum Villain's Self-Saving System by Mo Xiang Tong Xiu

Keita Mori/Thaniel Steepleton- The Watchmaker of Filigree Street by Natasha Pulley

Sancia Grado/Berenice Grimaldi- The Foundryside Trilogy by Robert Jackson Bennett

Shara Wheeler/Chloe Green - I Kissed Shara Wheeler by Casey McQuiston

[offonaherosjourney]

Me, pointing at my favorite character: "We need to stop putting this guy in situations"

[literary-illuminati]

2024 Book Review #20 – Foundryside by Robert Jackson Bennett

I’ve in theory been a big fan of Bennett for a couple years now, having adored American Elsewhere when I read it. I say ‘in theory’ because I had not actually followed that up by reading any of his other stuff until I happened to see him doing an AMA on r/fantasy and was jolted to go put something of his on hold. The most convenient option was Foundryside so, here we are.

The story follows Sancia, a former slave-turned-magical-experiment who now uses her rather inconveniently always-on sort of object empathy to be a really excellent thief for hire in the hopes of earning enough cash to pay some black market surgeon to make her normal again and then stay quiet about it. That price tag lures her into accepting a job for an eye-watering amount of money from what it clearly one of the merchant houses who rule the city – which she discovers to be an ancient relic, a key that can open any lock. And talk to her. And revolutionize the entire industry of enchanting upon which the city’s fortune and empire are built. She correctly assumes that there’s no way they’re planning to let her live after turning it (him) over, and things spiral out of control from there.

It’s fundamentally a heist story, with all the main action setpieces being about breaking into places and stealing things. And like all good heist stories, the protagonists are totally incapable of winning through anything like brute force, and have to be clever bastards about it – sneaking past guards, not slaughtering them in the night. Those heist sequences are all vividly described and just a lot of fun, almost worth the price of admission on their own.

So this is the rare story where calling it ‘magipunk’ is both accurate and helpful. Which is to say, it is almost literally a cyberpunk story translated into the idiom of vaguely-early-modern fantasy city states instead of corporate arcologies. Scheming oligarchs, overmighty corporate states, miraculous technologies that are only felt by the underclass as news ways of being oppressed and objectified, the works. The most triumphant and hopeful part of the ending involves the founding of a worker’s coop that doesn’t get immoderately crushed. Notably useful and plot-relevant enchanted items include a listening device, trackers, and a powered gliding rig. It’s only when you really get into it that the magic starts feeling at all magical, is what I’m saying – you could translate almost all of this into Cyberpunk 2020 terms in a couple of hours. I think it’s quite fun.

Sancia’s whole backstory – a slave on one of the plantations supplying the city with food and spices, taken as a subject for bloody experimentation in creating perfectly obedient magical cyborgs, surviving and escaping because they got sloppy with occult grammar and reality interpreted ‘be like object’ as ‘be like [INSERT NEAREST OBJECT HERE]’ – is fun on a few different levels. The story definitely leans into a running theme of the reduction of the powerless and subordinate to literal objects and tools wielded by those who control them, both metaphorically and literally. But also there’s an absolutely great beat where she’s explaining her story to the rest of the main cast who are all horrified and disgusted that anyone would do such a thing. To which she reacts very angrily and goes ‘you know that isn’t, like, worse than the whole rest of the chattel slave economy, right? More people get horribly tortured to death as part of everyday operations than creepy magical experiments?”

Sancia as a character is just a lot of fun to spend time in the head of, honestly. Her relationship with Clef (the magical key, the more literal example of being objectified and insturmentalized by one’s masters) is the core dynamic of the first ~half of the book, and it absolutely carries it. Though in the final act it then runs into the very common action/adventure story issue where she starts talking about this guy she’d known for barely a week like a life-long friend she’s shared more good times than she could count with. Entirely forgivable but like, it does stand out.

There’s this whole subtheme of, like, futile misogyny running through the text? It’s never explicitly brought up, and the only character whose actually vocally sexist on the page is the asshole philistine moneygrubbing abusive husband wannabe-coupist you’re clearly supposed to hate. But it’s a repeatedly mentioned point that the culture of enchanting grew significantly more patriarchal in the previous generation (for unstated reasons, possibly just the one epoch-defining genius being a misogynistic ass) and that this was very bad for the career prospects of several major characters. Despite this, important women in the story include a) half the main cast, b) the only competent and attentive head of any of the four merchant houses and c) the enchanting-prodigy wife of aforementioned sexist asshole who turns out to have been feeding him every useful idea he ever had until she could kill him and scoop up everything he’s gathered. This is one of those things that amuses me because it’s clearly deliberate but is never directly mentioned.

This is also one of those books that’s queer rep not in the revolutionary groundbreaking it’s-a-core-part-of-the-tezt way, but in the ‘wow isn’t it great how normal and unremarkable queer representation is now?’ way. Like, Sancia is gay, which is one of remarkably few things about herself she never expresses a single moment of angst, anger or self-doubt about, and she has the sort of C-plot romance subplot every adventure story is obligated to (right down to agreeing to go out for a drink if she survives the last big heist), but with a woman. Her sexuality otherwise basically doesn’t matter. When people ask for queer SFF book recommendations I’m never sure if offering stuff like this is missing the point or exactly what’s desired.

As mentioned, the only other book of Bennett’s I’ve read is American Elsewhere. Which was an absolutely horrible way to set my expectations going into this. Foundryside is fun adventure fantasy, but it has far fewer literary pretensions. The prose is incredibly readable – it’s absolutely a page turner – but that’s basically all it aspires to be. Elsewhere had several different passages I stopped and reread just for the pleasure of it, Foundryside I went back and reread only when I skimmed past some important detail and got confused.

But it’s a really fun fantasy heist story, and the sequel promises to be about a rampant artificial intelligence clockwork djinn which turned against the ancients who made her. So I’m sure I’ll get to it sooner rather than latter.

[blakbonnet]

i'm reading Foundryside and not sure whether i should be hoping for a happy sancia x berenice ending ;-; or are they going to remain tragic lesbians

[slowdripsunrise]

review time again i need to get through this backlog lol spoilers under the cut

howl's moving castle by diana wynne jones - OUHG. so much fun. loved it. i love that howl is such a bitch. i love that the only reason he's a wizard is because of tax evasion. he's welsh. he plays rugby. AND SOPHIEEEEEEE MY DARLING MY SOPHIE. she's so awesome in this its epic. like ouhg.

the golden raven by nora sakavic - what do i even say atp. i think you all know my feelings about it. i don't have to say anything else i don't think. i love you

clockwork angel by cassandra clare - LOLLLLLLLLL tbh i just wanted to see what the hype was about. not totally convinced. tried to read the second one couldnt get into it i really don't get the hype. mostly i was convinced by caricanread on yt and her forgot the plot series about the mortal instruments. so like. and i wasn't expecting to fall in Love with it obvs because i am a hater at heart and i didn't like tmi that much when i read it in middle school. and something that has been on my mind just in the back a bit recently is the whole like. and this isn't specific to cassie clare at all but how a lot of the times, the male love interest(s) feel more fully fleshed out/have more fun little quirky details about them than the female mc. like will has all this silly little lore/fandom in jokes that are about him and like the whole idk "cassie clare loves her boys" like okay i can tell. yeahhhh i can tell. very much so. idk tbh i did want to like this story because my absolute favorite kind of story ever and i know i said this before in my last post about crescent city but my fav story ever is the stories that are told, and then the stories that came before it are also told. like i wanna know the present. and then i wanna know the cause. the LORE. AUGH THATS ALL I WANT. and so a story like this where each kind of. time period has its own story but they are all connected to each other through generations like i do in fact eat that shit up. but this really did not capture me at all tbh.

evocation by s. t. gibson - cover is sick tbh thats why i picked it up mostly and the story was fun s. t. gibson usually hits. although i think a dowry of blood will always be my fave just bc of the narrator lol

the actual star by monica byrne - this was weird one. not sure how i feel about it. the different povs were interesting and i liked this fun look into the past and future. however with the way that the future people's pov made it seem the date that they were all leading up to was going to be way more impactful than it ended up being as in like a. it was anticlimactic is what im saying. tbh i did not really care about any of the characters actually that's not true i was interested in how the story played out. but ehhhhhhhhh. idk

the tainted cup by robert jackson bennett - okay THIS one i absolutely understand the hype ohhhkjlrmfdlkmewlkfmrklrmgeklf ohh my god i was in fact on the edge of my seat the whole time. im a sucker for dynamics like this and well the introduction to this world really did get me. weird plant magic? magically/biologically experimented on/enhanced people? SEA LEVIATHANS ?????? girl this book was made for me. and the characters did really bring it together as well. the intelligence of ana and how the story was crafted well i did really like it and it did make sense. so extremely excited about this series

arch-conspirator by veronica roth - i love antigone mostly because i was part of my high schools production of antigone now and that was such a good ass time. and this sci fi dystopian take on it was really cool. didn't capture me as much as when among crows did but i think it did it's job and i enjoyed it a lot.

into the riverlands by nghi vo - another banger. not as warm and fuzzy as the others in the series but i liked it and the new characters we met. excited to read the next one !

next i read a vampire in the batthouse by niko izuki and a land so wide by erin a. craig - both of which are netgalley e-arcs ! you can read my reviews of them here and here

foundryside by robert jackson bennett - the tainted cup changed me in fundamental ways so i started this series bc it is finished and well yeah the cover is cool. i didn't like it as much as the tainted cup but sancia as a character is like my everything. love her she's awesome and badass and a matter of fact and she's scared. a lot of the time. which makes sense obviously. and i do like the key thing and again that whole experimenting on humans and while this wasn't specifically a lab setting the aspects are still there and still evil i do want to see where this series goes ! esp with the lore around occidentals. and sancia of course.

a drop of corruption by robert jackson bennett !!! i saw that my library had this and well even tho i had just started another series of this i did have a NEED. for more of this series and this one the vibes were for sure different but i did really like the change of scenery like i was wary at first because the threat of the leviathans in the first book is so present everywhere bc of the setting, while in this second one it's not there really at all. however. LEARNING MORE ABOUT THE LEVIATHANS !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! yessss thats what i want. in the first book when it looked like one of them tried to talk well that wasn't answered in this one but oughgbhbgjdvndkfjnc i need more info. i wanna know more about that specifically. oh and din my disaster bisexual my boy i love you. and ana calling out his bullshit well i do love her too. i wanna find out more about her too like what is up with that. more experiments. lots of experiments going on in my life these days big fan.

iron widow (reread) and heavenly tyrant by xiran jay zhao - !!!!! fun. crazy. bonkers insane. i've never seen pacific rim but i feel like this is true to how it is fr fr. i could tell the author was having fun with this one which is awesome. did we go off the rails a bit at the end..... yeah...... did i like our illustrious emperor. no not at all really. but he was funny to read about. little bitch. and well did i miss our phoenix.... yeah.... but i had fun with the story. not itching for the next book but i will be reading it when it comes out probably.

the starving saints by caitlin starling - another netgalley e-arc !!! read my review for it here

water moon by samantha sotto yambao - Loved this. lived up to whatever hype it was getting and then some. on the edge of my seat just waiting for the characters to discover something new next. such a whimsical and magical world i loved it... definitely want to read more of this authors work.

daughter of the moon goddess by sue lynn tan - a fun and wild ride loved the folklore magical mystical feeling of it. tbh i was consumed by it and the beauty of the world and i liked how while the mc didnt really know what was going on the whole time she knew how to get what she wanted. deffo will be reading the second one

okay and onto the 2 most recent books i read probably going to become one of if not my favorite series of the year - legendborn and bloodmarked by tracy deonn !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! AUGHGH. OUCH. AEOFROEIFJOERJFOERMFKM. bree is my favorite character let me make that clear. god i love her so much and like i really do connect with her. the way she feels guilt and shame so powerfully but pushes through anyway, how it does affect her so much, but keeps working at what she wants and protecting the people she loves is,,,,, really inspiring to me. like obviously. my and my loved ones lives are not in danger the way her's are. and well i really do not have a thousands year old legacy invading my brain. however. well to avoid being crazy 3 minutes before i need to leave for work i'll leave it at that. ough her relationship with nick is everything to me. seeing how he immediately cared for her, Not in an instalove way, at all. was really nice. just really really nice. not only because a lot of young Black girl readers feel seen by this and how lovely and refreshing it is to see a young Black girl feel so easily loved and cherished - tracy's words, but also because ifl a lot of books these days aren't doing the whole enemies to lovers thing, but there also not, Not doing that. water moon was like this too. the just surety of trust and the whole call and response OAUHG. and well i am in fact a selbreenick truther i do think that if i had to pick one, i would pick nick. easily. sorry sel. i just think its refreshing. god. i have so many more thoughts but there mostly just BRRRR right now around in my brain so i will refrain from saying more. can't wait to read oathmarked and thus feel the agonies of waiting for the next book.

[wind-rider]

Foundryside is already an unhinged trilogy but Locklands is absolutely the greatest example of this.

You have the tragic lesbians, the traumatized middle-aged woman, the sapient key, the former ray of sunshine, and the godlike being with near-absolute power over reality.

All of them except for the godlike being are in a hivemind together.

The key is the god’s absent father who is being haunted by his dead wife.

They are trying to break into the backrooms of the universe before a different, eviller hivemind does.

What the fuck is happening.

[storybook-souls]

top ten books i read in 2024

i read (will have read, when i finish these last two) 72 books this year, and these were the ten (well, okay, fifteen) that i liked best!

1. Watership Down, by Richard Adams

It is so nice to finally get around to a beloved classic that you're pretty sure you'll like and discover that it rules even more than you thought it would. I loved Watership Down. Hazel is an incredibly compelling protagonist, the supporting characters are distinct and interesting and lovable in their own rights, and Adams managed to never let you forget that his characters were rabbits while also keeping his story high-stakes and epic enough to earn all his Homeric and Shakespearean epigraphs. this children's book about rabbits is IT!

2. Some Desperate Glory, by Emily Tesh

GOD did this book blow me away! Had me hooked right from the long list of content warnings--it is so refreshing to read a book that doesn't shy away from the ugly reality of misogyny, homophobia, sexual assault, and how it all reinforces each other and is used to prop up those in power. AND that is a fun, phenomenally-paced science fiction story with great characters, crazy situations, and a scene right in the middle that had me sitting on my couch with my mouth wide open for at least half an hour. Kyr and Avi win the award for my favorite new character dynamic this year and I basically haven't stopped thinking about and telling people to read this book since I read it.

3. Return of the King, by J.R.R. Tolkien (read by Andy Serkis)

I re-listened to The Hobbit and the entire LOTR trilogy this year, but ROTK was the one that really stood out to me, probably because it was the one I remembered the least well. It's so tense, so desperate, so hopeless until all of a sudden it's not. And I still love how much time Tolkien spends on the journey home--it's important! It's part of the story! And of course the ending is perfect. And the Andy Serkis audiobooks are excellent. Lord of the Rings forever <3

4. Everyone in My Family has Killed Someone, by Benjamin Stevenson

I got on a big mystery kick this summer, and this was my favorite new find to come out of that. This is a mystery for mystery fans, one that starts off with the narrator telling you exactly which page each death will occur on, but doesn't let the genre-savvy gimmicks get in the way of being a well-paced well-plotted mystery with a satisfying solution and a couple little tricks so neat they gave me goosebumps.

5. The Martian Chronicles, by Ray Bradbury

I love Ray Bradbury's short stories, so I'd read quite a few of the ones in here, but there were also several I hadn't read and seeing all of them together in context gave new meaning to even the ones I had read before. He's such a brilliant writer, and he so clearly and precisely uses science fiction to make exactly the points he wants to make. My favorites were "The Third Expedition", "The Martian", "The Long Years", and "The Million Year Picnic".

6. The Mysterious Case of the Alperton Angels, by Janice Hallett

I love Janice Hallett and I was really looking forward to this one of her "found materials" mysteries, and it did not disappoint. So many layers to peel back only to find something elegant and deceptively simple at the core. So many insane pencil notes that I got to make in my paperback <3

7. Ptolemy's Gate, by Jonathan Stroud

I finally read the Bartimaeus series after bemoaning that I couldn't think of any series where the last book was also the best, and Ptolemy's Gate sure managed to do it. All the dominoes that had been set up in the previous books finally fell, the characters crashed together in interesting and compelling ways, and the ending felt like exactly where the story had been going all alone.

8. Crooked House, by Agatha Christie

I love Agatha Christie, but I'd never read this one until this year, and I think it's an underrated standout of hers! I really liked how it flipped the traditional locked room into "Literally everyone here had motive and opportunity--but who actually did it and how can we find out?"

9. Shorefall, by Robert Jackson Bennett

This is the second book in the industrial high-fantasy Foundryside trilogy, and it's certainly the best of the three. The stakes are at the perfect level, the villain is terrifying and compelling, the characters and their relationships are at their most interesting, and the plot is one where everything just keeps getting worse and worse and worse!!! <3 As I said on discord while I was reading it, "i love when protagonists have no good options. i love when there's a bunch of factions with their own selfish motivations AND their own misguided way of doing what's 'best for everyone.' i love when antagonists exploit something prideful that the protagonists did in order to totally fuck them over. and most of all i love mind control."

10. Sharks in the Time of Saviors, by Kawai Strong Washburn

I loved this indigenous Hawaiian magical realism book about what it means to be the miracle that's supposed to save your family and people and land, and about what it means to be the parent/sibling of that miracle. Heart-wrenching and delightful.

Honorable Mentions:

11. The Last Murder at the End of the World, by Stuart Turton (weird twisty sci-fi murder mystery!)

12. Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game, by Michael Lewis (baseball and math!)

13. Bad Cree, by Jessica Johns (character-driven horror about family and identity!)

14. The Luminous Dead, by Caitlin Starling (cave horror and toxic lesbians!)

15. Eight Bears: Mythic Past and Imperiled Future, by Gloria Dickie (bears!)

if you made it all this way, add me on storygraph for further takes <3

[fallowhearth]

Book Review - Foundryside by Robert Jackson Bennett

A fun but undemanding heist novel which ended up being the right kind of palette cleanser following my recent reading. I found the first third to be a bit underwhelming, as I wasn't really gelling with the character voices, but it picked up significantly through the middle and stuck the landing.

The setting is quite interesting, and is one of the rare cases where magic is taken seriously as both a technology and as part of an economic model. While it wasn't the main focus of the story, I enjoyed the moments where scientific advances proceeded from a need to solve technical problems in magical item development. It takes place in the metropole of an explicitly colonialist society whose economics rely on the exploitation of subjugated people/lands. All of this was portrayed fairly accurately in my opinion, even if the narrative did not dive particularly deep. You get the impression well thought out, coherent worldbuilding, even if it is only being lightly surfaced.

The cast of characters were perfectly likeable but unfortunately landed a little flat to me. The main character, Sancia, had the misfortune to fall into an archetype that I'm personally a little tired of. Emotionally-repressed highly-competent hard-done-by teenage lesbian thief. It sounds niche but it's surprisingly common. Though to the book's credit, the budding romance between Sancia and her prospective love interest was refreshingly forthright. There was blushing but blessedly little. And they moved past that with clear communication. So small mercies. It's not the kind of story shape to call for deep nuanced characterisation, so the cast do their job.

This might be another personal issue, as I've read a lot of this kind of story, but I did find the reveals and twists to be a little delayed - I'd worked them all out well in advance of the characters, both on an overall plot and scene-to-scene level. I wonder if other readers experienced the same, or if it was just right for a younger/newer audience.

Overall, would recommend, as long as you're going in with calibrated expectations. I definitely don't regret reading this and will pick up the sequels.

[kitausu]

There is nothing like the bond of a girl and her sentient inanimate object bestie (aka Sancia and Clef)

[rifulofthewest]

You can always count on Robert Jackson Bennett to come up with a strange reason to introduce animals in his fantasy worlds

The Founders trilogy?

Gray monkeys who have a "fun" life because humans are shitty magicians

Shadow of the Leviathan series ?

Sloths who are magically enlarged and used to transport things because humans are lazy

I have my own little side quest while reading his books: to find how people torment animals in this particular world

[queer-book-character-tournament]

Character, book, and author names under the cut

Berenice Grimaldi- Sancia Grado- The Foundryside Trilogy by Robert Jackson Bennett

Tobias- Silver in the Wood by Emily Tesh

Tsukiko- Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern

Dorian- The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern

[aroaessidhe]

I went to the library sale :) i am a picky bastard and only got hardcovers with the removable dustjacket covers , so they're pristine on the outside! I've read the wayward children books, the others are on my tbr.

[literary-illuminati]

Okay 200 pages into Foundryside now and, lmao.

Sancia gets away with hiding the incredible valuable relic everyone wants in her boot while getting interrogated by people who absolutely do not trust her. How? Well you see, the three of them are a) a noble scion who deals with his immense moral injury by spending every waking minute being the soul of chivalry b) a mad scientist who can't bear to touch blood (or filth, or poor people), and c) apparently just an incredibly repressed lesbian.

So basically she gets away with it because everyone was too awkward to actually strip-search her and just gave up after a cursory pat-down.

I am actually laughing.

[haveyoureadthisfantasybook]

vote yes if you have finished the entire book.

vote no if you have not finished the entire book.

(faq · submit a book)

[book-repository-for-ducks]

"Every innovation—technological, sociological, or otherwise—begins as a crusade, organizes itself into a practical business, and then, over time, degrades into common exploitation. This is simply the life cycle of how human ingenuity manifests in the material world. What goes forgotten, though, is that those who partake in this system undergo a similar transformation: people begin as comrades and fellow citizens, then become labor resources and assets, and then, as their utility shifts or degrades, transmute into liabilities, and thus must be appropriately managed."

― Robert Jackson Bennett, Foundryside

[araliadon]

If anyone would like to come scream with me about Foundryside by Robert Jackson Bennett… feel free… Jesus this trilogy is stunning.