Foundryside: A Novel (The Founders Trilogy Book 1) Kindle Edition

Here are the finalists for the 2023 Best Series Hugo Award:⬤ Children of Time Series, by Adrian Tchaikovsky (Pan Macmillan/Orbit)⬤ The Founders Trilogy, by Robert Jackson Bennett (Del Rey)⬤ The Locked Tomb, by Tamsyn Muir (Tor.com)⬤ October Daye, by Seanan McGuire (DAW)⬤ Rivers of London, by Ben Aaronovich (Orion)⬤ The Scholomance, by Naomi Novik (Del Rey)I was surprised to find, on seeing this list, that I had read five of the six series -- completely, except in the cases of The Locked Tomb, October Daye, and Rivers of London, which have not yet reached their ends. Even in those three cases I have read all extant published novels.The exception was The Founders Trilogy, which I was previously unaware of. Obviously, the first book, Foundryside, went on my reading list immediately. I finished it yesterday and added the next two books to my reading list. If that's not a vote of confidence, what is?So what is it about? Foundryside is a novel about software development. Oddly enough, the 2023 Hugo finalists include another novel about a nontraditional fantasy topic: the fabulously popular Legends & Lattes, which turns out to be a novel about starting a business. I personally liked Foundryside much more than L&L, however, perhaps because programming is nearer and dearer to my heart than entrepreneurship. (By the way, that The Founders Trilogy is about software is not just my imagination, Bennett, in a blog post, has said so.)Foundryside takes place in and around the city of Tevanne. Tevanne is dominated by four wealthy founding families, which you should think of as competing software companies. The special thing about the world of the The Founders Trilogy is that reality is programmable -- this is the magic system. For instance an arrow can be programmed -- scrived (real-world programmers call this scripting) -- to believe that down is the direction it is pointing, and that it is far heavier than it is by nature. This arrow will then fire straight at very high velocity. The scriving done by the four families is mostly restricted to physics -- because of bad experiences, scriving humans is not allowed.Within the compounds life is good. But the Founders are the only law in Tevanne. Outside the Founders compounds there is a lawless marginal underclass. Our hero, Sancia Grado, is a thief who manages to get by in this marginal dystopia. Sancia has special abilities that make her an especially effective thief. She gets herself into trouble with one (and eventually all) of the Founder families and other older powers.It's a great story, exciting, full of great characters, both heroes and villains. The last third or so of the book is a deliciously exciting action-packed puzzle box, full of revelations about the magic system, setting up the sequels.

I want to focus on the world building because this concept is what sold me throughout the book. It’s fresh, original, and incredibly creative. I was fascinated. The idea that one could “scrive” items to change their characteristics using simple to understand ideas, was something I’ve never seen in a book before. “Scrivings” are symbols that represent ideas, and by putting these symbols on ordinary objects, one can enchant the object to believe it is something it isn’t. That can be accomplished even if it means defying the laws of physics, such as the laws of gravity. A pair of handcuffs are scrived to believe each half is a lover, and the two lovers can never be parted unless there is a special key, otherwise, they “love, love,love” each other and must never be parted. Carriage wheels can be scrived to believe they are on a hill and are constantly moving downhill, so naturally, they want to keep rolling at all times. Items can even be scrived to be “twinned” where two objects believe that they are the same object and thus, one reflects the sentiments of the other. The list goes on. It seemed that in the world of Tevanne, one could scrive just about anything, and this opened up a enormous possibilities. The best part was, all of these ideas were so simple to understand, and so so brilliant.The one thing that bothered me throughout the book was the character of Clef. Clef was supposed to be an ancient “artifact” made by the initial creators, which Sansia managed to steal. Clef was lost for years immeasurable. Sancia had a unique ability to communicate with Clef through telepathic means. My issue was this: Clef’s voice was too modern and didn’t fit with what he was supposed to be. I wasn’t bothered by the fact that he was a talking key. That was easy to get past. What I couldn’t get past was Clef’s frequent use of “kid” when addressed Sansia. “Hey, Kid!” or “Don’t do that, Kid,” and so on. The way he talked was far too slang-modern, making their dialogue seem somewhat juvenile. If an object has been hiding for thousands of years, it seems out of place for it to talk with modern speech. I think had the author made Clef’s speech more archaic, It wouldn’t have felt so jarring and juvenile. This turned me off in the beginning and I really struggled to get through the first half of the book. I even considered quitting it a few times, but the incredible world building kept me reading.While the first half of the book seemed to drag on, the second half of the book’s plot kept me hungrily reading. Sansia followed a well defined character arc, and it was obvious that she went from someone who only cared about her own survival, to someone who really cared about bringing justice to a broken world. I couldn’t put the book down once I reached the halfway point, and ended up reading nearly the entire last half in one day, while the first half took me one month. But I promise you, it’s worth it.All in all, this book is perfect for anyone who loves sci-fi/fantasy ideas and wants to read something fresh with ingenuity. There’s a unique form of magic in the way of “scriving” and the plot takes some unexpected turns at the end that really elevated it. I recommend this read to all fantasy lovers and can’t wait for the second book coming in 2020!

Imaginative world-building and a different twist on your typical fantasy with morally grey characters.

An original worldA lot of intriguesEndearings characterA long time since I read such a good bookThank's at the author

4.5 starsRobert Jackson Bennett is the author of the wonderful "Divine Cities" trilogy, so it is no surprise that this latest novel is replete with muscular worldbuilding, a fascinating system of magic and a cast of characters that we readers can root for enthusiastically.It is also no surprise that Bennett has a few things to say about the elements of freedom, about the way economic systems develop and evolve, and about who is able to benefit from economic advancement, and for what reasons. It is most eloquently shown in this story that without choices, freedom is a pretty meaningless thing to possess. Escaped slave and thief, Sancia Gordo is free enough to starve, living as she does on the chancy fringes of the Foundryside shantytown, itself clinging to the interstices between the grand compounds of the four great merchant houses of Tevanne. All of the benefits of economic advancement have accrued to these great merchant houses, not through their hard work alone, but through their ruthless application of power to crush their rivals. Gregor Dandolo, traumatised soldier is free to try to bring justice and order to the docks despite the disinterest of his family and virtually anyone else.The system of magic which drives the economic wheels of the city is based on 'scrivings'. Elaborate sigils written onto inanimate objects serve to convince those objects that their reality has changed. A wheel is convinced to roll down an imagined hill. A gate believes that it must stay closed. These scrivings are designed and created by adepts in vast foundies, jealously guarded within the great merchant houses. And the origins of these strange devices, well these are lost in the mists of time, and in the rumour and legend of a vanished civilization of hierophants, who were as gods walking the earth. Rumours of lost artifacts brought to Tevanne's chaotic dockside provide Sancia Gordo with an opportunity to obtain the desires of her heart, and freedom from her afflictions of a sort. One daring heist would do it. Only of course, nothing could be that simple. And the attentions of Gregor Dandolo are the very least of her worries.Eligible for the 2019 Hugo Award for Best Novel, and a very worthy candidate. The sequel (2nd of the planned trilogy) is titled 'Shorefall'

It's fresh, it's interesting, it's fun.Just do yourself a favor and read this book, you won't regret it at all

Uma forma de narrativa diferente e genial. Adorei este livro e quero ler muito mais