Foundryside

Foundryside

By Robert Jackson Bennett
Published: Crown, 2018
Pages: 503
Genre: Fantasy
Amazon, Goodreads

Reality doesn't matter. If you can change something's mind enough, it'll believe whatever reality you choose.

Foundryside is the first book of an addicting epic fantasy series that left me craving for more.

Sancia is a thief who has a special gift: she can hear scrived devices, scriving being a magical technology that allows scrivers to change the reality of an object, such as giving a door an unbreakable lock. She is hired to steal a seemingly ordinary wooden box that actually holds an artifact of breathtaking power.

Foundryside was hard for me to get into at first but then had me hooked. I loved the protagonist. Sancia is the badass, I-don't-need-no-man! kind of character I love reading and getting to know. The other characters were cleverly-written as well. The place/setting was interesting as well - Foundryside is kind of a glimpse into a world without a government... which was a little unsettling.

The novel's magic system was the most difficult part for me. This may be because I don't read much fantasy, but I had trouble wrapping my head around it. So basically these symbols can be etched onto objects to modify that object's reality. Because it can take an outstanding amount of symbols to perform simple tasks, one symbol can stand for several others by use of a lexicon in which definitions are physically stored. The lexicon part was especially confusing to me. Eventually I compared it to how some cultures believe that all objects have a soul - the trees, the ground, etc. For some reason, that made it easier for me to comprehend.

Regardless of my beginning struggles with the magic system, I really enjoyed Foundryside, and I'm looking forward to reading the second novel and more by Bennett.

RATING (out of five puppies):