geaease reviewed Foundryside by Robert Jackson Bennett (Founders trilogy series -- 1)
A thief in a city controlled by industrialized magic joins forces with a rare honest …
Really good
4 stars
I was supposed to read it slower but you know how that goes, ended up reading almost all of it in two days once I got drawn in. Pros: - I enjoyed the story quite a lot, it took me a little bit of time to get invested in the characters, but in my opinion they were also fairly well done. - The prose itself is good, nothing astounding or to write home about but nothing to take you out of the story either. - The magic system was interesting, relatively simple idea but with broad applications and flexibility, and it served the story being told very well in my opinion. - Brutalizes unrestrained capitalism fairly hard which is always fun, especially in the final part (Although the tone in that sense seems to change a bit at the very end. Not sure if the capitalism brutalization was unintentional, or …
I was supposed to read it slower but you know how that goes, ended up reading almost all of it in two days once I got drawn in. Pros: - I enjoyed the story quite a lot, it took me a little bit of time to get invested in the characters, but in my opinion they were also fairly well done. - The prose itself is good, nothing astounding or to write home about but nothing to take you out of the story either. - The magic system was interesting, relatively simple idea but with broad applications and flexibility, and it served the story being told very well in my opinion. - Brutalizes unrestrained capitalism fairly hard which is always fun, especially in the final part (Although the tone in that sense seems to change a bit at the very end. Not sure if the capitalism brutalization was unintentional, or if I just need to RAFO.) Cons: I only really have two complaints: - The book can be a bit heavy with the exposition dump at points, especially as it relates to the magic system, given that it's not always the most straightforward and would be hard to introduce with more subtlety. - The plot felt like there was a bit too much random chance thrown in there, along with plot twists out the ass. None of them felt too much on an individual basis, but the plots twists and the moments of bad luck and bad timing leading to major changes/developments just kept coming throughout the story.
In the end I would probably give this a 4.5 out of personal enjoyment, a 4 on technical execution (not that I'm super qualified in that department but whatever), assuming 5 on either scale is a masterpiece. As I can't use fractions of a star, 4 it is.
