Foundryside A novel

Robert Jackson Bennett, 1984-

Book - 2018

Sancia Grado is a thief, and a damn good one. And her latest target, a heavily guarded warehouse on Tevanne's docks, is nothing her unique abilities can't handle. But unbeknownst to her, Sancia's been sent to steal an artifact of unimaginable power, an object that could revolutionize the magical technology known as scriving. The Merchant Houses who control this magic--the art of using coded commands to imbue everyday objects with sentience--have already used it to transform Tevanne into a vast, remorseless capitalist machine. But if they can unlock the artifact's secrets, they will rewrite the world itself to suit their aims. Now someone in those Houses wants Sancia dead, and the artifact for themselves. And in the city ...of Tevanne, there's nobody with the power to stop them. To have a chance at surviving--and at stopping the deadly transformation that's under way--Sancia will have to marshal unlikely allies, learn to harness the artifact's power for herself, and undergo her own transformation, one that will turn her into something she could never have imagined.

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Subjects
Genres
Fantasy fiction
Novels
Published
New York : Crown [2018]
Language
English
Main Author
Robert Jackson Bennett, 1984- (author)
Edition
First edition
Physical Description
503 pages ; 25 cm
ISBN
9781524760366
Contents unavailable.
Review by New York Times Review

MOVING FROM ONE season into another isn't unlike traveling to different countries: As landscapes and weather patterns shift, so do our habits and thought processes. Now that autumn is upon us, I want to look at four wonderfully immersive otherworlds that circle around ideas of magically controlled environments and the free wills that resist them. C. L. POLK'S WITCHMARK (Tor.com, paper, $15.99) IS set a few degrees slant of an early-20th-century Europe where witchcraft is real but practiced only by a secretive upper class of weather-controlhng mages. The nations of Aeland and Laneer have recently concluded a war in Aeland's favor, and Dr. Miles Singer, a mihtary surgeon Uving in Aeland's capital, tends wounded soldiers while investigating the terrible affhction that makes them dissociate and murder their famihes once released into their care. One day a stranger brings a dying civihan into Miles's hospital who claims he's been poisoned; before he dies, the man begs Miles to find the party responsible. But Miles has his own secrets to manage. In addition to being a witch in danger of being incarcerated if found out, he's also a noble on the run from his powerful family: His father wants to see him live as an external power source for his older sister's magic, instead of allowing Miles to develop his own heahng gifts. Uncertain whom to trust, Miles navigates a tightening web of intrigues, bicycle chases and romance. "Witchmark" is thoroughly charming and deftly paced; I appreciated how well the worldbuilding meshed with the plot's development, Uke a map's surface being revealed in time with one's progress along it. That said, I wanted more from its female characters, especially Grace, Miles's sister. While the male leads were well-developed, their attraction to each other engagingly reahzed, I found the women were limited to their roles in the story. In Grace's case this was especially frustrating, as the plot requires her to be ally or antagonist from beat to beat without giving readers a clear sense of her as a person - and while her motivations are supposed to be opaque, they often come across as arbitrary. Still, "Witchmark" sticks its landing while opening up intriguing possibilities for a sequel. This is an accomphshed and enjoyable debut. Robert Jackson bennett, author of the Divine Cities series, launches a new trilogy with FOUNDRYSIDE (Crown, $27), an absolutely riveting secondary world fantasy that grounds its magic in industriaUzed processes, heavy machinery and capitahst dystopia. In the city of Tevanne, the dominant technology is programming made magic: Objects are, through special writing called "scriving," convinced that reality is shghtly other than it is, so that wood can be convinced to be as hard as stone, or stone as Ught as wood. But scriving is proprietary and is mostly practiced in the campos - heavily gated ehte communities - while the folk of the Commons, who live in poverty and danger, are left to fend for themselves. Enter Sanda Grado, a Commons thief with abihties that make her unusually good at her job: When she touches objects, she can learn about them and their history, intuiting how to pick a lock or scale a wall within seconds. But it's as much curse as gift - using it is painful, and passively receiving impressions from everything she touches is maddening and impossible to avoid. Deeply isolated and desperately lonely, she's one big job away from earning enough money to fix herself. But the job involves stealing something very old from someone very powerful - and Sanda quickly becomes embroiled in conflicts between serivers, merchant houses and the legacies of ancient powers called Hierophants. To say "I couldn't put it down" is a cliché, but it can describe a lot of different reading experiences: I can be glued to a novel and stressed out by it, or dehghted by and indulging in it. It's even possible to be swiftly turning pages in a bored way, skimming for the necessary information to learn what happens. So when I say I couldn't put "Foundryside" down, what I mean is this: I felt fully, utterly engaged by the ideas, actually in love with the core characters for their differences and the immensely generative friction between them, and in awe of Bennett's craft. I went to bed late reading it and woke up early to finish it. This is the first of Bennett's books I've read, so I can't compare it to his previous work, but it sets a very high bar. Crossing the brilliant economics and object-empathy of Edward Carey's "Heap House" with the careful character and setting work of Fonda Lee's "Jade City," "Foundry side" is a magnificent, mind-blowing start to a series I'm hungry for. JOHN SCHOFFSTALL'S HALF-WITCH (Big Mouth House, $18.99) is one of those books that are simultaneously so starthngly original and deeply famihar I can't quite believe they're debuts. Lizbet Lenz, 14, Uves with her father, Gerhard, in a medieval Europe where Christian cosmology is made literal: The sun circles the Earth; a miUtary battle rages between God and Satan (God is losing); and witches, gobUns and demons are real. Lizbet is deeply devout and moral, but her father is a con artist; when he's imprisoned for accidentally making it rain mice, it's up to Lizbet to free him. To do this she needs to travel over perilous, enchanted mountains accompanied only by a surly witch-girl named Strix with whom she has nothing in common. But over the course of their adventure they begin to change each other - and in so doing learn more about the strange world they inhabit. "Half-Witch" is a marvel of storyteUing, balancing humor, terror and grace. Lizbet is so earnestly good, in a way that I think has faUen out of fashion but that I loved reading. She and Strix are a perfect double act, and the shape and texture of the friendship they build is a joy to discover. It reminded me of Keith Miller's "The Book of Flying" crossed with Judith Merkle Riley's "A Vision of Light" and "The Master of All Desires" - a picaresque coming-of-age story about transformation set in a history made fantastical by taking the period's beUefs at face value. This is a book of crossing and mixing, of mashing and counter-mashing, with surprise and wonder the result. The ending suggests a sequel, which I hope comes about; the book's last act is full of revelations (as it were) about the especially strange nature of Lizbet's world that I'm keen to see Schoffstall develop and explore. But "Half-Witch" is also fully satisfying in and of itself. FINALLY, RACHAEL K. JONES'S novella EVERY RIVER RUNS TO SALT (Fireside Fiction, paper, $9.99) IS a beautiful story of friendship, love and katabasis set in a version of Athens, Ga., where a woman can have a glacier for an ancestor and steal an ocean on a whim. " I keep an ocean in a jar on my nightstand and a handful of coffee beans in my pocket," begins Quietly, our protagonist, before telhng the story of how her roommate, Imani, stole the Pacific and hid most of it in an underworld beneath Athens called the Under-Ath. Unfortunately, manifestations of the states of CaUfornia, Oregon and Washington, called Hypotheticals, come to visit by turns, demanding the ocean back and leaving powerful, dangerous gifts when Imani refuses. When Imani vanishes into the UnderAth, Quietly journeys after her to bring her back. The story unfolds in three watery parts - Pacific, Oconee, Atlantic - with the logic of a lyric poem. The prose is gorgeous, and the specificity of place is an enjoyable counterpoint to the mythic vastness of a story about travehng to the underworld. Quietly and Imani are great characters, and their relationship - deep friendship teasing romantic overtones - is a pleasure to dwell in. I found the final part a bit crowded with new characters and developments, but was still riveted by the experience, the luminous storytelhng and Quietly's devoted determination. ? amal El-Mohtar won the Nebula, Locus and Hugo awards for her short story "Seasons of Glass and Iron." Her novella "This Is How You Lose the Time War," written with Max Gladstone, will be published in 2019.

Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [August 23, 2019]
Review by Booklist Review

*Starred Review* Bennett follows his Divine Cities trilogy (beginning with City of Stairs , 2014) with a new fantasy set in a commercial city-state controlled by four founding houses. The rival families reside in luxurious walled territories, manipulating ancient magical symbols to enhance their positions. For those living on the streets outside, life is unregulated and a constant struggle. Young Sancia, former slave and thief extraordinaire, can feel both the texture and the history of anything she touches. She steals Clef, an unusually vocal artifact from a bygone age, for an unknown client. With the ability to open any lock but no memory of his origin, Clef is more than an animated inanimate object he may be the literal key to everything. Soon Sancia and Clef are on the run from Gregor Dandolo, a war hero, only son of a founding matriarch, and captain of the city's new security force. Gregor has abandoned fighting and devoted himself to bringing justice to the lawless commons between the founders' territories. But someone from among the merchant houses is aware of Clef and is willing to kill Sancia, Gregor, and anyone else who gets in their way. The diverse, multifaceted characters, meticulous world building, and complex interhouse conflicts will draw readers into this new, action-packed fantasy series.--Lucy Lockley Copyright 2018 Booklist

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

Bennett's stunning fantasy, the first in a series, is set in Tevanne, a city-state run by four merchant houses, funded by pillaging nearby lands and powered by scrivers who use sigils to make devices that defy reality. When talented thief Sancia Grado steals a sentient golden key named Clef, she's pursued by paladin-like police captain Gregor Dandolo, scion of the Dandolo merchant house. Clef and Sancia are both shocked when they find they can communicate telepathically. This and Sancia's other abilities-linked to a painful scar on her skull-hint at strange, terrible things in her past. When someone tries to kill Gregor to get Sancia, they discover that a very ambitious and powerful figure is building something that could "annihilate scriving on a mass scale," a disastrous disruption of Tevanne's society. With a little help from Gregor and Clef; Orso Ignacio, the eccentric Dandolo head of research; scriver Berenice Grimaldi; and other singularly skilled allies, Sancia sets out to pull off the most dangerous theft of her life. The endlessly inventive Bennett (the Divine Cities trilogy) brings humor and empathy to his portrayal of Sancia, a dark-skinned woman who bears substantial physical and psychological scars from being enslaved and experimented on, and who deeply resents her unwanted talents. Sancia and Clef's friendship is poignant, and her journey of self-realization serves as a backbone for nearly nonstop, cleverly choreographed action sequences. This is a crackling, wonderfully weird blend of science fiction, fantasy, heist adventure, and a pointed commentary on what it means to be human in a culture obsessed with technology, money, and power. Agent: Cameron McClure, Donald Maass Literary. (Aug.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review

Industrialized magic, applying a technology called "scriving," is what makes the city of Tevanne run. Four merchant houses have monopolized and become wealthy by wielding this power, which imbues ordinary objects with sentience. Outside of their prosperous closed-off enclaves live the poor in crime-ridden communities; one of these residents is thief Sancia Grado, who ekes out a living using her own special talents for reading objects. When she steals a magical artifact from a heavily guarded warehouse on the city's docks, she comes into possession of an object that could change the world-or destroy it. Now someone wants her dead. Sancia joins forces with police captain Gregor Dandelo to stop those in power from achieving complete domination. VERDICT This engaging new series from Bennett ("Divine Cities" trilogy) features a masterly blend of fantastical magic with sf technology that will engage readers to the final page. [See Prepub Alert, 2/19/18].-Kristi Chadwick, Massachusetts Lib. Syst., Northampton © Copyright 2018. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review

Bennett (City of Miracles, 2017, etc.) inaugurates another series of imaginative, thoroughly idiosyncratic fantasy novels.Mona Lisa meets The Matrix in Bennett's introduction to the carefully constructed world of Tevanne, a city-state dominated by four merchant housesliterally. The four big boys (think Amazon, Google, Facebook, andwell, Penguin Random House, maybe) occupy fortresses that, though stoutly built and heavily patrolled, are no match for Sancia Grado, a gamin version of the Tom Cruise of Mission Impossible, if not Spiderman. Sancia scales walls and penetrates castle keeps with ease, and she's not above dispatching a guard or two in the pursuit of her work: "She did have her stiletto, and she was an able sneak, and though she was small, she was strong for her size." Bless her heart, Sancia shows mercy, pulls off the heist she was hired for, then retreats into the teeming, seething world between the walls of those great houses, whose masters have made a killing with a thing called "scriving""instructions written upon mindless objects that convinced them to disobey reality in select ways." Thus a carriage on a horizontal plane might be commanded to roll as if on a steep slope, removing the need for horses to pull it. But what if some corporate villain were to scrive a person in such a way that he or she might become a soldier impervious to pain or discomfort, an arrow that might travel with the wall-breaking force of a cannonball? That's the scenario Sancia tumbles into when she discovers that she's stolenwait for ita talking key named, naturally, Clef. The baddies want Clef to complete their job of world domination, Clef wants to find the lock of his dreams, and Sanciawell, Sancia has many a fish to fry, alternately helped along and hindered by fellow criminal masterminds, proletarians, a well-connected cop worthy of Umberto Eco, executives of ill intent, and a few other talking inanimate objects.If you accept the notion that the laws of gravity are just suggestions, this makes for a grand entertainment. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Chapter 1 As Sancia Grado lay face down in the mud, stuffed underneath the wooden deck next to the old stone wall, she reflected that this evening was not going at all as she had wanted. It had started out decently. She'd used her forged identifications to make it onto the Michiel property, and that had gone swimmingly - the guards at the first gates had barely glanced at her. Then she'd come to the drainage tunnel, and that had gone... less swimmingly. It  had  worked, she supposed - the drainage tunnel had allowed her to slink below all the interior gates and walls and get close to the Michiel foundry - but her informants had neglected to mention the tunnel's abundance of centipedes, mud adders, and shit, of both the human and equine variety. Sancia hadn't liked it, but she could handle it. That had not been her first time crawling through human waste. But the problem with crawling through a river of sewage is that, naturally, you tend to gain a powerful odor. Sancia had tried to stay downwind from the security posts as she crept through the foundry yards. But just when she reached the north gate, some distant guard had cried out, "Oh, my God, what is that  smell ?" and then, to her alarm, dutifully gone looking for the source. She'd avoided being spotted, but she'd been forced to flee into a dead-end foundry passageway and hide under the crumbling wooden deck, which had likely once been a guard post. But the problem with this hiding place, she'd quickly realized, was it gave her no means of escape: there was nothing in the walled foundry passageway besides the deck, Sancia, and the guard. Sancia stared out at the guard's muddy boots as he paced by the deck, sniffing. She waited until he walked past her, then poked her head out. He was a big man, wearing a shiny steel cap and a leather cuirass embossed with the loggotippo of the Michiel Body Corporate - the candle flame set in the window - along with leather pauldrons and bracers. Most troublingly, he had a rapier sheathed at his side. Sancia narrowed her eyes at the rapier. She thought she could hear a whispering in her mind as he walked away, a distant chanting. She'd assumed the blade was scrived, but that faint whispering confirmed it - and she knew a scrived blade could cut her in half with almost no effort at all. This was such a damned stupid way to get cornered , she thought as she withdrew.  And I've barely even started the job. She had to get to the carriage fairways, which were probably only about two hundred feet away, behind the far wall. And she needed to get to them sooner rather than later. She considered her options. She could dart the man, she supposed, for Sancia did have a little bamboo pipe and a set of small but expensive darts that were soaked in the poison of dolorspina fish; a lethal pest found in the deeper parts of the ocean. Diluted enough, the venom should only knock its victim into a deep sleep, with an absolute horror of a hangover a few hours later. But the guard was sporting pretty decent armor. Sancia would have to make the shot perfect, perhaps aiming for his armpit. The risk of missing was far too high. She could try to kill him, she supposed. She did have her stiletto, and she was an able sneak, and though she was small, she was strong for her size. But Sancia was a lot better at thieving than she was killing, and this was a trained merchant house guard. She did not like her chances there. Moreover, Sancia had not come to the Michiel foundry to slit throats, break faces, or crack skulls. She was here to do a job. A voice echoed down the passageway: "Ahoy, Nicolo! What are you doing away from your post?" "I think something died in the drains again. It smells like death down here!" "Ohh, hang on," said the voice. There came the sound of footsteps. Ah, hell , thought Sancia.  Now there are two of them ... She needed a way out of this, and fast. She looked back at the stone wall behind her, thinking. Then she sighed, crawled over to it, and hesitated. She did not want to spend her strength so soon. But she had no choice. Sancia pulled off her left glove, pressed her bare palm to the dark stones, shut her eyes, and used her talent. The wall spoke to her. The wall told her of foundry smoke, of hot rains, of creeping moss, of the tiny footfalls of the thousands of ants that had traversed its mottled face over the decades. The surface of the wall bloomed in her mind, and she felt every crack and every crevice, every dollop of mortar and every stained stone. All of this information coursed into Sancia's thoughts the second she touched the wall. And among this sudden eruption of knowledge was what she had really been hoping for. Loose stones. Four of them, big ones, just a few feet away from her. And on the other side, some kind of closed, dark space, about four feet wide and tall. She instantly knew where to find it like she'd built the wall herself. There's a building on the other side, she thought. An old one. Good. Sancia took her hand away. To her dismay, the huge scar on the right side of her scalp was starting to hurt. A bad sign. She'd have to use her talent a lot more than this tonight. She replaced her glove and crawled over to the loose stones. It looked like there had been a small hatch here once, but it'd been bricked up years ago. She paused and listened - the two guards now seemed to be loudly sniffing the breeze. "I swear to God, Pietro," said one, "it was like the devil's shit!" They began pacing the passageway together. Sancia gripped the topmost loose stone and carefully, carefully tugged at it. It gave way, inching out slightly. She looked back at the guards, who were still bickering. Quickly and quietly, Sancia hauled the heavy stones out and placed them in the mud, one after the other. Then she peered into the musty space. It was dark within, but she now let in a little light - and she saw many tiny eyes staring at her from the shadows, and piles of tiny turds on the stone floor. Rats,  she thought.  Lots of them. Still, nothing to do about it. Without another thought, she crawled into the tiny, dark space. The rats panicked and began crawling up the walls, fleeing into cracks and crevices in the stones. Several of them scampered over Sancia, and a few tried to bite her - but Sancia was wearing what she called her "thieving rig," a homemade, hooded, improvised outfit made of thick, gray woolen cloth and old black leather that covered all of her skin and was quite difficult to tear through. As she got her shoulders through, she shook the rats off or swatted them away - but then a large rat, easily weighing two pounds, rose up on its hind legs and hissed at her threateningly. Sancia's fist flashed out and smashed the big rat, crushing its skull against the stone floor. She paused, listening to see if the guards had heard her - and, satisfied that they had not, she hit the big rat again for good measure. Then she finished crawling inside, and carefully reached out and bricked up the hatch behind her. There, she thought, shaking off another rat and brushing away the turds.  That wasn't so bad. She looked around. Though it was terribly dark, her eyes were adjusting. It looked like this space had once been a fireplace where the foundry workers cooked their food, long ago. The fireplace had been boarded up, but the chimney was open above her - though she could see now that someone had tried to board up the very top as well. She examined it. The space within the chimney was quite small. But then, so was Sancia. And she was good at getting into tight places. With a grunt, Sancia leapt up, wedged herself in the gap, and began climbing up the chimney, inch by inch. She was about halfway up it when she heard a clanking sound below. She froze and looked down. There was a bump, and then a crack, and light spilled into the fireplace below her. The steel cap of a guard poked into the fireplace. The guard looked down at the abandoned rat's nest and cried, " Ugh ! Seems the rats have built themselves a merry tenement here. That must have been the smell." Sancia stared down at the guard. If he but glanced up, he'd spy her instantly. The guard looked at the big rat she'd killed. She tried to will herself not to sweat so no drops would fall on his helmet. "Filthy things," muttered the guard. Then his head withdrew. Sancia waited, still frozen - she could still hear them talking below. Then, slowly, their voices withdrew. She let out a sigh.  This is a lot of risk to get to one damned carriage. She finished climbing and came to the top of the chimney. The boards there easily gave way to her push. Then she clambered out onto the roof of the building, lay flat, and looked around. To her surprise, she was right above the carriage fairway - exactly where she needed to be. She watched as one carriage charged down the muddy lane to the loading dock, which was a bright, busy blotch of light in the darkened foundry yards. The foundry proper loomed above the loading dock, a huge, near-windowless brick structure with six fat smokestacks pouring smoke into the night sky. She crawled to the edge of the roof, took off her glove, and felt the lip of the wall below with a bare hand. The wall blossomed in her mind, every crooked stone and clump of moss - and every good handhold to help her find her way down. She lowered herself over the edge of the roof and started to descend. Her head was pounding, her hands hurt, and she was covered in all manner of filthy things.  I haven't even done step one yet, and I've already nearly got myself killed. "Twenty thousand," she whispered to herself as she climbed. "Twenty thousand duvots." A king's ransom, really. Sancia was willing to eat a lot of shit and bleed a decent amount of blood for twenty thousand duvots. More than she had so far, at least. The soles of her boots touched earth, and she started to run. Excerpted from Foundryside: A Novel by Robert Jackson Bennett All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.