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A Thief Saves a City in the Weird, Wonderful Foundryside
In Robert Jackson Bennett’s Foundryside, a young thief is caught up in the machinations of wealthy lords and ancient magics, and comes under fire from all sides with the fate of a city at stake, at the very least. The author follows up his acclaimed Divine Cities trilogy with an inventive twist on the urban fantasy, full of brisk action, pointed commentary, inventive magic, and a deeply cool lead character.
Petty thief Sancia Grando lives hand-to-mouth in the city-state of Tevanne, surviving by stealing and fencing relatively minor trinkets. Though it’s not the life she would have chosen, she has a talent for it—in part because she’s clever, spry, and athletic, leaping across the city rooftops, but also because she grew up in Tevanne’s version of an orphanage, wherein she was subject to brutal experiments that, as a side effect, left her with the ability to communicate in a very basic way with inanimate objects. For example, she’s able to touch structure and understand its layout in detail, which is a useful skill when it comes to planning a heist (or escaping from an assassin).
Sancia isn’t ruthless, precisely, but life in the city is, and she does whatever she needs to do to survive as a young woman on her own. As Foundryside opens, she’s in the midst of completing that legendary last score, the one that will solve all of her financial problems and allow her to get out of the thieving life for good. It’s not a spoiler to say that the job comes with complications, in the form of a particularly tricky job that ends with Sancia in possession of a small wooden box. Against her better instincts, she opens it to discover what tiny object could be worth all that she’s getting paid. She’s not just curious—she’s also worried about running afoul of one of the four families that control all of the city’s resources (if you’re not affiliated with one of these houses, you’re a bug to be crushed—consider the tech gentrification of cities like Seattle and San Francisco, given a turbocharged boost from literal magic). Her decision turns her into a living connection with the ancient origins of the magic that runs the city, and the most wanted woman in the world.
Building a book around a magic system is a trick in and of itself: exposition and explanation can quickly swallow the narrative. Even when well done, mileage varies: some readers appreciate an attention to sorcerous detail, others…not so much. Bennett goes all the way here, creating a framework that’s as complicated as any science (and magic is indeed treated as such in Tevanne), and makes it so integral to the story that it requires a fair bit of explanation.
The Divine Cities Trilogy: City of Stairs, City of Blades, and City of Miracles, with an excerpt from Foundryside
Robert Jackson Bennett
eBook
$25.99
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Miraculously, it works remarkably well. The rudimentary consciousness of objects in this world can be manipulated when inscribed (“scrived”) with mystical codes and symbols that operate by many of the same rules as computer programming languages in our world. The wheels of a cart, for instance, can be tricked into thinking that they’re going downhill, even on a flat road. There are practical limitations, not the least of which is a particular type of genius required to come up with new inscriptions that will make objects to do what you want them to without making a mistake that causes a (literally) fatal logic error. Generally, the more complex the scriving, the more elaborate and outlandish things an object can be made to do. Bennett lays out the ground rules with precision, creating a setting in which fantastic things are possible, but only within very particular guidelines. There’s a strong class component here, as well: the wealthy and the powerful hoard the intellectual and physical resources required to create and maintain the scrived devices that also keep them at the top of the food chain. In a world rich in magic, the wealthy hoard it like any other resource.
What Sancia discovers is that control of objects isn’t nearly enough for the powerful of the city: though lost to history, the ancient culture that innovated their entire system of scriving is said to have had the power to manipulate the world at will, and even control people’s minds. The object in that box she stole could tip the balance of power in the city and make slaves of its people. The object has its own opinions on the matter, however, and ultimately, it becomes a sort of partner to Sancia; together, they form an alliance of sorts with an assortment of rogues and elites in a bid to save the city, such as it is.
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With a plot as carefully controlled as one of those scriving patterns, Bennett has achieved a perfect balance with this trilogy-starter. What could have succeeded as a dark, weighty story of wealthy oligarchs resurrecting ancient powers in order to subdue an already starving underclasses is transformed into a sparkling entertainment, with magic that follows its own rules but still allows for stunning turns. Just as Sancia flits across the rooftops of the city at night, the genre-bending story starts at a run and never lets up..