2019 Dragon Award Finalist, Best Fantasy Novel: "Foundryside"

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An abbreviated review can be found on Goodreads, which has already posted. I’ll also submit the review to Amazon, and will include that link when it posts.

Greetings to all my internet friends and neighbors, and for those of you who are counting down with me to the Dragon Awards, TODAY’S THE LAST DAY TO VOTE! I’d give you the voting link, but if you didn’t register, it’s too late. Sorry.   And to any of my family checking in, I know you are inclined to party like it’s 1999 on Labor Day. Write my phone number on your arm in something that doesn’t dissolve in BBQ sauce, in case you need me to go your bail.

This is the third of four books I’m reading in the dead tree version. Wow, am I having to make some adjustments! I DO like to read in bed, but my gift-from-God, happily-ever-after trophy wife Vanessa, the elegant, foxy, praying black grandmother of Woodstock, GA, doesn’t like the light on while she is sleeping. So, I’m using this headlight I picked up at Harbor Freight. Amazon has one very much like it, but if you get one, be sure it has a LOW setting for reading, as well as the super high beam for hunting rabid raccoons at midnight. A strobe setting can be useful, too. My preferences is for one that runs off batteries, but they have rechargeable lights as well.

“Foundryside” is an amazingly smooth read. I’ve noticed an uncomfortable tendency to dump bizarre place and people names at the beginning of some fantasy books; it seems the author must IMMEDIATELY establish that this isn’t taking place in mundane land, and they don’t quite trust the “FANTASY” tags on the cover to get the point across. If they also toss in an info dump about how magic works, it makes it worse; and, if they haven’t gotten all of the tendencies to purple prose yet hammered out of their system, it can be just as close to unreadable as you can get.

None of that here. Bennett does an excellent job of showing, not telling. It’s only after he has established that protagonist Sancia feels the walls, and gets a complete understanding of their environment from that, and that use of that power makes the scar on her head burn, that he tells us why that’s the case. It works well.

Sancia is an approximately teen-age guttersnipe thief girl, who is proficient in the use of her ability to ‘hear’ and understand physical structures, small enough to fit in tiny places/openings, and strong enough to handle the necessary acrobatics to climb roofs, etc. She is NO Mary Sue, though. Her ability to hear the floors, walls, etc, talking to her also means that she can’t tolerate much touching her skin; it produces a sensory overload. She can’t even eat meat, or drink water, because she identifies so strongly with what it is and where it’s been. Plain rice, some beans from time to time, and weak cane wine is all she can tolerate. She even hates to have to put on new clothing, because she has to adapt to what the new cloth has experienced.

She has a plan, though: she has heard that there are criminal-element docs, who can free her of the gift/curse via an expensive surgery. So, she partners with former upper-class fixer Sark. He identifies worthy objects; she steals them; they split the take.

And the take on this last job is an unbelievable amount, enough to get repaired, and to escape the wicked city of Tevanne.

Actually, the city isn’t THAT wicked. It’s just horribly constructed around the use of magic. From the scraps of a prior civilization, a few magical concepts have been recovered or rediscovered. By means of scriving cryptic symbols on an object, it can be made to perform simple acts, or to have certain characteristics. Until fairly recently, though, it was to cumbersome for most uses; if you tried to scrive all the desired characteristics on the head of an axe, you’d run out of room. However, a discovery in some ancient ruins showed how all the needed traits could be linked into a single scriving, which would be small enough to fit. That condensation of instructions can be compounded further, and via a series of links and instructions, entire construction industries can be built.

If you have ever done any programming, this will sound VERY familiar to you.

It’s not the magic itself that is horrible; it’s the uses it’s been put to. All of the power is concentrated into a very few merchant houses, and they seem to spend as much time protecting their privilege and limiting access to their processes as they spend making shoes, or building boats, or whatever. Industrial espionage is a significant part of their business practice, and while they HAVE managed to come together and ban certain extremely dangerous magical uses, there is no thought of establishing anything that looks like an authority over their individual practices.

And that leaves no one with the authority, and perhaps not the inclination, to look out for the welfare of those who don’t fit into the institutional structure of the merchant houses. As a result, you have lovely, clean, well-lighted dwellings for the merchants and agents of each house, all enclosed in impenetrable walls with gates and guards to keep other merchants of other houses out. And as for the refuse, nobody cares. They can live or die as they see fit, as long as they don’t intrude on the business and well-being of the merchants. If that happens, doom comes, in the form of well-armed and armored troops with magical weapons and some pretty lethal non-magical weapons as well. They kill or capture the offenders, and those who die may be the most favored. Convicted offenders (and they are ALWAYS convicted) are punished by having magical wire loops placed around various appendages; the loops then contract, slowly, until the appendage is amputated. Sometimes, this results in death; other times, in crippling. The merchants don’t really care, except for the value of the punishment as a source of entertainment.

In the midst of this lawless depravity, Captain Gregor Dandolo cuts a solitary figure. A war veteran who has seen horrible things, he resolves to bring order to the city, and he starts by cleaning up the waterfront. He hires guards to watch over the area, and they eliminate the theft and trafficking taking place, until thuggery departs.

Which makes the waterfront a safe place to store things. And one particular thing, from this safe location, is what Sancia must steal in order to earn her monster, life-changing paycheck.

And, she steals it!

The object she steals is contained inside a simple wooden box; she has to preserve it for three days, before she can meet up with Sark, and make the transfer. However, her escape plan got a little too enthusiastic, and instead of just causing a distraction, she burns the whole waterfront. She fears that the enraged Captain Dandolo will be hot on her trail, and she needs to have some way to stay safe, yet retain possession of whatever is in the box. So, she opens the box, and finds a gold key.

And discovers the key can talk to her, and hear her thoughts. It’s a unique key, that can open any lock, and detect scrived objects from a distance. In the hands of a merchant house, they could have immediate access to the secrets of all the other houses; nothing would be safe.

And, THEN, it gets weird.

This is a very well-written book, with lots of flashy, bang bang boom boom bits of violent conflict tossed in to keep the characters motivated. The villains are boo-hiss dastardly. The heroes are sufficiently flawed to make them lovable. The logic behind the magic only requires the SLIGHTEST bit of suspension of belief, because it’s clear that it takes a good bit of organization and skill to make the devices work as intended. If a world is posed in which any dope can do any magic, it just doesn’t play, because there’s no realistic conflict possible. Here, magic is a resource, and access to it can be controlled similarly to access to energy, food, and so on.

As for The Question: Is “Foundryside” a worthy choice for the 2019 Dragon Award in the category of  Best Fantasy Novel?

My opinion: Out of the five books I’ve reviewed in this category, two of them are non-starters. One, “Deep Roots” by Ruthanna Emrys, I exclude because it appropriately belongs in the horror category. And I exclude “The Raven Tower” by Ann Leckie because of the virulent attacks on the entire Dragon Award process, and the community, by the community she has chosen to affiliate with. If it were not for that, exemplified by the specious inclusion of a shibboleth, I’d consider it. But I think it’s a horse race between “House of Assassins,”  by Larry Correia, “Lies Sleeping” by Ben Aaronovitch, and “Foundryside.” I think it’s going to come down to the size of individual fan bases, and personal preferences.

So, yes, this one is a worthy contender.

Peace be on your household.