Reviews tagging 'Excrement'

Foundryside by Robert Jackson Bennett

11 reviews

stick2theplan's review against another edition

adventurous dark lighthearted mysterious fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

I enjoyed this book and will probably read the sequel, but it’s not without its flaws. Foundryside required me to actively suspend my disbelief and hold it at bay. My foes in this task included an

ancient, sentient key

, whose anachronistic manner of speaking most closely resembled the “hello, fellow kids” meme, and a magic system that made less sense the more it was explained. And it was explained a lot.

Once I forced myself not to think too hard about it, I did enjoy Foundryside for what it is: a heist novel. The plot itself was solid and the pacing was good, though the ending felt a little abrupt. The book was laden with twists and reveals, some of which were very well executed. I also found the lore interesting. Because none of the POV characters understood the lore, it didn’t suffer from the over-explaining that hindered the magic/technology of the present. 

As for the characters, they were mostly likable but satisfyingly complex. There was appreciable, earned growth from all the secondary characters. I think I was most underwhelmed with the main character’s arc. I’d like to have seen more of her development manifest throughout the novel; it was sort of spelled out for her by a literal deus ex machina. So much telling, not enough showing in this book. Still, the characters did feel fleshed out. The tropey stock characters were few and far between. That said, Bennet uses the antagonist-to-ally bait and switch one time too many for the eventual antagonist reveal to have much shock value. 

At the end of the day, this is still a novel I’ll recommend to my friends. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Body horror, Death, Slavery, Violence, Blood, Excrement, Medical trauma, Murder, Colonisation, and War

Moderate: Misogyny, Panic attacks/disorders, Torture, Vomit, Trafficking, Fire/Fire injury, and Classism

Minor: Emotional abuse, Pedophilia, Sexual content, Sexual violence, Cannibalism, and Car accident

capgambit's review against another edition

adventurous mysterious tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Cursing, Gun violence, and Medical trauma

Moderate: Excrement

sersi's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional mysterious tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Body horror, Death, Gore, Slavery, Blood, Excrement, Medical trauma, and Injury/Injury detail

Moderate: Sexual violence

jessthanthree's review against another edition

adventurous dark fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Violence

Moderate: Death, Gore, Pedophilia, Sexism, Sexual violence, Slavery, Blood, War, and Classism

Minor: Mental illness, Terminal illness, Forced institutionalization, Excrement, Vomit, Cannibalism, Car accident, and Alcohol

jjjreads's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional inspiring mysterious sad tense fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Body horror, Bullying, Child abuse, Confinement, Death, Eating disorder, Emotional abuse, Genocide, Gore, Gun violence, Infidelity, Mental illness, Misogyny, Physical abuse, Sexism, Slavery, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, Torture, Violence, Xenophobia, Blood, Excrement, Vomit, Medical content, Trafficking, Grief, Medical trauma, Stalking, Suicide attempt, Death of parent, Murder, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , Gaslighting, Colonisation, War, Injury/Injury detail, and Classism

Moderate: Cursing, Drug use, Infidelity, Pedophilia, Rape, Sexual assault, Sexual content, Sexual violence, Alcohol, and Sexual harassment

kell_xavi's review against another edition

adventurous dark fast-paced

2.5

There were a few things I liked about this book, but it’s a case where a combination of length and unpleasant tropes brought it down in my esteem the further along the plot went. There’s a kind of fantasy novel that is concerned with magic that is often mechanic, often acts on the human body, is often a curse of gothic body horror, and almost always has someone sadistic and mad with jealous power at its heart. I’ve read a few of these books, and I can feel the dread creep in as I figure out that they’re going in this direction. 

Bennett’s basic world-building is kind of cool, though (and this may also be an element of the kind of book I’ve just described) perhaps not to the well-trained, in-depth fantasy reader. The idea that codes can train objects to act like other objects, essentially as though their reality is different and specific to another thing, is intriguing. The scrivers and fabricators, lexicons and Sancia’s powers are all fascinating. The problem is that a lot of the mythology is really complex, the advanced scrived designs get a bit out of hand, and Bennett ends up juggling a lot of stuff that, despite sometimes lengthy explanations, is often a mix of suspension of disbelief and deus ex machina. Which would be a good joke, considering how much of the story deals with gods, machines, advanced beings, magic cyborgs, and the like, except that the piling up of all these pieces sort of cracks the foundations that the story is built on. I was never sure, when the characters refer to god (as in, “god help me” etc.), which god they speak of, since there’s no religion mentioned and the distant past is legend. They also swear way too much, all said, so that it became a distraction and the characters blended together at times; and this alternate universe looks a lot like steampunk 19th century Italy.  

Some of the reveals about the key, about Sancia, are moving, but there’s a way to write trauma without putting that trauma in the reader, and Bennett was not interested in doing so. There’s an abundance of scenes of torture, war, enslavement, of misogyny, of medical trials, of starvation and mutilation, a lot of which I didn’t feel served it’s purpose. It’s a terrible world that’s terrible to live in. Sancia is a scrappy thief with a weird curse, and one of the few people worth rooting for. Mostly, these circumstances made me less likely to read the rest of the trilogy. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Slavery, Torture, Violence, Medical trauma, and War

Moderate: Body horror, Misogyny, Blood, Excrement, Cannibalism, Murder, and Colonisation

Minor: Child abuse, Physical abuse, and Vomit

c_hope_b's review against another edition

adventurous dark tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Body horror, Death, Slavery, Torture, Violence, Blood, Sexual harassment, and Injury/Injury detail

Moderate: Excrement and Colonisation

spacecurl's review

adventurous dark emotional funny hopeful mysterious tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.5

I picked this book up because I loved the cover, it's stunningly beautiful. It has been a while since I read a fantasy book with a lot of world building so it took me a little bit to get into, but the magic system was really interesting and the highly flawed characters that learned to work with each other over the course of the book was really fun to read. 

It was a bit gruesome in parts which took me by surprise, but it matches the overall story and atmosphere of the book so it was tolerable to my soft heart haha

All in all I really enjoyed this book and will be reading the other two in the series in the future.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Body horror, Slavery, Torture, Violence, Blood, and Vomit

Moderate: Death, Gore, Excrement, Car accident, Murder, and Classism

Minor: Misogyny, Sexual assault, Sexual content, Terminal illness, Sexual harassment, and War

poetry_shaman's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional funny mysterious tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Slavery, Violence, Blood, Excrement, and Colonisation

Moderate: Death, Racial slurs, Sexual assault, and Torture

Minor: War

The G word is used to refer to a group of traveling people. While the occurrence of the word happens in dialogue and is not directed at a person or ethnic group, it does stand out and has aged poorly.

booksthatburn's review against another edition

It introduces a disabled secondary character as an object lesson/warning to the protagonist, this character is disabled from mutilation and amputation during previous torture. I’d felt uneasy about how flippantly some topics were handled and then this confirms that my hesitance was well-founded.

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Ableism, Body horror, Cursing, Torture, Excrement, and Fire/Fire injury

Minor: Slavery