Reviews

Foundryside by Robert Jackson Bennett

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marareyn's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional mysterious tense fast-paced

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

4.5

kaylax_'s review against another edition

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5.0

Man oh man did I ever loooooooveee this book. Sancia is so so so cool. i want to be her. or date her. i haven’t decided which one. and Clef? I didn’t know i could love an inanimate (but not?) object would much. I will say I really have been enjoying these more adult fantasy books recently because the plot is so NON ROMANCE centred and man is it refreshing. They really tend to focus more on the characters struggles within themselves & not so much the struggles of a romantic relationship is a fantasy world. LOVE THAT! Although it does touch of romance here and there (Berenice you’re my soul mate) plus the LGBT relationships are just.. CHEFS KISS!! AMAZING!!!

raj_page's review against another edition

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5.0

I loved how the world slowly unfolds in front of our eyes. We are not flung into this vibrant world all at once with many infodumps guiding us through the wilderness. We keep learning new things about the world through the eyes of the protagonist.

I loved all the characters in this book. And the ending was really good. Tempting us to read the book 2 but still a good ending for book 1.

I will now need to find and read all the books by this author.

nemegarcia's review

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adventurous dark informative mysterious sad tense fast-paced

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

4.0

Interesting world, i appreciated that it started in media res but that it later gave us the direct layout of the land (it wouldve added a hundred pages to try to “show not tell” that aspect). Surprisingly found myself caring about Sancia to the point i shed a tear with her story. Really easy read, cant wait to read the next one

kmarkus15's review

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adventurous slow-paced

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

2.0

If you want to read a 500 page physics textbook about fake physics that leaves you with little to no understanding of how anything works then this is the book for you. But don’t worry, between the clumsy magic explanations and vague world building you will find a bunch of meh characters that whine nonstop. Also can straight white authors stop trying to write LGBTQIA+, female main characters. I appreciate and want inclusion but it’s basically impossible for us get their perspective.

danielles_reads's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional funny 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

4.5

Ok this was great!! I went through a wide range of emotions while reading this, from laughter to tearing up for my bbs. I’m glad to say that this lived up to the hype (and maybe some cishet white men can indeed write enjoyable diverse books lmao).

Starting off this review with: SANCIA MY GIRL 🥺 She went through SO MUCH SHIT and still came out the other side. Her “ability” led to some very interesting characterization for her, and Bennett really thought about how it would affect all facets of her life. And then seeing where she ended up at the end of the book was so rewarding.

Spoiler

I LOVED seeing her push back against Estelle trying to make her an object by asserting her own worth after a lifetime of being objectified.

(Also she kind of reminded me of one of my favorite characters of all time, Korra from LoK, so that’s a bonus too 🩵) I also loved seeing Sancia’s interactions with Clef, which ended up being both hilarious and wholesome. I also liked her shy interactions with Berenice and look forward to seeing more. Orso and Gregor were less interesting to me (especially since Gregor started off as very “I’m a noble man following all the rules” kind of character that felt like a random insert at first), but they did grow on me near the end.

The magic system of scriving is really fascinating and it was cool to see the applications. It definitely has a lot of potential. I’m also fascinated by the history and lore of this world and look forward to learning more about the hierophants, especially after that ending!!

Spoiler

No lie, I kinda love the concept of releasing/relying on some evil to destroy another evil. Really curious to see what tf Valeria and whoever that prophet Ofelia has are going to do. And those MOTHS, wtf.

I’ve seen some people say the plot is predictable, and maybe I am a dumdum but I did NOT see where it was going at all 🤣 I do think whoever wrote the blurb did a great job as it only describes the first like 10% of the book. I really enjoyed the twists and turns this book took me on, as the heists built and built to more intense endeavors. I do think the focus on plot put the characterization in the backseat (especially for the side characters, as Sancia did get a good amount of focus), but I still enjoyed it as a mostly character-driven reader.

The main reason I can’t give this 5 stars is alllll the info-dumping. It was incessant! The narrative took so much time explaining every little detail of scriving and it was just so silly and unnecessary. It was especially annoying during a scene near the end when I understood what scriving was happening just through Sancia’s dialogue and interactions, but the text took three additional paragraphs to explicitly explain what I had surmised indirectly. There were also quite a few scenes where characters (both protagonists and antagonists) spoke in such unnatural ways that were obvious attempts at exposition. I’m hoping that this will be better in the next book in the series now that we’ve gotten the basic world building down in this first book.

Also this is just me lmao but ever since my husband pointed out that the characters in Star Trek Deep Space Nine constantly say something looks like “some kind of” something else, I’ve been noticing it more in fiction. And it was very prevalent in this book 🥲 Searching for “some kind” in the ebook returns 59 results, which means it shows up about once every 8 pages. I do think it is a very lazy way to describe things by vaguely comparing them to some category of things. Or it’s just not saying anything at all… like why do you need to say “some kind of closed, dark space”? It just is an enclosed space lol.

Like I said, this quibbles are fairly minor and did not greatly reduce my enjoyment, though I am hoping I won’t have the same complaints about the next book. I am really looking forward to continuing in this series!!