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After I finished devouring this year’s stunning fantasy murder mystery The Tainted Cup over the course of about three days, I knew that I had to dive into Robert Jackson Bennett’s back catalog immediately. Foundryside happened to be the one my library had the shortest hold list on, and I was delighted to find out that not only was it as well crafted, but it was also queer. In Foundryside, Bennett combines intricate world-building, nonstop action, and surprise sapphic feelings into a thrilling first book of a fantasy trilogy that I can’t wait to finish.
We open in the slums of Tevanne, where Sancia works as a highly skilled thief with a hidden power to read objects she touches to earn a living. Despite being so highly skilled, Sancia lives in a ramshackle, poorly-furnished room by herself. I was immediately interested in Sancia because she was so highly skilled but also, unusually for a thief character, she wasn’t too cocky. She didn’t take unnecessary risks because she simply wanted to save enough money to escape her Tragic Backstory that gave her the unique sensing ability. Not even the accepted magic users in universe can do what she does, and what she would really like is to turn it off. Bennett has created an entire intricately-crafted society around his unique magic system, called scriving. Scriving uses symbols and their relationships with each other to cast a new state of reality on objects. For, example one could scriv a wall to believe it’s a strong as the day it was built or a door to only open if it meets the correct key. It’s a system that can be dangerous: scriv with gravity in the wrong way and suddenly a body turns into paste. With such a system, Tevanne has come to be ruled by a series of Merchant Houses, each with its own proprietary scrivings. No government can be allowed to exist that could puncture the Merchant Houses’ sovereignty, and so if you are not attached to the Houses and live in their campos, there is only slums and scraps for you, which is where Sancia operates. I found the implications of scriving—limited only by ones imagination and logic—to be fascinating and compelling, and it made for a series of Mad Max-esque heist and action scenes, as various characters had tools, weapons, and abilities that were essentially welding together from unpredictable elements, which I found very fun.
When Sancia is hired to steal an artifact from a safe, she is dropped into the midst of a vast conspiracy that will change Tevanne forever, if it survives. What I enjoyed about this story was the dramatic flip: after her semi-successful theft, Sancia runs up against Gregor, a Merchant House man with a burning desire to actually bring justice to Tevanne, and it’s a typical cop/thief dynamic. However, circumstances force them to flee back to Gregor’s campo together, and Sancia comes to meet Orso, the campo’s head scriver, and Berenice, his ultra-competent and practical assistant. Suddenly, we’re in a split in the Merchant Houses, trying to expose who wants to steal power and illegal scrivings for themselves. Sancia, being an outsider, at first doesn’t want to work with any of them—any more than they trust her as someone from the slums instead of the campos—but they have to if they want to both stay alive and prevent magical catastrophe. It was such an interesting dynamic for a band of protagonists, and Berenice’s immediate interest in Sancia was even more welcome.
Berenice, unlike the men with more obvious status, never dithered and quickly established herself as out to get things done. When she meets Sancia and is attracted to her both looks and talent, she expresses her interest with a kiss and then makes it clear that the next move is Sancia’s. Sancia, traumatized and operating on the edges of society, has not had a lot of opportunities to think of love or sexuality in relation to herself, but is pleased with this development. Being the first book of a trilogy, there isn’t a ton of time devoted to their budding relationship, but it does provide absolutely critical and adorable motivation to Sancia at a pivotal action point.
In conclusion, if you are looking for a well-crafted and intricate fantasy book with a rules-based magic system and girlfriends instead of a straight romance, you can do worse than Foundryside. I found it to be an engaging and speedy read, and I put the second book on hold right away.
