✨A sequel so nice I read it twice ✨
Ho boy, how do I begin to sum up a book of such a grand scale? For the sake of no spoilers for this sequel in Robert Jackson Bennett’s Founders Trilogy I’ll start at the beginning.
Foundryside was one of my favorite books of 2018. It was such an interesting world of an industrial-like city full of dueling merchant houses and all the seedy underground heists that come with that territory. The scriving magic system that operates like a combination of old fantasy’s sigilry and modern day coding that convinces objects that their reality is different than it is was so fun to explore. A fun ensemble cast was led by a complex young woman with her own traumas who had an unwanted hero’s journey thrust upon her. That heist plot mixed with a healthy dose of humor throughout made for a great start to a series.
Now with Shorefall, it takes all of that and turns it up to an 11. Little did we know that we were just scratching the surface of what this magic system was capable of. The stakes and villains have approached god-tier so much so that by 80 percent of the way through this book I was convinced the author had decided to make it a duology instead because like ~how~ could the characters make it out of the ominous situation. While we still remain in the city of Tevanne, the scope of everyone’s actions just feels so consequential for the entire world, which we’re now bound to see more of in the finale book. For fans of the first book, it has bits of the fun heists, interesting developments for the characters we love from the first book, and even more to speculate on in the future.
Shorefall: Book 2 of the Founders Trilogy by Robert Jackson Bennett Read first as an eARC from Netgalley (Thank you Del Rey Books) Then listened to as an audiobook with narrator Tara Sands One sentence synopsis: The Foundryside crew are scraping together their grand plan to bring down the corrupt merchant house system when an ancient evil returns to disrupt everything they know.
What series has your favorite magic system?
