Book Review: Foundryside by Robert Jackson Bennet

Title: Foundryside
Author: Robert Jackson Bennet
Series/Standalone: Founders Series (Book #1)
Genre: Fantasy, Adult
Pages: 512
Publisher: Crown
Year Published: 2018
Format: Audiobook

"Sancia Grado is a thief, and a damn good one. And her latest target, a heavily guarded warehouse on Tevanne's docks, is nothing her unique abilities can't handle. 

But unbeknownst to her, Sancia's been sent to steal an artifact of the unimaginable power, an object that could revolutionize the magical technology known as scriving. The Merchant Houses who control this magic-- the art of using coded commands to imbue everyday objects with sentience-- have already used it to transform Tevanne into a vast, remorseless capitalist machine. But if they can unlock the artifact's secrets, they will rewrite the world itself to suit their aims.

 Now someone in those Houses wants Sancia dead, and the artifact for themselves. And in the city of Tevanne, there's nobody with the power to stop them.

To have a chance at surviving-- and at stopping the deadly transformation that's underway-- Sancia will have to marshall unlikely allies, learn to harness the artifact's power for herself, and undergo her own transformation, one that will turn her into something she could never have imagined."

My Rating: 2.5/5

I found that this work was really hard to get into. Maybe that is due to the fact that I haven't read many Adult Fantasy works but this one took me a while to be interested in what was happening in the story overall. This also could be due to the fact that I really need to care about the characters in a story to continue on with the novel and truly care about where the plot was going. It wasn't until the last 2 hours that I felt something strong for our main characters and our side characters. There is a ton of world-building in this story and I understand why because the magic system is very different from other things I've heard about and needed a lot of explanation for the reader. I do wish that we could have gotten a bit more show and a little less tell, that being said I understand why the author had to use the tell method more often with such a complex magic system. I would recommend the audiobook for anyone who struggles with name pronunciation because when I was typing this books description I didn't expect any names to be spelt the way they were. Is this only a me problem?

I did like the plot of the heist and the plot twists were amazing! I'm still unsure if I will continue on with the next book in the series, for now, I"m curious but content to wait it out. 

Thanks for reading,

Sidny