Review - Shorefall by Robert Jackson Bennett

Cover design by Rory Kee

Shorefall (The Founders Trilogy, 2)
Robert Jackson Bennett
Jo Fletcher Books, 21 April 2020
Available as trade PB, 496pp, e, audio
Read as PB
ISBN 9781786487896

I'm grateful to Millie Reid at Jo Fletcher books for an advance copy of Shorefall to consider for review.

Following from 2018's Foundryside, Shorefall is a return to the city of Tavenne three years later. In the previous book, thief and ex-slave Sancia Grabo teamed up with Orso Igacio to disrupt the technology of scriving - the use of mystic sigils as essentially a coding language used to reshape reality. Long dominated by the monolithic merchant houses, scriving has now been opened up to upstart firms, dubbed the 'Lamplands', prompting conflict between the Houses.

Meanwhile, revolts continue in the distant slave plantations, the islands which are the other pillar of Tavenne's wealth and dominance.

As Shorefall opens, Sancia, her girlfriend Berenice, and Orso are embarking on their most audacious scam yet, intending to open up the library of one of the houses, the Dandolos, to the scriving community. Sancia's aim is to 'move carefully and bring freedom' but the gamble she's now engaged in looks anything but careful, and likely to upset the fragile ecosystem of Tavenne,

As with Foundryside, I really loved the way that Robert Jackson Bennett creates a consistent, logical basis for what is really a form of magic; turns it into a recognisable technology; and lampoons the excesses of the tech world as it it is used to drive something like a magical-industrial revolution. The basis of scriving is well worked out, clearly explained and hangs together logically. In Foundryside we saw its social and political consequences, which made an absorbing and entertaining story - in Shorefall (named for the annual carnival taking placed as a backdrop to this book) the story is perhaps closer to a familiar, fantasy plot as beings of power toy with the fates of mortals.

Scriving is, you see, all about authority, about control and privileges - in the sense of a system admin. It's about who has been granted, or has hacked, the ability to direct reality at a more or less fundamental level. The very existence of the more mundane scrivings manipulated by the houses and by the Lampland start-ups, point to the possibility of more subtle code, deeper sigils, root privileges.

You can guess how it goes - start meddling with this things and something will wake up. Or perhaps, you might want o wake it up because you think it will serve you? So behind the struggles in Shorefall perhaps there may be something else. We caught a glimpse of this in the previous book with the mysterious Valeria and with Sancia's "friend" the artefact Clef. But there is much more to be discovered.

I really, really enjoyed Shorefall. Robert Jackson Bennet doesn't give us a reprise of Foundryside - welcome though that might be, this is the tricky middle book of a trilogy and things need to move on. During the first third of Shorefall that's happening very quickly and the reader has to recalibrate expectations several times. You can almost hear the mechanism shifting, the scope widening, before the story attains escape velocity and roars away into a tense and conflict-filled finale which will change Tevanne forever. But it's not only about that conflict - Sancia, Berenice, Orso and of course Gregor are well realised, three dimensional characters with flaws and histories. They have things to lose, vulnerabilities and, especially at the start, a set of motivations and ambitions that just don't match h up to the cosmic scale of what happens here (there is one character who appears briefly who is on top of all that but does not play a large part in the story but I suspect we'll be hearing more from here in the final book).

Those vulnerabilities and histories mean there are dangers - not only physical but moral - to be faced, and choices in a world where things suddenly seem very murky. This is far from being a straightforward fight between Good and Evil - just as you'd expect from Robert Jackson Bennett.

A good and absorbing continuation of the Founders trilogy and I look forward to the third and final part.

For more about the book, see the publisher's website here.

Blog Blast Review - Foundryside by Robert Jackson Bennett

Design by Rory Kee

Foundryside (The Founders Trilogy, 1)
Robert Jackson Bennett
Jo Fletcher Books, 23 August 2018
Trade PB, 503pp

I'm grateful to Jo Fletcher Books for a copy of Foundryside to read and review and an opportunity to tale part in the Blog Blast. Since reading Robert Jackson Bennett's Divine Cities trilogy I'd been waiting eagerly to see what he would write next - and Foundryside didn't disappoint. It is a chewy, absorbing story of rebellion and identity set in a grim manufacturing city where a form of "magic" has been industrialised.

It's clearly an otherworld fantasy, but I wouldn't try to pigeonhole it further than that. Especially, don't let anyone try and tell you that just because the book focusses on industry and the commercialisation of this world's form of "magic" it must be "steampunk". There is very little steam here, and indeed referring to scriving as "magic" isn't quite right, although it definitely isn't science either.

Imagine, rather, you could somehow hack into the code that runs the world, and alter the nature of things - or what they believe about their nature - with strings of written commands.  That's the basis for the economy of Tevanne, where powerful merchant houses employ legions of scrivers to design the products which they then stamp out and sell. These may be carriage wheels which are tricked into thinking themselves running downhill so they turn endlessly, structures which are commanded to act as if they are  ten or a hundred times stronger than they "really" are or weapons of incredible, unnatural power. There are limits to scriving, based on how far or for how long you can push reality, and on how those commands ("sigils") can be combined and modified to express more complicated ideas.

The culture behind all this is a bit tech (with an emphasis on coding), a bit esoteric (much of the language of the sigils is lost so there's a kind of Indiana Jones element to seeking out and reconstructing it) and a lot capitalist, with huge profits to be made (and even a reference to the "move fast and break things" arrogance of the tech business). For all that, life in the enclaves of the four Houses is good for the best workers with plenty of food, clean water and low crime.

Outside - in Foundryside and the other districts of Taverre - it's almost a hell on earth. There is no government, no law, and precious little to live off. People do the best they can amongst filth and squalor, living in in overcrowded, decaying slums. This is where we meet Sancia Grado, escaped slave and possessor of strange talents, who's surviving as a thief. She's engaged on a job, and the description of this sets the tone for much of the book which from one perspective is a series of audacious heists.

Grado is the central character of this book and indeed carries almost all the narrative, with others - such as irritable scriver genius Orso or law and order crusader Captain Gregor Dandolo of the Waterwatch - very much acting as foils to her, at least until late in the book when Bennett gives them more depth. Sancia is though a magnificent creation, well able to bear that focus: maimed by her history, in many ways afflicted by a "talent" that she is, nonetheless, able to turn to some advantage, and fiercely, fiercely devoted to survival.

When she is drawn into the wider plot, concerning existential threats to the city and indeed the world itself, Sancia very sensibly asks why she should risk everything when she's been dealt such a shitty hand in life. Hasn't she suffered enough? Isn't she actually owed? The cruel surgery that gave her her talent - and which is related to that threat - pales, she argues, beside the evil of slavery which is something that was and is accepted by all its beneficiaries, including Dandle who present as being od so moral.

That question is at the heart of the book, also arising in connection with Clef, another character I loved and who Sancia comes to know well. The revelation of his true nature came as a real shock, but did explain the bond that formed between the two. (The scenes between Sancia and Clef are one of the best things in the book - both funny and increasingly sad, the relationship between the two depicted sensitively and with a lot of emotional truth).

Foundryside has deep resonances with our world, from colonialism and the exploitation of slaves to the impact on workers of unrestricted capitalism and the treatment of women (women scrivers are being eased out of the profession; other women are treated as counters in the dynastic games of Taverre). Bennett integrates these well with the fantasy plot, maintaining a real sense of mystery as to what is really going - at certain points it seems straightforward but then he turns things on a sixpence and all seems up in the air again.

I think there is a bit of homage to Sir Terry Pratchett: most obviously, the industrialising society somewhat resembles Pratchett's "technology" novels, and  Gregor has a bit of Carrot, a bit of Vimes about him (he's trying to introduce the rule of law in a chaotic city-state). More subtly, there is that moral heart I mentioned above, which in various different ways (negative as well as positive, the pursuit of power as well as the desire for freedom and survival) motivates nearly everyone in this book.

It's a riveting book, an example of what fantasy can be, and like the best fantasy, poses hard questions about us and our own society.

Strongly recommended.

(Content warning: Foundryside contains a couple of scenes with brief implied references to/ threats of rape).

Review - City of Miracles by Robert Jackson Bennett

Image from www.quercusbooks.co.uk

City of Miracles (Divine Cities 3)
Robert Jackson Bennett
Jo Fletcher Books, 4 May 2017
PB, 439pp

I'm grateful to the publisher for an advance copy of this book.

Sigrud je Harkvaldsson is back, and this time he's out for vengeance...

This is the third and final part of Bennett's Divine Cities trilogy, three books I have found delightful, entertaining and deeply accomplished.

In the world of the Divine Cities, miracles are commonplace, the Dininities walk among us and reality is mutable. But not everyone benefits from this: the Divine is here, but is unequally distributed - and for centuries, it was the people of the Continent who had the miracles, and the people of Saypur who paid the price. In an act of unforseen violence, the Divinities were slain and reality Blinked.

The first book, City of Stairs, explored the moral ambiguities behind this post-colonial situation where the formerly oppressed rule and seek to erase the culture of their oppressors. The focus of that book was the wily spy Shara Komayd, sent to investigate a murder in the city of Bulikov (in these books, the Continent has Slavic overtones and its residents are pale skinned while the Saypuris are darker).

The second book, City of Blades, focussed on Komayd's sparring partner, General Turyin Mulaghesh, brought out of retirement to clear up a mess. Both Komayd and Mulaghesh are delightful characters, professionals, even ruthless professionals, committed to, and masters of, the political game that is Saypuri public life, well connected, realistic, mired in compromise - but seeking a better way. We never actually get to see much of the Saypuri bureaucracy and its machinations, since the books are really about the crises that these two women face when the past won't stay buried and history threatens to turn upside down (again). But Bennett is really, really good at suggesting, at hinting... you just know what kind of organisation stands behind Shara and Turyin, what dangers they face, how high the stakes are.

'It's unfair that the dead leave us... but it's worse that they never really go away.'

Both books also feature Sigrud je Harkvaldsson, a great bear of a man from the North, Shara's sidekick with whom we learn - again hints, few details - she's shared a career's worth of adventures, scrapes and situations. An exile from his people, Sigrud is a lonely figure with a bad habit of continually losing what he values - family, home, honour - until at the end of City of Blades he is forced to flee, having committed a terrible crime.

In City of Miracles, Sigrud gets his own book. We learn more about his past, and what his losses mean to him. About the desire for revenge, and what it cost him and - in the end - who he truly is. Because he's got a part to play in making things right.

And they have gone terribly wrong. Shara has been murdered, leaving her adopted daughter unprotected, and once Sigrud hears about it, it's time for him to dig up his old work tools and come out of the forests to track down her killer and find what was behind the crime.

What follows is a truly white knuckle adventure filled with marvels, squalor, Divinities, spycraft, escapes, deaths - and an implacable enemy, something that can use the shadows to strike and which is very hungry. Sigrud begins simply wanting to avenge Shara, then he realizes that he has a bigger task - and that in the end, time will be against him.

I can't tell you how delighted I was to read this book, to meet, especially, Sigrud again and to see him account for himself and try to redeem himself (whether he does I'll leave it to you to judge). One of the strengths of these books has always been Bennett's characterisation of his three central protagonists. Sigrud's pain, his despair and his loyalty have always shone through but with more focus, in this book, they become nuanced, both more and less than in the previous ones and he has much more of a role in shaping the story. Which isn't to say that he overpowers everyone else: there are some other truly great - and horrible - characters here, including a pair of villains who are the embodiment of creepiness, a tough billionaire businesswoman who habitually clutches an automatic rifle, and a pair of teenage girls - one of them Shara's adopted daughter - who won't be pushed to the margins of things.

There are also some wonderful feats of imagination as the story powers towards its conclusion - my favourite was the Aero Tram which now HAS TO BE BUILT - but the idea of a seneschal (you'll have to read the book!) comes close as does the final release of Bulikov's miracles.

And there's dark humour:

'He takes a long, slow breath. 'In my operational days, there were three ways of thinking about things. There were things you knew. There were things you knew that you didn't know. And then there were the things that you didn't know you didn't know.'

'No wonder we keep having so many international crises' she said  'if you lot are running around talking like that.' "

Look, just read the book. It's brilliant in so many different ways - as a book in its own right, as the conclusion to a dizzying, ground-breaking fantasy trilogy and as an inseparable part of that trilogy.

This isn't fantasy with a Map and Dragons, it is fantasy with telephone, trains and radio yet still in a world of the deeply weird, a world where there is a Divine ecology which has been upset. It has things to say about power imbalances, about revenge and retribution, about progress and backwardness, about grief, loss and exile, but above all it's an epic story - epic not in the "ten thousand warriors thundered across the plains" sense, epic in its humanity, its sympathy and its empathy.

Read it!

Review: City of Blades by Robert Jackson Bennett

City of Blades
Robert Jackson Bennett
Jo Fletcher Books, 7 January 2016
PB, 448pp

I'm grateful to Amazon for sending me a copy of this book as part of their Vine programme.

I loved Bennett's City of Stairs published in 2015 - it was so fresh, innovative and immersive - so was excited to see the sequel and delighted to get a copy for review.

It is five years since the events of the previous book. General Turyin Mulaghesh has retired from the army of Saypur and gone to live on a tropical beach. Shara Komayd has risen to become Prime Minister (though apparently not for long). Saypur continues to rule the Continent, whose gods it killed to overthrow centuries of colonial rule. But the Continent is complex, a dark continent with many secrets and dangers... so it's not surprising that a seasoned operator like Mulaghesh would be brought back into play when things begin to go wrong. Very much as in City of Stairs, where Komayd was the spy, Mulaghesh is despatched to the city of Voortyashtan (formerly ruled by the Goddess of war and death) to track down a lost agent.  Her arrival triggers a cataclysmic chain of events that force her to confront a grim episode from her past. If the Continent is dark, not all of the darkness comes from the Continentals and their tyrannical gods. Oppression begets reaction and cruelty leads to cruelty.

Building on the earlier book's themes of colonialism and cultural destruction, Bennett again produces  novel that is not just entertaining but engages with some meaty themes - here, military occupation, battle trauma and its aftermath, the sheer messiness of combat leading to rage and a desire for destruction for its own sake (embodied at its purest in the nightmare goddess Voortya and her "sentinels" but also reflected in Sigurd's berserker rage and in other characters too).

That preoccupation makes it rather more melancholy and generally darker than Stairs and perhaps more of a challenging read, although I still loved the book and had to sit up late to finish it. Bennett has a real gift for words: here is description of an automated weapon "An enormous cloud of dust rises up as the PK-512 continues putting hundreds and hundreds of rounds into the skin of the earth, like it's a pressurised water sprayer sawing through limestone." Or those sentinels: "...splintery creations of bone and horn and metal, long and thin and positively lethal-looking, as if someone could teach a knife to float." Nor are the gentler parts of the story any less convincing or less vividly done.

In short, this book lived up to my expectations, with the later part, especially, a white-knuckle read that demands to be taken in one session. Superb fantasy - and things are clearly building to a climax in the final volume.