I was waiting on pins and needles for this book to come out! I kept searching every couple of weeks to see when it would show up on Netgalley and then suddenly there it was, and it was just as good as I hoped it would be!

If you haven’t read the first book in the series you definitely need to get that before you start with Shorefall. Here is a link to my review of Foundryside, book #1 in the Founders series.

Book two starts off a few months after the events of Foundryside. Our characters have begun to adjust to the way their fates have changed since the end of the first book, but everything is disrupted again when a new villain comes onto the scene. Reminiscent of the infamous Thanos, Crasedes Magnus is a psychopath who has convinced himself that the destruction he wreaks is necessary. The book also reminds us that having the best of intentions does not guarantee a good outcome, and we see that play out for so many of the characters in the book.

The worldbuilding is still fantastic, and the action scenes are wonderfully cinematic. There is a truly creepy section on a boat that gave me serious chills.

I can’t recommend Shorefall more strongly. But as I said, start with the first one, you won’t be sorry.

Song for this book: Stay by Shakespeare’s Sister (dedicated to Sancia & Berenice)

I received an ARC of Shorefall by Robert Jackson Bennett via NetGalley. What follows is my fair and honest review.

Shorefall is the sequel to Bennet’s Foundryside and you’ll definitely want to read Foundryside in order to understand Shorefall. It’s been a year since I read Foundryside, and I had a little difficulty following Shorefall. Here’s my quick summary:

The Foundryside crew--Sancia, Orso, Berenice, and Gregory--are trying to change Tevanne by bringing the magical art of scriving to the masses, taking power away from the ruling Campos. But before they can accomplish their goal, they are once again caught up in a much larger plot, involving beings of immense power. As the crew faces this new threat, they must not only solve tricky magical problems, they also have to decide who they can trust. The fate of a city is at stake.

As I said, you’ll definitely want to read Foundryside first. These novels have a fairly unique magical system, and most of the explaining of that system takes place in the first novel. However, how that system works is crucial to the plot of the second novel. And let me just say, if you like complex magic systems in your fantasy novels, you’ll definitely like Shorefall. You’ll also enjoy this novel if you like stories that deal with large moral problems. Shorefall deals with issues like slavery, justice, and the question of how to fix a broken world.

I have to say, I struggled a bit with what rating to give this novel. Because while I don’t dislike those things stated above, it was also missing something for me, and I think that element was fun. The book was an interesting read, but not a very fun one. While it includes some of the same heist elements from the previous novel, the stakes of the problems faced made it slightly less enjoyable to me. But I don’t think that’s a commentary on the book as much as a commentary on my headspace right now. So, I’m going to give this book the benefit of the doubt and rank it….

4 stars

Be warned: while the book does wrap up many of its narrative threads, the ending also presents all new problems for the characters. So it’s a bit of a cliffhanger.

The explosive sequel to Shorefall picks up shortly after the end of the previous book. This book starts of running and just gets more traction as the story progresses. The tale is full of twists and turns and gets better on every page.

Shorefall is the second book the Founders series. This is a series that builds on the prior books and so you need to read them in order to have any idea what is going on. I actually re-read Foundryside right before jumping into Shorefall since it was one of my favorite books of 2018 and there are a lot of details, I wanted a quick refresher.

Shorefall did not disappoint; Robert Jackson Bennett isn’t afraid to put his characters through some really tough times and hard decisions. You are genuinely scared for them because he isn’t afraid to kill people off or have them make terrible sacrifices.

One of the best things about this series is the world and how it works. It is built on scrivings, which are little rules written into materials that make them do a specific thing or think they are something else. Like wood scrived to think it is as hard as stone, locks that are smart and will only accept specific keys. The entire city has thousands of these all around, forcing reality to believe it is something different.

Now a God-like creature, a Heirophant, who once destroyed most of the world has returned and wants to remake the city into what he thinks mankind should be. Once you find out how a Heirophant was made, it is hard to think anything they want will be good. If this one gets his way, it will not go well for mankind.

“Ofelia…” said his voice. “You wish to make a moral world, do you not? A just, equitable, sane world?”
“Yes,” she whispered.
“Yes. Of course you do. And sometimes I find it takes a lot of treachery and death to make a moral world. That is simply the way of things.”

Our cast of characters from Foundryside will be there working together with a powerful tool at their side trying to stop the returning Heirophant. Sancia can hear and see scrivings; she can even sometimes convince them to change, a trick she learned from a very special key. Sancia made ‘friends’ with Valeria, a tool once used by the Heirphant to change the world, until the tool became as powerful as the man who made her and went to war with him thousands of years ago. But, should you trust the powerful tool that seems to have an agenda of her own?

I loved the characters in this. None of them are great fighters, well except the former soldier Gregor, but all of them bring something smart and unique to the table. They were a small band trying to break the main houses who controlled the city. They never expected to have to fight an almost god and his most powerful tool.

“I remember the plan,” said Sancia. “I just also remember there’s a lot of spots in the plan that say, ‘Sancia improvises a bunch of shit.’ Which is not, you know, comforting.”

Founders is a series I’m both desperate and terrified to finish. I’ve read other series by RJB and I know that nothing is off the table for him. The conclusions to his stories can be bittersweet for some characters and just down right sad for others. But I never guess what the endings will be and for that I’m always grateful and in the past I have left his series feeling satisfied with the endings.

Another wonderful smart fantasy told by Robert Jackson Bennet and I was really happy that a certain key wasn’t left out of the story since he was one of my favorite things from Foundryside.

Shorefall is the second book in Robert Jackson Bennett’s The Founder’s Trilogy and it’s also one of my most anticipated reads of 2020 because I loved the first book, Foundryside, so much. It’s always hard to review the second book in a series because of the tricky balance between enticing new readers to the series without spoiling it, but hopefully I can find that balance.

Shorefall exceeded my expectations on so many levels. Sometimes I find that middle books in trilogies feel like they’re full of filler and just trying to stretch things out to the climax of the final book. There’s none of that with Shorefall though. It’s an action-packed story that definitely furthers the plot in every way and adds layer upon layer of suspense along the way.

My favorite part about Shorefall is getting to revisit the cast of characters I grew to love so much in the first book. Sancia, Orso, Bereneice, and Gregor – my favorite morally gray, found family – are just as wonderful and easy to cheer on in this second book as they were in Foundryside, perhaps even more so as they’ve truly come together as a little family. When we meet up with them in Shorefall, it’s a couple of years after the events of Foundryside and Sancia, Orso and the gang have created their own consulting firm that revolves around the magical scriving technology. Their goal with this business is two-fold: 1) to help everyone who can, master the art of scriving, and 2) to thus take power out of the hands of the greedy merchant houses who have dominated their city for so long. I loved the Robin Hood-esque feel to what they were doing. They’re still as morally gray as ever, but their cause is a noble one.

New characters also made Shorefall an absolutely gripping read for me. An ancient (and super creepy!) hierophant, one of the first practitioners of scriving, has somehow been resurrected and is making a beeline for the city, leaving a trail of destruction and devastation in his wake. His agenda remains to be seen, but Sancia, Orso and the others soon realize that the merchant houses are the least of their problems and they must turn their attention to defeating this new enemy before he destroys them and everything they’ve been working for. I don’t want to give away anything about this character, but wow, he made my skin crawl every time he made an appearance!

What made Shorefall such an all around great read for me was just how well so many elements are woven together. There’s the high stakes action and adventure of trying to defeat this ancient creepy guy, but there’s also a deeper exploration of the magical scriving as we watch the characters pool their talents and try to use the magic in new ways to fight the enemy. And finally, we are also given a more in-depth look at the history of some of the beloved characters from the series. There’s so much going on but it all feels effortlessly woven together, which made it so easy to become fully immersed in this world and its characters all over again.

My only quibble with Shorefall is that I wanted to see Clef, one of my absolute favorite characters from the first novel, and I felt like I had to wait way too long for him to put in an appearance. Thankfully, it was well worth the wait, but I did feel myself growing a little impatient waiting for him.

Even with that quibble, however, Shorefall is still a stellar read and one that I highly recommend to anyone who is looking for a fantasy with morally gray characters that you’ll fall in love with as well as unique worldbuilding and phenomenal storytelling. The Founders Trilogy has it all!

RJB (is that a thing?) is starting to creep into a Sanderson level for me. All of his books have been SO GOOD. Shorefall is book 2 in a series, and Sancia and company must face another threat to their existence. The magic in this world is fantastic, the characters are all people you want to meet (even a sentient key!), and the plot keeps you guessing until the end. AND THE ENDING. Gah. I can’t believe I have to wait who knows how long until the next book comes out. I love Sancia and Bernice and all the other characters. I’m glad that the secondary characters got a little more love in this book, because they really are fantastic. If you like fantasy, urban-esque fantasy and amazing characters, please pick up the Founders series and fan-girl with me.

I read the first book in this series last year and really enjoyed it, while I did enjoy this one a lot, I have to admit I struggled with it a little bit. I think mostly this might stem from my mood reading and how reading a very complex fantasy novel is just not what I want right now. The complex stuff...I'm still not sure I even understand the whole scriving thing in this series. It's interesting, but I don't get it.

I definitely liked the first book a lot better, and even though this book had a lot of action to it, I do think part of it suffers from second book syndrome. A lot of crazy twists and turns happen in this book, but I was like three minutes done the book and things weren't really resolved. The book ends leading into the next book, which I get, but also made me a little disappointed.

I was interested to learn more about who Clef, the key from the first book, was. That was an interesting turn. The stuff with the Gods and everything that is happening with Sancia was interesting too. I do wonder if maybe there are too many characters in this book?

I'm definitely interested in the next book in this series. I really want to see how this one ends.

*I received a review copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

I was given a copy of this book by Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. Shorefall continues the adventures of Sancia and crew. I really wanted to like this series but I just don't think its for me. I read the first book and enjoyed it enough to continue, but I've never really felt connected to the characters. I actually don't mind the laid back style that Jackson writes in. I enjoy some of the plot points. But I never really feel invested in individual characters. I think its just that this series isn't for me. I know other people laud this book. I also don't think this book is bad by any means. Just a not my personal taste.

This one suffers hardcore sequel syndrome. While trying to increase the stakes, Bennett bit off more than he could chew with two villains, a time jump, and a pervasive sense of helplessness/doom. Unlike Foundryside, which was a brilliant heist novel inundated with increasingly complex schemes and clever tricks, Shorefall establishes early on that our heroes have no good choices and can't possibly outsmart or outgun the two villains.

One villain starts as a grudging ally. Fine. The other is the most stereotypical, melodramatic Disney movie villain ever. All he does is TALK all the time. And I was so absolutely tired of him almost as soon as we met him. So much of this book is wasted on him talking about how grand his designs are and how he's working for the greater good, blah blah blah. The other villain at least kept her mouth shut and was just sneaky/sketchy instead of melodramatic.

There was also a lot of... Forgetting. Bennett seemed to forget - several times - that three YEARS had passed since the events of Foundryside. One character talks about not taking her girlfriend to the ANUAL festival... Like, there were 2-3 of those that you presumably went to and conveniently forgot? And we don't see much casual intimacy between these characters who have spent SO MUCH TIME together in the intervening years. The group dynamic feels exactly the same as it did in Foundryside where they'd been thrown together by circumstance overnight.

There was also this REALLY COOL bit of magic that gets implemented in the last... Let's say 1/4 of the book. There are a few scenes that really utilize it, but most of the time it's kind of ignored. This particular situation would be pretty all-consuming and in order to really sell it, you'd have to go all in, which Bennett did not do.

The futility of our heroes' fight really wore down the pacing so that the 50-70% portion of the book felt infinite and I was finding excuses not to read. I'm curious to see how Sancia's story ends, so I'll probably still read the third book, but I'll prepare better for disappointment this time around.

Ahoy there me mateys!  I received this fantasy eARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. While I try to post no spoilers, if ye haven’t read the first book then ye might want to skip this post. If ye keep reading this log then ye have been forewarned and continue at yer own peril . . .

I really enjoyed book one of this series.  It had wonderful world building, excellent characters, a fantastic magic system, and a heist gone wrong.  So I was super excited to get a chance to read book two.  Sadly this was just okay.

The main issue for me is that the scope of the novel was too big in terms of ideas.  The first novel was a character driven story that felt intimate and fun.  I loved watching the characters grow and influence the world around them.  And of course so much of that fun involved the key.  Now I didn't read the blurb and went into this blind.  Mehaps that was the problem.

Now don't get me wrong, I still love the characters and the world in general.  I loved the set-up for this book and was looking forward to the scrapes that Sancia was going to get herself both into and out of.  Well sadly, both her and the other characters get lost in the minutiae of the set-up for the big showdown in book three.  Also suddenly all of the characters seem to have acquired the ability to be super-humans and conveniently get themselves out of everything with rather little effort.  Sancia in particular just seemed to ease her way through every magic situation with her talent.  I wanted more struggle and character connections.

Really I wanted the character-driven story back.  The plot also became a bit too meta for me.  I can't get into it because of spoilers but it was both convenient and lackluster.  Perhaps this was because I have read other books where the same type of magic happens.  There wasn't enough difficulty in execution and adjustment.  The two main characters in this situation just seem to take it in stride and it became a little too woo woo in terms of making human relationships better.  Argh!  I wish I could explain this better but I don't want to ruin it for those who may find these circumstances mind-blowing.

The crew has overwhelmingly given this one five stars.  Wish I could say the same.  I am likely to read the last book because of how the battle has begun.  I actually did think the ending was the best part.  I am interested in seeing how the mess gets resolved.  I just be sad that book two didn't make me fall in love the way book one did.

So lastly . . .

Thank you Random House!

Release Date: 21 April 2020
Author: Robert Jackson Bennett
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group – Ballantine
Genre: Sci Fi & Fantasy
Rating: 4.0/5.0
One sentence review: A rich and exciting sequel to Foundryside.

Summary: Three years after the events of Foundryside, Sancia, Berenice, Orso and Gregory are running a “shareware” consulting scriving company. As people are realising their newfound freedom from the chains of the merchant houses, a being legendary for its abuse of power and cruelty threatens Tevanne. Our band of misfits must find a way to protect their home and their lives.

Review: Bennett expands brilliantly on the world created Foundryside. This is not a sequel meant to fill space between more action-heavy books. Rather, Bennett brings the strong world(s)-building, in-depth character development, action-packed plot, and detailed/unique magic system into this novel and enriches each aspect masterfully.

Bennett has a way of bringing grand, fantastical scenes to the reader so that they are both foreign and completely commonplace, simultaneously. There are these huge, world-shattering scenes encountered by very real human characters. This depiction of the huge and daunting mixed with the tiny details that characterize individuals makes the extraordinary elements attainable, rather than overwhelmingly fantastical.

Bennett is a treat to read and this series continues to solidify him as one of my favourite modern authors.


ARC Disclaimer: I received an eARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review of this book. I am so grateful to NetGalley, Random House, and Bennett for this opportunity.

The upstart firm Foundryside is struggling to make it. Orso Igancio and his star employee, former thief Sancia Grado, are accomplishing brilliant things with scriving, the magical art of encoding sentience into everyday objects, but it's not enough. The massive merchant houses of Tevanne won't tolerate competition, and they're willing to do anything to crush Foundryside. But even the merchant houses of Tevanne might have met their match. An immensely powerful and deadly entity has been resurrected in the shadows of Tevanne, one that's not interested in wealth or trade routes: a hierophant, one of the ancient practitioners of scriving. And he has a great fascination for Foundryside, and its employees - especially Sancia. Now Sancia and the rest of Foundryside must race to combat this new menace, which means understanding the origins of scriving itself - before the hierophant burns Tevanne to the ground.

Shorefall (Founders #2) by Robert Jackson Bennett was one of my most anticipated reads of 2020. The previous installment of the series, Foundryside, was hands down one of my favorite reads of 2018, so I was absolutely thrilled when I got approved on NetGalley for an ARC of the sequel as well. Luckily for me, Shorefall is a more than worthy follow up and it's just as easily made my best of 2020 list. I enjoyed every second of being back in the world of Tevanne and seeing Sancia and company again. Bennett's style is absolutely addicting from the unique magic system, cast of characters, and the world-building. The novel is over 500 pages, but it doesn't feel like it in the least because I was so engrossed in the story. I particularly enjoyed that we get to explore more of the city which is practically a character in its own right. The author builds quite organically upon everything we learned in book one and everything here is vital - irresistibly so.

Overall, I can't recommend the Founders trilogy enough. It's so skillfully put together and it's incredibly creative and unique. I can't resist the characters and the world they inhabit. If you're looking for an action-packed, fast-paced, and mind-bending sequel with plenty of thrilling moments, Shorefall might be perfect for you. I can't wait to see where this series will go in the final installment, but I'm sure it will be a doozy. I do know that I'll have to read more of his work to tide me over until then. I'm especially looking forward to diving into The Divine Cities series.

I’ve been waiting—like an ember for air—to read this book and see how things will play out after Foundryside had spiraled down into tight claustrophobic tragedy, and it was like bracing yourself for a punch to the throat only to get struck in the kidney instead.

Bennett continues to prove me wrong each time I believed myself gone beyond shock. This book is a whole new level of shock.

Bennett has proved himself capable of orchestrating walloping storylines in Foundrtside. But Shorefall remarkably lays down even more potential. The author digs with dark glee into this sequel, and from page one, he doesn’t let up. The result is a sprawling—yet dynamic—novel that twists history, geography, mythology and fantasy into a resonant tale that underscores just how fragmented our own realities can be during periods of fear, unrest, and inequality—and an aching reminder that retaking what has been lost isn't always the answer.

The author succeeds admirably on all fronts, creating a rich tapestry of wonders as well as brutality and oppression. The action is ferocious, bloody, and unrelenting—but Bennett renders that violence extremely well, and its physical and psychological effects are believable and lasting. It’s the ending, though, that makes Shorefall an absolute knock-out. It strikes like a thunderstroke: electric, sizzling, and minutely delivered.

Shorefall is the sequel to Foundryside, where the world is build by scrivings, a language that tells inanimate objects orders it normally wouldn't follow.

This book follows the same four main characters along with the main antagonists of the group. I found the characters fleshed out and realistic to me. They had confidences and insecurities like any person would have in this damaged world and I found them relatable.

The atmosphere to this book was very apparent. You could see the grittiness of the town in comparison to the steampunk feel to the major scriving houses. The characteristics of what striving is aided how the atmosphere came alive.

The writing in this book is the same as in the first book. Robert Jackson Bennett loves to describe things in a way that makes simple concepts difficult to understand, just for the sake of it being difficult to understand. I knew that coming into the sequel and it doesn't go away either.

The overarching plot of this book follows an arc I've seen many times over in over books, but the intricacies and details that make this series its own leads to twists and turns that make you want to keep going to figure out what will happen. That being said, this book felt like it only accomplished setting up the next book. The first book gave you all of the background, this book gave you the set up to the problem while suffering more problems around. The third and final book seems to be where all of these problems will be solved. That being said, Robert Jackson Bennett has a lot he will have to cover to wrap this series up as a trilogy. I hope he can follow through on that.

The intrigue and logic are where this book shines. The world building and magic system is what really makes this story unique and what made me want to keep going, if only to get a little bit of a glimpse of the history of scriving. I personally like knowing all of the information about this up front rather than having information handed to me when relevant. So based on my own tastes, I want more of this. This book left so much out where it could have shared the history with Clef and the main antagonists, but it keeps getting pushed back to a big reveal later. That could have been laid out as a stepping stone to make the history and magic system more rich and it would increase the stakes more when more problems arise.

Overall, I really did enjoy this book and I would recommend it to those who were on the fence about Foundryside and want to see more. I will happily wait for the final book to come out.

“There is no innovation that will ever spring from the minds of men that will not eventually be used for slaughter and control.” This powerful sequel to Foundryside will force you to think on a deeper level about what it means to make a choice between the unimaginable and irredeemable.

Sancia and her allies Bernice, Gregor, and Orso understand Tevanne’s flaws. They understand that to make Tevanne a better place, they must steal the power monopolized by the merchant houses and give it back to the people. Their goals are lofty but doable, until a new power emerges, derailing everything they’ve worked for. Crasedes Magnus, first of the legendary hierophants, is reborn. He will stop at nothing to rid the world of evil. In the eyes of Crasedes, all men are the same: inclined to use their inventions for slaughter and control. Crasedes longs for a world where people create rather than destroy. To achieve such ends, he would remake every human mind into a submissive entity—a slave. “I came to realize, Sancia—you can’t make laws or policies or dictums to constrain this impulse … You must overwrite all the hearts and minds of mankind—directly, instantly, and permanently.” Crasedes believes he is doing the correct thing. And while his methods are inhumane, he is not wrong in wanting a better world. “It is a regrettable thing that in order to fix a monstrous world, one must become a little monstrous in one’s own right.”

Crasedes is like many villains both on and off page. He believes that his goals are pure. That one must resort to ignoble measures to achieve noble ends. This is not so unlike other famous characters throughout humanity’s history, which makes Crasedes easy to relate to as a character. [Danny Targarian from GoT season 8 is another character that comes to mind with the same kind of ideals, willing to make unbelievable sacrifices to achieve a specific end, believing that end is the right thing to do.] I found myself fascinated by Crasedes. Shrouded in a great deal of mystery, he was presented in layer after rich layer of detail. Everyone loves a good villain. But there was another villain in this story. Valera. She’s the kind of villain that presents as the lesser of two evils. While she also means well, we see that she’s got her own motives. Both Crasedes and Valeria are on opposite sides of the same fight. Each has opposing goals, yet each would inflict catastrophic damage. Thus, our key characters are caught in a struggle to chose which of two evils they must support. There is no middle ground.

“But one day, girl, you too might have to choose between the unimaginable and the irredeemable. And no matter what choice you make—it will haunt you for the rest of your days. Until you become a specter like this.”

The incredible world Robert Jackson Bennett creates is breathtaking. Very few books come close in conjuring such imaginative concepts. Scriving is the common means for magic here. Everyday objects are imbued with bits of sentient intelligence using small sigils. Each string of sigils forces an object to believe something contrary to reality. A string of sigils written on a wheel might convince the wheel it is forever on a hill, forced to roll, because a hill provides the potential energy it needs to remain in motion. In doing this, Bennett has found a way to defy the laws of physics with a dose of magic that is believable and absolutely beguiling.

Concepts such as artificial intelligence are introduced in a magical setting and used prevalently. To me, this was unique because AI is usually specific to science fiction only. Bennett finds a way to change that. While this book is predominantly fantasy, the lines of fantasy and science fiction are blurred exquisitely. “But the line between life and death is always blurred. To live is to die, just very, very slowly.”

Sancia, Bernice, Gregor and Orso are individually presented with unique voices, distinct in their own ways. I grew to enjoy these characters in the first book and now I absolutely adore them. I believe that I cried for the last four or five chapters. I was so overcome with emotion while I read each of their endings. I especially loved getting to see more of Sancia and Bernice’s queer relationship. They were so different from each other, yet they found a middle ground to come together. Each completed the other. I found myself smiling at their various interactions, and rooting for them every step of the way. They make a killer team!

Shorefall was, in my opinion, better than Foundryside...by a LOT. Foundryside took some getting used too. The first half of the book was a hard adjustment. For that, I had given it four stars, and I stand by that rating. With Shorefall, I was already familiar with the world, characters, and the technology. I was able to jump straight into the story. Plus, I enjoyed the deeper concepts in this book compared to Foundryside. There were some really deep issues presented here, issues that make a person think. Not only that, the story was unpredictable. I did not expect the ending—it took me by complete surprise. The ending sets the stage for what is sure to be a great third book, and I will eagerly await its release...whenever that is.

Thank you to Netgalley and Del Ray for giving me an ARC. This has been my favorite read of 2020 so far. I’m still emotional about the story days after finishing it. Such a great read!

I received this ARC from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

I've been anxiously awaiting this book since i read Foundryside almost a year ago and I was not disappointed. The story picks up 3 years after the events of Foundryside and, like the first book, it hits the ground running. And it never stops.
I liked Sancia, Gregor and especially Clef already but I got so much more insight to them and all of the other Foundrysiders that I couldn't stop reading.

The magic system was easy to understand and the world building put me in a place that kept me on the edge throughout. The action never seemed to stop and wait..... cliffhanger? Oh No. I wasn't ready for that. Please, Mr Jackson, take your time while we're quarentined and hurry up. I'm ready to pre-order NOW!!!

An interesting and fast moving fantasy novel, this book is set in a world in which magic is more or less a craft or industry, one on which the world relies. Or perhaps over-relies. There is some discussion of how much a civilization should be built on one particular technology (fossil fuels?) and what it might mean suddenly to remove such a fundamental foundation of society. There is also discussion of free will and what you could call man's original sin - subverting every advance to violence and power struggles.

But none of this interferes too much with the story, which is well crafted and well written. There is pretty much non-stop action, with the stakes for our heroes getting higher with each chapter. The characters are reasonably complex, and there enough shades of gray in both good and bad guys make each character's choices difficult.

I recommend the book to fans of fantasy and intend to read the other books in the series (of which this is the second).

So, this is book two of The Founders Trilogy, and now I need book three. Now. Right now. Go ahead, RJB. I’ll just sit here and wait. *checks watch, looks around for 3 seconds, checks watch again* Okay, maybe I can’t just sit around waiting for it, but I’m not sure how I’m supposed to keep living on in quarantine without the next book!

What was so good about it? Well, I’m glad you asked. My answer is simple. Everything.

It’s these characters! 

In the start of book one, I didn’t know how to feel about any of them. Who am I supposed to like, and who do I hate? Who’s a good guy, who’s a bad guy? By the end, I still didn’t really know who was good or bad, but I loved them all. This rag tag group of survivors continue doing the one thing they seem best at: surviving while cutting you with sarcastic quips.

Between Foundryside and Shorefall, our cast of characters have been busy. They’ve been building. Creating a life for themselves that is part of what they used to be and partly something new. Their relationships have developed into something deeper and more meaningful and they’ve all changed a little as people. And none of this is given in an info dump. It’s something you see for yourself as the pages turn.

It’s this magic system!

This might be my favourite magic system I’ve ever read. RJB takes the time to acknowledge the science of how things work just before he shows you how the rules of physics, time, distance are snapped in half for our enjoyment. It’s not quite magic and science working hand-in-hand, but I’m a reader who really appreciates when science is addressed.

It’s this writer!

Robert Jackson Bennett might be a poet with prose, but I couldn’t tell you. Not only because I wouldn’t trust myself to make such a bold distinction, but also because I was relentlessly pulled through the pages without the time to look at sentence structure, style of prose, or choice of words. RJB is effortless to read. As someone who often stops dead in the middle of a page to ask myself, “why would the author use that word?” I can’t recall a single thing making me stop to ask myself anything.

It’s this trilogy!

When I found myself near the end of the book, and thinking I had reached the books ending, I felt a little disappointed. It was a better ending that I had read in a lot of books, but it wasn’t the kind of ending I expected after Foundryside. But the thing is, that wasn’t the ending. I turned the page, the ending began, and I could barely hold on to my seat! Chaos isn’t a wild enough word. 

Shorefall takes everything you knew from reading Foundryside, and changes it all. You think you know the characters, and they change. You think you know the magic system, and it expands. You think you know Tevanne, and it sheds its skin and becomes something new. 

RJB, if you happen the read this, just tell me what I need to do to get book three out of you. Keep in mind that the law frowns on human sacrifice. I’m not saying it’s off the table, just know the part about the frowning.

This is the continuing story of Sancia Grado and her compatriots from Foundryside. This story starts a few years after the events of Foundryside. Sancia and her allies are running their own company, which more or less collects scriving definitions and keeps them in a library.

However, one of Sancia’s enemies has used their considerable power to attempt to resurrect a hierophant – a legendary mortal man who once used scriving to turn himself into a god. It’s up to Sancia and her friends to stop this terrifying creature.

This was a really fun read. Super easy to get into, and hard to put down once you pick it up. I spent many a late night with this book, reading well past my bedtime.

I really do enjoy Sancia, and continue to in this volume. She’s snarky and foul mouthed, and is known to make a crass joke now and again. There was one nearer to the beginning that had me snort-laugh so loudly at the office that my boss checked in to make sure I was okay.

There are plenty of ups and downs in this one. It doesn’t hold back either. The way the magic works in this world allows for all kinds of bananas ways of manipulating reality, and the antagonist isn’t scared to use them. So, just a heads up for anyone who might not love too much gore in their books. There might be a time or two when people… uh… turn inside out? Implode? Little of both?

The magic system is another thing that I love about this series. The idea that there is a system of rules with which someone can convince the inanimate that they are sentient is brilliant. Having a character that can more or less hear the inner workings and ‘thought’ processes is further brilliant. This is used so well so many times, with Sancia convincing all kinds of different things that what they’ve been lead to believe isn’t actually how it is.

So, all told, I had a wonderful time with Shorefall, just as I did with Foundryside before it. I can’t wait to dive headfirst into the rest of Robert Jackson Bennett’s work, because if it is anything like this, I am absolutely sure to love it!

This book is so driven by action I could not tear my eyes from the page. Unstable bad guys and MORE world building. Let's all stand for a round of applauses. Just this was just beautifully done!