Robert Jackson Bennett finishes the trilogy with Locklands and it’s a fitting conclusion of plot lines and characters . He does, as always, a great job at drawing the reader into his constructed and highly believable world.. Looking forward to more from a gifted author.

This was action-packed conclusion to The Founders Trilogy. I would not recommend jumping into the series with this last book because there is so much you'll have missed. I found it to be an enjoyable read although I would have appreciated a few more breaks from the action. It's well written and I'll continue to seek out and read everything written by Robert Jackson Bennett.

Fantastic sequel to an amazing first story. Great characters and amazing plot. A must read!!! I would give this 10 stars if I could

Locklands picks up eight years after Shorefall Night, and drops us immediately in the thick of our favorite rag-tag group of rebels, fighting for their lives and the rest of humanity against Tevanne. The pacing keeps the action high, even in the quieter moments. I especially loved the development of Clef's and Crasesedes's histories through flashback scenes that were actually effective.

What is most impressive about this thrilling conclusion is that each book builds and expands the world-building and develops the characters in unexpected ways. I was happy with this ending, even if I did feel like the time jump between Shorefall and Locklands left me a bit unmoored as a reader. We also see less of Sancia in this one, which is okay, but I felt like her presence was missing a little. The scriving system also gets turned up quite a bit, which again is okay, but it felt almost akin to the last season of Game of Thrones when the characters could travel huge distances way quicker than previous seasons (if that makes sense).

When I requested this ARC, I realized that I had never read Shorefall, though it was on my to-read list since finishing Foundryside. Oops! And because my memories of Foundryside were fuzzy, I went and reread it, then read Shorefall, and then dove into Locklands. Which...whoa. I'm still kind of reeling from the intensity.

Locklands picks up 8 years after Shorefall, and so very very much has changed in the Founders' universe. There is a great deal of war, an incredible number of women combatants, and a societal arrangement that I did not see coming and is too good to risk spoiling.

It has been a long time since I read anything that encompassed as massive a change from the beginning of book 1 to the end of book 3 as this series does. People are going to call it "epic," but that's still too small. And I can't describe why without spoilers.

I do have some quibbles. There are some things, esp toward the end, that I don't really get. This is a problem with worlds where magic, technology, and magical technology all intermingle, and the narrator tries to describe something that doesn't really translate. There are also some relationship things that maybe ought to have gone deeper (in flashback, probably, since there was little time between racing plot points).

Anyway, I enjoyed this a lot, though I admit it was a lot of war to read on top of reading Ukraine War news. I would love to see this as a TV series. It could be like a wild mix of BSG 2004 and Game of Thrones, except a million percent less rapey and vastly more equitable in race and gender.

8 years have passed since Shorefall Night. The world has changed in horrific ways, but it has changed in tremendous ones as well. Tevanne has enslaved much of humanity by conquering cities and taking over the minds of countless victims. However humanity still lives. Sancia, Berenice, and Clef have saved many people and become the founders of the nation Giva. Crasedes Magnus also resists Tevanne's advances through the strength of his permissions over the world. The time has come that running and hiding are no longer options. Tevanne intends to reset existence entirely and appears to have the means to do so. Sancia, Berenice, and Clef must venture into the heart of Tevanne's territory to save their nation and humanity itself.

Locklands is a fascinating tragedy. I wasn't sure how the book would go after the vastly different first and second books. Foundryside felt tangible with a touch of incredible magic with scrivings, while Shorefall felt as though scrivings had the power to do anything at all. Locklands merges the two styles for a heart wrenching conclusion.

I really appreciated the character work done in the book. The power Valeria granted Sancia has been slowly stealing her life away, but she won't quit. She's strong and capable even in the face of insanity. Berenice is much the same while having to watch her wife waste away. Clef and Crasedes however stole the show. It was clear there was more to the talking key and his monstrous son, but I never imagined how much more there could be.

I was glad to see scriving continue to evolve even though the descriptions of scrivings in action grew tedious. Watching Giva's growth with scrivings made Crasedes and Tevanne feel more grounded. It wasn't as hard to imagine how the two beings could gain such strength. I wish we could have witnessed more of that in Shorefall because at the time Crasedes and Valeria felt completely unbelievable.

Locklands was a solid conclusion to the trilogy and I'm glad to have read it.

3.5 out of 5 stars

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

(4.5 stars rounded up)
I was a huge fan of the first two books in this trilogy, Foundryside and Shorefall, so my expectations were extremely high going into this one. Luckily, I had a great time reading it!

This book starts eight years after the end of Shorefall, so there's a lot to catch up on at the beginning, but basically, they are in the middle of a giant war against even bigger threats and dangers than the first two books. You get to see much more of the world in this one, and there's more detail about the history and previous civilizations. I thought that was a huge strength!

Compared to the first two, this one has fewer traditional heists, but it still has that feeling of sneaking around and outsmarting the enemy. And because of the time jump, the characters are a lot more skilled at scriving, so there's less emphasis on the tiny details of the magic than in the other books. I missed that element a little bit during this book since it was fun to see how they would solve each puzzle using logic. However, the change helped this book feel different from the others and not repetitive.

The pacing and plot development were really strong— I never felt like there was wasted time or unnecessary tangents. It built up nicely to a finale that wrapped up the series in a satisfying way.

If you like this series, I definitely recommend this one so you can see how the world changes over time and how the different plots conclude!

A big thank you to NetGalley and Ballantine for this ARC to read and review.

Locklands is the final entry in the Founders trilogy, which brings the story that started with Sancia’s breathtaking heist and its subsequent consequences in Bennett’s excellent series opener Foundryside to a close. Things have only gotten more difficult for Sancia, Berenice, Clef, and their allies after the events depicted in Shorefall saw a new threat known as Tevanne rise to power and (during a time skip) swiftly demolish and take control of most of the world. Dangerous and more extreme experiments with scriving have led to devastating weapons of war and incredible breakthroughs that are changing what it even means to be a human for the survivors of Tevanne’s aggression, but with the enemy making moves towards their endgame, the most high-stakes heist in history and an all-or-nothing sprint to the finish is all that stands between a bright tomorrow or the end of everything.

I liked many parts of this book, and I loved this series overall. Foundryside was one of the most entertaining and interesting fantasy stories I’d read since, well… Robert Jackson Bennett’s other series the Divine Cities. Catching up with Sancia and Berenice in Shorefall was great, and Locklands doesn’t skimp on surprising character development and the kind of big swings in scale and scope that I’ve come to love from this series. Action sequences are tense, desperate affairs with horrible consequences if our heroes falter, and the imagination on display here really shines through.

But not everything lands the same as it did in the previous books. An eight-year time skip has transformed the world into something almost completely unrecognizable from where we last visited it, and getting comfortable with the changes on display here took me some time. Be prepared for some seriously off-the wall kind of events and concepts being introduced early on in the book and it should make your own reading experience a lot smoother. I was happy with the conclusion of the book and the series as a whole (though I had to sit with it for awhile) and would definitely recommend it to fans of the series. Reading the past two books is mandatory to understand anything that is going on.

Woof. Okay. I finished this book over the weekend while trying to get my teething 10 month old to sleep. Sadly, I wasn’t a huge fan of Locklands. If you read my reviews of the previous two books, you’ll know how much I enjoyed them. Needless to say, I am vastly disappointed in how this series ended. Those three stars I gave this book is me being generous.

Locklands is a hot mess compared to Foundryside and Shorefall. The prior two books felt like a natural progression. Shorefall raised the stakes the appropriate amount compared to the first book. The villain got scarier, the world got bigger and more dangerous. The characters developed and generally, it made sense that Shorefall followed Foundryside. Locklands problem is that it jumps ahead eight years after Shorefall. I generally do not like time jumps in books. They rarely do what the author thinks they do, and instead just make a series feel jumbled up and messy. We see little of those eight years, and as a result, you feel as if you’ve been dropped into the middle of something. You’re left confused and unsure for a while until things feel slightly more familiar.

There is a huge concept in this book that was extremely confusing to me when they first introduced it — the twinning of minds. It technically was introduced in Shorefall, but Sancia and Berenice pushed this even further in those eight years that we don’t see. The whole conversation/explanation in the text is only made more confusing by the diagram that’s included.

I’m really not a fan when authors introduce a phrase/saying/concept in the last book of a series, and then act like it was a huge part of the series from the beginning. Sancia and Berenice use the saying, ‘There’s no dancing through a monsoon,” over and over in this book. I think the author was trying to reiterate it enough to have some emotional impact on the reader. It didn’t really work on me, though it probably would have if this saying had been introduced in the prior two books.

That’s not to say there weren’t parts of this book that I enjoyed — I really, really liked learning more about Clef, who he was, and what he did that brought about literally everything. What a character. He’s deeply flawed, and at first you feel sorry for him, but by the end of the book everything you know about him changes. Crasedes Magnus, and Valeria/Trevanne get some serious character development, too.

In the acknowledgements at the end of this book, Robert Jackson Bennett shares that he wrote this book during the pandemic. I think that’s why this book is the mess that it is. I’m really disappointed in Locklands, and I hate to say that overall, I didn’t enjoy it.

I received a copy through NetGalley for review. Special thanks to the publisher for granting me early access to this one.

I loved City of Stairs series so much, and this is a second solid series I could rave about for the rest of time. Robert Jackson Bennett delivered another slam dunk, its still some of the most refreshing new fantasy I've come across. The Founders Trilogy is another masterpiece.

Well, get ready folks because this one is going to make you scrumming ugly cry.
The finale was so well done, all the loose ends are wrapped up.
More insights into Clef and how he came to be, and the events that happened to spurn him into opening the door of creation. To who he was and what happened to his family.

Locklands takes place 8 years after the end of Shorefall Night, Valeria merged with Gregor Dandolo and they've become a hybrid being called Tevanne, a new Hierophant.
Tevanne has taken over what remains of humanity, twining human flesh with scrivings using their lives as batteries for his creations.

Bernice, Sancia, Clef, Claudia and all the people they could save and gather up after Shorefall Night are hiding out on various islands, known as Giva. And although the world is bleak what they have been able to create in these desperate times has made people better. More empathetic, sharing emotions, memories and ideas freely though their scrivings, joining their minds together. They've become their own nation protecting those that will join them.

But they're running out of time, humanity is running out of time. Tevanne has to be stopped, and San, Bernice, Clef and the team are going to have to face them before they destroy the fabric of reality and end the world as they know it by opening the door to creation once again.

This was so scrumming good, and I almost can't believe it's over. This one was definitely an emotional journey.

Please, if you haven't picked up this series, please do!
And if you've been waiting for the conclusion, it is everything you want and more.

Locklands is a riveting end the Founders trilogy and another successful conclusion from Robert Jackson Bennett. Longtime fans of RJB and his unique brand of fantasy will undoubtedly love this final chapter in the lives of Sancia, Berenice and Clef.

When we last left our beloved characters things were looking pretty dire and war was looming against not just one godlike enemy but two. This book starts after a bit of time jump and finds our characters continuing the scriving work of the previous two books but on a hitherto unimaginable scale. However, they soon find themselves faced with the reality of their enemy's plans to open the room in which reality itself was scrived millenia earlier. This forces them to plan one last attempt at saving the world, possibly from being uncreated completely.

This book continued the great characterization of this trilogy's characters. Sancia and Berenice remain awesome as always and continue to be so in this book. During the aformentioned time jump their relationship had evolved and this book finds them trying to navigate what their relationship looks like when the very end of the world is a likely outcome. Clef is also back after spending most of the second book sleeping (Tsk tsk Clef being lazy) and plays a great and constantly surprising role in the events of this book. The book also introduces some new characters and ideas that I think fans of the previous books will both find enjoyable and surprising.

Overall I'd say this book is a triumphant end to this trilogy. While this reviewer may have thought City of Miracles was a stronger finale to its' trilogy than Locklands to it's own, overall this book was completely successful and I find myself eagerly awaiting whatever is coming next from the mind of RJB.

I want to thank Netgalley for the arc of this book and the entire trilogy.
It's been eight years since Shorefall and it's been war. Part of humanity is hiding and fighting Trevanne but Trevanne is winning and humanity is getting desperate.
The first part is probably the most thrilling until the finale. I can't describe the Founders world that Robert Jackson Bennett has invented and do it any justice. But it has the two things that I will always come back to Mr. Bennetts novels for: an amazing complex world and even more complex and unique characters.
I'm not really doing this justice, I'm not very good at this obviously. I loved this book. I loved this trilogy. And if you're here at he the third book you probably agree with me

This is a solid, well plotted, well written, conclusion to an equally solid trilogy, and I enjoyed reading it, so it gets five stars from me. I find myself a little disappointed, but only because this trilogy didn't have the awe factor for me that Bennett's Divine Cities trilogy did, but I would give those books ten out of five stars. This trilogy doesn't appear to be marketed or targeted as YA, but somehow I found the characters less deep, conflicted, and interesting as Shara, Mulagesh, and Sigrud. But not that Berenice, Clef, and Sancia aren't well developed, relatable, likable characters. The magic system is certainly interesting, and in this final book in the trilogy, the scope becomes enormous, with the protagonists literally required to save the whole world. So, yeah, read them. And if you somehow have managed to miss City of Stairs/Blades/Miracles, go get those too!

You need to read Foundryside and Shorefall to get the most out of Locklands the final book in the Founders trilogy. All are worth reading.

Wow RJB goes out with a band to this series with Locklands. Sancia's character arc has been fun to follow and it was so good I can totally see this being a TV show or movie....honestly. Female protagonist who kicks butt, has a grayer side when it comes to morals, and fights for what she believes in.

Locklands is the thrilling conclusion to Bennett’s stupendous Founders trilogy. It is one of those books -like the other two in the trilogy – which is jaw-droppingly great from the first page to the last. It is epic. It is awesome.

The Founders trilogy is a fantasy world dripping with the fantasy equivalent of computer codes. We live in a world where computer codes can do just about anything and often a smartphone in our pocket can access libraries of knowledge, passkeys, and more. The Founders world though is not an advanced science fiction spaceships and time travel type world. Rather, scrivings or codes are written by editors upon any kind of object, making arrows want to hit targets, doors want to stay closed, ships want to float on the ocean, or the like. At its base, such use of scrivings is fascinating and the ability to make objects want to act in certain ways like bricks that want to stay together to help a building’s stability is incredible.

But, by the time we get to Locklands, the work of the scrivings has been moved to a whole new level. Plates can be scribed and embedded on objects and twinned so that things done to one object can act like permissions on the twinned object. Plates can be placed in people to twin them with others to either control them one directionally or marry them telepathically when it goes in both directions. There is no end to what these scrivings can do or how one can argue with the scrivings to make them behave (or people behave) in ways that defy reality. Some of these scriving objects, moreover, have the ability to edit reality and carve it away.

Locklands takes us to a point where, like Sauron in Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, an all-powerful entity has unleashed armies of followers upon the world, threatening to rip asunder all reality, and one little kingdom stands between the Dark Lord and the conquest of the entire world. We get here a band of intrepid warriors (or at least people brave enough to act as warriors) who seek to slip into the Dark Lord’s empire and do something in secret that saves the world of fails to.

This novel is filled with solid action from cover to cover and there is almost no let=up in that action from beginning to end as the stakes get higher and higher and the ability of the few left -Sancia, Claudia, Clef, and Berenice – to stand up to the greater powers doing battle around them are quite limited. Each of these characters -and yes a magic key is still considered a character – are well developed and put through trials and tribulations.

But perhaps the power of this narrative is that what we think of as reality is put into question as tools are used that defy all known versions of reality and warp things like gravity and density and individuality. This novel – like the two preceding ones- which might be helpful to read first- is simply mind-blowing. It is not just a fantasy story of swords and wizards and kingdoms but a full-on departure from the ordinary. And, isn’t that what we often seek in fantasy literature- not the ordinary, but the absolutely extraordinary.

The books "Foundryside" and "Shorefall" have taken you to this point, and the conclusion of the trilogy. I don't want to spoil anything for the devoted readers of the series, but I do suggest that you re-read the prior two books in order to be freshly oriented as to who, what and where.