Shorefall is the second novel in Robert Jackson Bennett’s Founders series. I absolutely adored its predecessor, Foundryside, and so went into this one
with pretty high expectations. In good news, those expectations were more than
met. Bennett has played a blinder; Shorefall was absolutely dazzling, a book
that I’ve spent a large part of a week in lockdown thinking and talking about.
It has the audacity to ask interesting questions with vast scope, like: who are
we? What are we willing to do to right wrongs? How do we justify what we do to
ourselves, as a society and individually? . The story takes those questions and
wraps them up in compelling characters and a world lavish in its detail.
Basically, if you want the short version, I
think this is a fantastic book, an absolute cracker of a sequel, and that you
should get hold of a copy and read it as soon as possible.
After the events of the last book, things have
settled down a bit for Sancia and her team of ne’er-do-well guerilla scrivers.
They’re sitting pretty outside the walled compounds of the scriving merchant
houses, figuring out how to disrupt the status quo. Scriving certain sigils
onto machinery has magical effects, you see - convincing reality to work in
ways different to the ones we’re used to. What could you do if writing on the
wheels of a cart convinced it that gravity didn’t apply, or that flat ground
was actually a slope? Scrivers ask these questions, echoing (for me) the
systems of information technology in our own world. Here, though, most scriving
knowledge was kept under lock and key by the massively wealthy and their teams
of scrivers, living in walled off luxury while everyone on the other side of
the walls scrabble to survive.
Sancia and her team are here to change that,
offering their own designs for review for free - as long as those reviewing them are willing
to add their own designs to those available for review. It’s open source, but
with grimoires, and their initial struggles to change the paradigm of their
society are fascinating in themselves. There’s a heist, chases, and some very
tense moments near a steam pipe. It’s a page turner, for sure. And the world is
as wonderful as it was previously. The lavishly decorated campos compounds, filled with scions of educated privilege, and the
sneering sons of a monied elite, are as wonderful and terrible as ever. The
shattered remains of The Mountain, the huge complex now inhabited only by the
ghost of a semi-conscious magical AI is grand and appalling in equal measure,
the grandeur somehow heightened by its now also being a shattered ruin.
Questions of autonomy and sovereignty are here too - as slaves escaped from the
island plantations which drive the wealth of the city begin to surface in the
land around the campos. There’s a distinct whiff of politics in the air,
and some complex double dealings kicking
off in the first few pages.
But there’s something else as well. I won’t
dig into it for fear of spoilers, but will say this; it’s a problem which can
reshape the world, for better or worse. Whether Sancia and her gang can stop it is another matter, as is
whether they want to. But big changes are coming to the world, one way or
another, and the story makes sure that Sancia and her people know the costs of
their choices, and that every decision they make will have consequences. It’s a
wonderful thing, this story that lays out difficult moral choices for its
protagonist, plays on her need for agency, for freedom, and juxtaposes that
need with survival, or with deciding to do the “right” thing.
This is
a story unafraid to ask its characters difficult questions. The antagonists are
smart, focused people, and in other books they might have been heroes. They’re
certainly assured of the need to realise their own goals, and unflinching of
their cost, to everyone else and to themselves. They’re wonderfully complicated
people in their own right - broken and reforged, perhaps. Making terrible
choices, possibly. But convincing, and consistent. You can feel for them even
while desperately hoping Sancia and her team thwart them, or find a way out of
the situations they find themselves in.
Speaking of Sancia, I just want to add how
much I loved seeing her grow here. Both with her friends, and in her
relationship. Reaching out and finding solace and love where she can has always
been difficult for Sancia; trust and intimacy are things that tend to happen to
other people. But here, she’s growing, reaching out to others, wrapping herself
in the armour of their love, affection and loyalty, willing to take risks to
help them get through another day alive, willing to trust and to believe - even
as she is put through the wringer of tough choices. The emotional connections
here are raw and genuine, and they have a kick like a mule. The struggles and
trials here have an authenticity to them which had me at the edge of tears at
times, and laughing far too hard at others. The relationships work, and they
feel real. The characters, with all their pain and joy, are people you share
the page with, and are wonderfully realised.
In the end, we’re back to the short version:
this is a fantastic book. Buy it now, read it now. You won’t regret it.
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