*NEW RELEASE SPECIAL* Review of Shorefall – Book 2 of The Founders trilogy by Robert Jackson Bennett #Brainfluffbookreview #Shorefallbookreview

I thoroughly enjoyed the first book in this series, Foundryside – see my review here – as the magic system in particular, was original and nicely complex. So I was delighted to have an opportunity to get hold of the arc of Shorefall.

BLURB: 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.

For starters, if you haven’t yet had the pleasure of reading Foundryside, then park Shorefall and dive into the first book in this series, before going any further. I regularly crash midway into series, but this isn’t one where that tactic would end well. This book starts with a bang more or less immediately after Foundryside finishes – and with the complexity of the magic system and the fact it is essentially a continuation of the narrative arc from the first book, you’ll spend far too much time floundering to make such a strategy worth it.

It was a delight to reconnect with Sancia, Berenice, Orso and Gregory, all memorable and likeable protagonists with their own backstories and different voices – which isn’t always the case in an ensemble cast. I immediately reconnected to them all – which was important as things kicked off from the start of this one and didn’t calm down at all. Not even at the end… My favourite character, other than Sancia, was poor Clef, whose fate from the first book still reverberates through this one – and he is also involved in an amazing twist at the end that I didn’t see coming. There are some gory scenes, though nothing gratuitous, with quite a lot of dismembering going on – nothing I couldn’t handle, but I did think I’d mention it, in case you find such scenes objectionable.

The action scenes were well written, with plenty going on and a delightfully horrible antagonist I loved to hate. What I also enjoyed, was that we got see why our antagonist was quite so awful and what was driving him – I liked the fact that as far as he was concerned, the end absolutely justified the means. And he also put a strong case for it, too… He is definitely one of the more memorable villains I’ve encountered recently. The pacing issues I’d had with the first book weren’t present – fortunately Bennett took the decision to allow folks to pick up his magic system on the fly, rather than interrupting the adventure to explain it all, which I appreciated.

Overall, an entertaining and well written continuation to this memorable dystopian fantasy adventure and I’m looking forward to the final book in the series. Highly recommended for fans of well-constructed magical systems and engrossing high-octane adventures. The ebook arc copy of Shorefall was provided by the publisher through NetGalley in return for an honest opinion of the book.
9/10