Summer Reading 2018 Foundryside

This book starts off a new series with some very interesting characters and a lot of room to add others. The world is built on the ruins of a former civilization and the founders are using the scraps of what they have learned to create some amazing and some awful things. The protagonist, Sancia, is a thief - but readers will be very sympathetic to her as they learn more of her backstory and come to see why she is isolated, loath to touch anyone, and desperate to escape from her current location. She is not one of the fortunate who work directly for the Founders, and definitely not a member of one of the Founder families. So she has little hope of survival in their world of mechanical marvels that seem to run on magical inscriptions built into the mechanisms. But as we follow her path into an increasingly complicated situation, we can see how the traditions and customs of the Founders have created a strict class system, and how tightly controlled the power is within their world. The more hopeless the plight of those like Sancia seems, the more we root for her to succeed. As she weighs everyone she encounters to determine if they are ally or enemy, we look through her eyes and make those same judgments. We won't know if we are right, if she is right, until the very end. And even that is unsure, since it is only the first book in this new tale.

For those who like heroines who persist, even though they have been deeply wronged or hurt; for those who savor complicated plots and detailed settings; for those who have enjoyed stories such as The Court of Fives, or existing fans of Robert Jackson Bennett - give this book a try. 

I read an e-book provided by the publisher through NetGalley.