Title: The Founders Trilogy - Robert Jackson Bennett
Media: Books
Approx length: Three books--Foundryside (2018, 500 pages), Shorefall (2020, 493 pages), and Locklands (2022, 550 pages).
Where to find it: Wherever books are rented or sold!
What is it, in summary?: This is a speculative fiction trilogy with strong heist elements essentially about the natures of humanity/technology/innovation/capitalistic systems that opens in a ruled-by-four-companies-propped-up-by-magic-that-works-like-coding vaguely Italianate city-state called Tevanne, though over the course of the trilogy you traverse about 20 years and see beyond just the one city-state. A thief called Sancia with some slightly odd sensory abilities gets drawn into a megaheist of a piece of technology? a ruin from a previous state of humanity? both at once? that sets her and her hardscrabble, enemies-to-comrades band on a road to understanding the nature of the technology-magic that runs their society and, eventually, the nature of reality itself.
What do you love about it?: Is it fantasy? Is it sci-fi? Is it both? Are powerful magic/tech users just augmented humans given potentially endless life or are they gods? What does life and existence mean? I love the blurring of tech and magic and how the magic/tech system works, and I love how the series ultimately comes to be about what it means to be an individual human but also what it means to be a member of the human race and a society. It has strong "fuck capitalism" and cyberpunk vibes in addition to the heist set-ups that recur across the trilogy and EXTREMELY strong found family vibes, though it's almost like enemies-to-found-family inasmuch as they have a rough go of things at first and start out antagonistic to one another and working together only grudgingly. (Sancia is a former slave left without blood family who finds a girlfriend/wife and their own desperate set of family-society-without-blood-or-genetics set-up that is wonderful.) Lots of "dealing with the trauma your blood relations passed on to you" as well and attempting to stop chains of intergenerational abuse. And, yes, it is very gay, and the f/f relationship is a crucial part of the worldbuilding and further anarchic innovation of the magic/tech in the 2nd and 3rd books.
What sort of things are you likely to request for it?: I LOVE Sancia and Berenice but for 3rd book reasons I am really interested in more about Berenice in particular, including her relationship with Gregor. Also, the worldbuilding for this series is off the chain and I'd love to explore where society goes after the end and to fill in some pieces between the end of Locklands proper and the epilogue.
Content warnings (ie, rape, incest, racism, gore/violence): Hoooooo boy. Slavery/indentured servitude (mostly as backstory), sexual and psychological and physical trauma (the sexual trauma is mostly off-page but there is a lot of magic/tech manipulating people to do nonsexual things against their will on page), brutal relationships with blood family members, uses of tech that border on the cyborgian and may be body horror (especially in the 3rd book, though the focus is mostly more on the psychology and not how people look), violence. Probably more. Notably, not really any racism or queerphobia--this is a pretty grim world but most people are some shade of brown in skin color and no one makes note of m/m or f/f relationships being odd.
The Founders Trilogy - Robert Jackson Bennett
Media: Books
Approx length: Three books--Foundryside (2018, 500 pages), Shorefall (2020, 493 pages), and Locklands (2022, 550 pages).
Where to find it: Wherever books are rented or sold!
What is it, in summary?: This is a speculative fiction trilogy with strong heist elements essentially about the natures of humanity/technology/innovation/capitalistic systems that opens in a ruled-by-four-companies-propped-up-by-magic-that-works-like-coding vaguely Italianate city-state called Tevanne, though over the course of the trilogy you traverse about 20 years and see beyond just the one city-state. A thief called Sancia with some slightly odd sensory abilities gets drawn into a megaheist of a piece of technology? a ruin from a previous state of humanity? both at once? that sets her and her hardscrabble, enemies-to-comrades band on a road to understanding the nature of the technology-magic that runs their society and, eventually, the nature of reality itself.
First book plot hook is here on Goodreads.
What do you love about it?: Is it fantasy? Is it sci-fi? Is it both? Are powerful magic/tech users just augmented humans given potentially endless life or are they gods? What does life and existence mean? I love the blurring of tech and magic and how the magic/tech system works, and I love how the series ultimately comes to be about what it means to be an individual human but also what it means to be a member of the human race and a society. It has strong "fuck capitalism" and cyberpunk vibes in addition to the heist set-ups that recur across the trilogy and EXTREMELY strong found family vibes, though it's almost like enemies-to-found-family inasmuch as they have a rough go of things at first and start out antagonistic to one another and working together only grudgingly. (Sancia is a former slave left without blood family who finds a girlfriend/wife and their own desperate set of family-society-without-blood-or-genetics set-up that is wonderful.) Lots of "dealing with the trauma your blood relations passed on to you" as well and attempting to stop chains of intergenerational abuse. And, yes, it is very gay, and the f/f relationship is a crucial part of the worldbuilding and further anarchic innovation of the magic/tech in the 2nd and 3rd books.
What sort of things are you likely to request for it?: I LOVE Sancia and Berenice but for 3rd book reasons I am really interested in more about Berenice in particular, including her relationship with Gregor. Also, the worldbuilding for this series is off the chain and I'd love to explore where society goes after the end and to fill in some pieces between the end of Locklands proper and the epilogue.
Content warnings (ie, rape, incest, racism, gore/violence): Hoooooo boy. Slavery/indentured servitude (mostly as backstory), sexual and psychological and physical trauma (the sexual trauma is mostly off-page but there is a lot of magic/tech manipulating people to do nonsexual things against their will on page), brutal relationships with blood family members, uses of tech that border on the cyborgian and may be body horror (especially in the 3rd book, though the focus is mostly more on the psychology and not how people look), violence. Probably more. Notably, not really any racism or queerphobia--this is a pretty grim world but most people are some shade of brown in skin color and no one makes note of m/m or f/f relationships being odd.