Robert Jackson Bennett‘s Founders Trilogy begins with Foundryside (2018), continues with Shorefall (2020), and concludes with Locklands (2022).
This is rollicking ride of a trilogy, animated chiefly by well drawn characters and a very intelligent twist on the question of how does magic work, anyway? In this world, the answer revolves around a practice of scrivening, which inscribes functional runes–not dissimilar to lines of computer code–onto objects that change their relationship to the laws of the physical world. Meaning, if I inscribe two objects with runes that believe they are next to each other, and activate one of them when the objects are far apart, that object will rush with all speed towards the other, with predictable effects.
Different manipulations of reality take different levels of complexity of scrivening: changing the amount of light an object reflects is relatively simple; getting a falling object to ignore gravity is incredibly complex.
But the trilogy really centers around its somewhat ragged band of heroes, and while some of the relationships are, like so much contemporary fiction, overly determined, there is a lot of nuance for many others. And beneath the page-turning nature of the series are explorations of all sorts of relationships: generational, parental, a wide variety of personal and sexual attraction, and, perhaps overall, wrestling with the myriad answers to the question of just how do I navigate my choices about who I want to be in the world. At the end of the day, I believe, that is the real-world implication of “the hero’s journey.”
Most entertaining of all for a reader, there is a deliciously creepy antagonist for much of the series, a true wow, I hope they film that scene type of bad guy.
The plot spans multiple genres: heist, political intrigue, classic fantasy adventuring, love triangles (and other shapes as well).
It’s a very smart series, very recommended as change of pace, hovering quite comfortably somewhere between steampunk and fantasy.