Such a disappointment. Bennett seems to have lost his touch and his sense of humor. That makes me very sad. This book took itself far too seriously and the characters, which I liked in the first book, are turned into annoying, self-involved children wading through a pile of shit that they created themselves.

The world that he created remains top-notch, however. He builds such fantastic places with incredible populations. He's just getting really weak with the individuals in his stories. They were so annoying in Shorefall. Maybe if they had a wider vocabulary of curses?

I'm unsure if I'll continue with this series. At least I have my memories the old Bennett books. They are the best. ( )

https://fromtheheartofeurope.eu/the-founders-trilogy-by-robert-jackson-bennett/

I very much enjoyed Bennett’s previous Divine Cities trilogy; this is a different fantasy world, but one where magic and machinery intersect according to a series of complex rules. So often in books like this, worldbuilding stops at the point where the writer needs it to in order to drive the plot; I really don’t get that sense here, I feel that the writer is playing fair with us all the way through, and the barriers that the characters face because of how the world has been created don’t seem artificial. There’s also a good spectrum of emotional engagement, romance, parent-child dynamics, deep and committed friendships; and Bennett’s not afraid to kill off important characters as he goes. And the sense of place is very well realised, whether it’s a cityscape, a blasted heath or a vast natural fortress.

I felt that the middle book was not quite as strong as the first and last; the baddy seemed a bit too powerful and that constrains the plot a bit. But otherwise this is a good series of novels set in an unusually thoughtfully constructed world. ( )

I am still reeling. So, you thought that book 1 was dark at times, full of blood and gore? This book: “Hold my beer.”

This story is more complicated, full of evil secrets revealed, horrible choices past and present, and horrific consequences. Haven’t you dreamt of remaking the world? Making it a better place? How far would you go, if you had superpowers? How much collateral damage would you justify? Kudos to the author for writing about an ancient, terrifying evil that simply wants to help humanity. It’s all for a “noble cause”.

As the book sprinted along, the magic was getting ever more wild, weird, and interesting. I did think that the characters’ magic problem-solving skills were too good at times (it made more sense by the end, though). I am willing to look past that, because I was in a nail-biting mode for most of the book. The characters are still too thin for my liking, but I did like what the author did with them. Some of the plot twists were not unexpected… and then there was an additional twist that made my jaw drop and my heart break a little. (How often do you feel sorry for the villain in books!?)

The ending is a cliffhanger, naturally, with a very obvious setup for the final instalment. I am game. ( )

Wow. So this is a worthy sequel. Despite the sections that get a bit too "preachy" it's well-done. And the last chapter is a doozy! ( )

It is sad to see most of the flaws and problems from the first book are exaggerated instead of addressed.
At least he left out the stupid one-liners this time.

The amount of selective stupidity for plot convenience to create artificial drama is staggering.
It eclipses any and all boundaries of common sense and reason.
And you can see it coming from kilometres away too and yet the story treats our protagonists as these smart, resourceful and intelligent people. It's incredibly frustrating.
You can not just make everyone blind to everything that would compromise your plot. I could forgive this if there was this one thing the author just couldn't find a way around or maybe just overlooked. It would frustrate me but I could understand and accept it. This book doesn't even try tho. It just blatantly makes every relevant person blind to literally every obvious conclusion that would break the plot.

Then there are all those wannabe prophetic statements and dumb pseudo-arguments. I am not sure if this is the result of incompetent philosophy or just the twisting of philosophical arguments around the plot that makes me want to tear my hair out.
I find this particularly frustrating because almost all epically proportioned villains do this. They start with a legit philosophical argument about right and wrong, about power and human nature. An incredibly important argument that philosophers are discussing for literally thousands of years now. But then, right when they get to the juicy core of the argument, the villain suddenly spouts some kind of utter bullshit or the argument is abandoned in favour of some shallow platitudes about hope and belief in the good or somesuch. There are no easy answers and this is an insight that is most sorely missing in modern western society. Why do so many authors allude to this issue but no one actually has the balls to address it? You are not obligated to do this of course. Books can be about anything but if you already lead the reader to the crux in a gritty and dark world why not go the final step?

Now let's address the magic system. I've already complained about it in my review of the first book.
The idea itself is incredible and I love it. I really do. There is just something wrong with the arbitrarily made up limitations it apparently suffered from. In this book, we see more of the word and how this magic is integrated into it. Not as much as I'd like but it's more than in the first one at least. One could probably write an entire series of books just about daily life in a universe with magic like that.
But that doesn't excuse the extremely wonky rules and limitations. The more you pay attention and think through this incredibly complex system the more you notice that it fundamentally makes no sense in many places. Especially it's limitations are completely arbitrary and are adjusted for plot convenience constantly. This is something that kills the enjoyment of high tension scenes completely for me. Regardless of how high the stakes are, I can not do more than roll my eyes.
If the author just invents rules or possibilities on the fly every time he needs to influence the outcome of any given situation everything becomes meaningless and all tension is lost. This is probably one of the biggest shortcomings of this series.
There, of course, are also all the unexplored possibilities and how they could shift power dynamics.
These people have incredibly devastating weapons and could create much more precise ones as well but there are no defences against those. Either the reader is missing a big and essential part of the power structure in the magic or this world should be stuck in some kind of MAD. Neither of which seems to be the case which is only revealed in this book. This is a big red flag.

Apart from these big problems, there are countless small frustrating mistakes. The author repeatedly forgets who knows what which causes people to act surprised to things they already knew. I am pretty sure sometimes this happened the other way around as well but I didn't notice that as much.
There is this one instance that stayed with me. Sancia used a particular argument to bypass a lock but later she gives high praise to someone else for suggesting the same trick when she herself was stuck on another one because she would never have thought of it herself...

Another perplexing thing I found was repeated phrasing, especially in fight scenes. I repeatedly had a sense of Deja Vu but it turns out the phrasing was just too similar to previous scenes.
It's not the typical, repeated idiom or word that grates on your nerves. These repetitions are more general than this. Like a chain of actions and events. It is more the wording than the actual actions as if they are written based on some kind of template. Now that I think about it I am not even sure I can't call it a flaw per se. It's more just something I've noticed I guess.

A minor detail that annoyed me a bit was that Orso constantly blurted out "you can not just do X with scriving" every time someone had a novel idea. "And that is supposed to be the guy that invented twin-realities?" was my thought every time he spouted that non-sense. If you need someone to emphasize the novelty of something, use another character for that, please.

I dropped this one late in chapter 31. Anyone that read the chapter will doubtlessly know why.

These books have a way of emotionally sweeping you off your feet which causes most people to be so invested that they are able to see past all the flaws on the way. Sadly the part of my brain that does critical thinking runs somewhat separately from the rest of my consciousness and never ever stops which has spoiled many things for me, including this series.
I am sad that I couldn't enjoy such an ambitious series with epic proportions. Even tho I had much to complain about in the first one as well I really looked forward to reading the next one. I really hoped that many of the obscure things in the first one would be explained in this one but alas, no, there really wasn't more depth behind it all. ( )