Crimes, murder, and some monologuing about utopia

[bloodygranuaile]

 Last year, which feels like a million years ago, the BSpec book club read Robert Jackson Bennett’s Foundryside, which I liked pretty well. I do not remember precisely how or why I was reminded to check out if the sequel had been published yet, but somehow I did, and it turns out that book two, Shorefall, had indeed come out earlier this year. As the only romantic subplot I recall the first book having was between Sancia and Berenice, it fit my criteria for acceptable reads for this year, so I put in a hold for it at the library.

 

I enjoyed it although I cannot say I was particularly blown away; I was certainly entertained, and it suited my current mood by being extremely gory and peppered with some decent jokes, which is about what entertains me these days. The stuff about time-crunching was fun, although again, mostly because it was excitingly painful for the characters and not really because I cared about this particular book’s theory of time travel. I also was less than thrilled with the grand philosophical debates between the supervillain and our intrepid heroes, possibly because “evil control freak madman is a ZEALOT about wanting to END WAR AND SLAVERY” always feels like it is attempting to present itself as a SHOCKING TWIST instead of one of the most common, overdone, overlearned messages in American fiction (and actual politics) since the Cold War. Like, this book was published *this year*, which means it was probably being written or at least edited during last year’s Game of Thrones finale debacle, where seven years of at least somewhat interesting questions about the contradictions of implementing well-intentioned and necessary social change via conquest and monarchy got flushed down the toilet in favor of going “THE LADY THAT WANTED TO BAN SLAVERY,,, IS CRAZY!!” Anyway, these days I’m just not real here for that type of villain; it is overdone enough that it does not add the level of interest or nuance that I think authors are going for when they try to make villains more complex or sympathetic than real-life villains, who, it seems, are generally either clueless about what they’re actually doing or are openly hate-driven ghouls. When the clueless ones try to talk big philosophical questions about what they’re up to they usually just talk about different philosophical questions than the ones raised by whatever they’re actually doing, and they’re usually dumb as shit about it. 

 

The villainy gets better once the philosophical debating is left behind and we get to look at the various villains’ material and family ties and other sorts of regular human motivations, even from the villains who aren’t human anymore—and more importantly, once stuff happens. I admit I occasionally lost the specific twists and turns of the plot, largely due to not reading real closely these days, but there were a lot of magical shenanigans and a hefty dose of crime-doing. 

 

Anyway, I will probably read book three, and just hope it is lighter on arguments about free will!