★★★★★ Clef's story

Locklands

Robert Jackson Bennett

In this corner we have Crasedes Magnus, the immortal heirophant -- oh, Heck, let's just call him a God -- who wants to enslave all of humanity for their own good. BOO!! HISS!! In the opposite corner we have Tevanne, which is the name we now use for the entity that came into being when Gregor Dandolo allowed the Artificial Intelligence known as Valeria to take him over, and together the two of them took control of all the scrived rigs of the city of Tevanne. (This, more or less, is analogous to taking over all the electronic devices of a modern real-world city.) Gregor's goal was to thwart Crasedes. But, alas. Valeria's intentions for humanity make Crasedes look like Saint Francis of Assisi. More BOO!! HISS!! In a third corner we have our heroes (OOO!! SIGH...) Berenice and Sancia and their good friends (not all of whom are dead). Tevanne has imprisoned Crasedes and has, for the last eight years, been making war on the collective Berenice and Sancia founded, Giva.

Berenice and Sancia haven't exactly lost, but they sure as Heck ain't winning. They have reached the point where, as they themselves put it, "there is no dancing through a monsoon". That means, roughly, that when The Big One comes, you throw finesse to the winds and fight with everything you have.

There is one important character I have not yet mentioned: Clef. Clef is a device -- a key that can open anything. We first met Clef in Foundryside, when Sancia stole him from Gregor. But Clef is not just a device -- he is also a personality. Sancia, because of her unique gift, could talk to him, so right from the beginning we were treated to conversations between Clef and Sancia, in which Clef revealed himself to be witty and clever and kind. In fact, near the end of Foundryside Clef enabled Sancia to see inside the key that holds him, where she saw him as a man once called Claviedes, who had been put in the key by Crasedes. At the end of the second book, Shorefall we learned that Claviedes was Crasedes father. At least, that's what they say, and if you can't trust a god and the person he stuffed into a key, who can you trust?

On finishing Shorefall, it seemed obvious to me that Clef's story had to be told. I even hinted so in my review. And, indeed, we get Clef's history in Locklands! That is not the whole of the book, because Clef's history is revealed in the course of an ongoing war between Giva and Tevanne. It's a huge and exciting story, with battles of mountain-sized missiles hurled against floating city-size battle citadels, and eleven-dimensional chess-like strategies, and hackers scriving their way into secure places, and above all, an ideological conflict -- is humanity truly so irredeemably awful as Valeria and Crasedes believe, or is there hope for us? It is all told through the personal stories of Berenice, Sancia, Clef, Valeria, and Crasedes. It is grand and exciting and, above all, something NEW. It is rare that I read a new book that really tells a really new story. To me, this felt like one.

I picked up The Founders Trilogy because it was the only finalist for the 2023 Best Series Hugo Award that I had not yet read.

⬤ Children of Time Series, by Adrian Tchaikovsky (Pan Macmillan/Orbit)
⬤ The Founders Trilogy, by Robert Jackson Bennett (Del Rey)
⬤ The Locked Tomb, by Tamsyn Muir (Tor.com)
⬤ October Daye, by Seanan McGuire (DAW)
⬤ Rivers of London, by Ben Aaronovich (Orion)
⬤ The Scholomance, by Naomi Novik (Del Rey)

It's a great list -- I love all of them. But if I were voting, my vote would go to this one, to The Founders Trilogy. I am not predicting that it will win. Many readers will, I think, find The Founders Trilogy big and indigestible. It's a fantasy series about software development, and that's not going to be everyone's cup of tea.

The ending is *complicated*. It is not all sad -- indeed, in my opinion, it is more happy than sad -- but if you want an ending where rainbows and happy marriages break out all over -- it is not that. You have been warned.

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