Locklands

The Founders Trilogy burst onto the scene with Foundryside showing an engaging cast of characters and a very clever magic system. Now we are at the close of the series, the gang of characters is mostly still with us but has expanded to include a whole nation with some intriguing new characters in the form of Aspects. And that expansion of scope is probably the defining feature of this finale. The scope is huge. Whereas the first two novels were largely confined to the city of Tevanne, we are now in a world spanning story. On the whole RJB handles this well, but the sprawl loses some of the intimacy of the earlier novels. The enemy has changed here too. Rather than wealthy elite, or god like Heirophant, they are now facing a world spanning AI entity. In some ways this shows an interesting allegory to modern society.

The story is as action packed as previous ones, the stakes do feel genuine (RJB is not scared of killing off characters). The world building is as fascinating as ever - the ancient city where the door through reality was first opened is an intriguing and vividly realised fever dream. The resolution between Clef, Cresades and Tevanne was well done, giving a satisfying conclusion. However, I miss the heists, the scheming and more intimate feel of the earlier books. This was a good finale, but it is my least favourite book of the series, mostly due to some of my favourite elements of the earlier books getting a bit overwhelmed by the increase in scale.