Book Blogger Hop (8/22/24)

Book Blogger Hop

Happy Friday my friends! We made it! I don’t know about you, but my week was absolutely exhausting and all I’ve been thinking about is making it to the weekend. I feel like around this time every year things go absolutely bonkers on all fronts. My vacation (and quiet reading on the beach) cannot come soon enough. For now though I’ll look forward to a fun weekend with friends!

Anyway, Friday means it’s time for a Book Blogger Hop as well! I really liked the question this week because it made me pause and really think about what I wanted to recommend. I’ve read a lot of books in my lifetime, and a whole lot that I wish I could just yell at everyone to read. It was so hard to choose.

Can you suggest a book that you believe everyone should read at least once in their lifetime?

I chose Foundryside by Robert Jackson Bennett:

In a city that runs on industrialized magic, a secret war will be fought to overwrite reality itself.

Sancia Grado is a thief, and a damn good one. And her latest target, a heavily guarded warehouse on Tevanne’s docks, is nothing her unique abilities can’t handle.

But unbeknownst to her, Sancia’s been sent to steal an artifact of unimaginable power, an object that could revolutionize the magical technology known as scriving. The Merchant Houses who control this magic–the art of using coded commands to imbue everyday objects with sentience–have already used it to transform Tevanne into a vast, remorseless capitalist machine. But if they can unlock the artifact’s secrets, they will rewrite the world itself to suit their aims.

Now someone in those Houses wants Sancia dead, and the artifact for themselves. And in the city of Tevanne, there’s nobody with the power to stop them.

To have a chance at surviving–and at stopping the deadly transformation that’s under way–Sancia will have to marshal unlikely allies, learn to harness the artifact’s power for herself, and undergo her own transformation, one that will turn her into something she could never have imagined.

This is one of my all time favorite Fantasy books! I feel like it’s super accessible to new Fantasy readers, while still being complex and beautiful. It has vivid characters, fantastic world building, and a really excellent magic system that to this day I can’t stop thinking about. I had a lot of fun reading this one! It’s what I recommend to my friends who want to dip their toes into the genre, and so I happily recommend it to all of you as well.