Extremely strong, vivid story. I'm left with a lot of impressions – because the worldbuilding was good, because the characters were strong, because the story was better than decent. A couple of minor points like a predictable staple plot twist or sudden relationship building dialogues while in a dangerous situation didn't detract from my enjoyment. The first book in a long time that led to me just devouring it.

Foundryside by Robert Jackson Bennett is a hard book for me to rate. In the beginning it was lackluster, because it felt like very system-heavy Fantasy: Fantasy where the author cares more about the magic system than about the characters, or the worldbuilding, or anything else. After about a third of the book, it came close to hitting its stride, drawing me in and letting me feel with the thief-protagonist and her life and quandries. But then, towards the end, the book seemed to turn into a very heavy-handed metaphor on the dangers of artificial intelligence (and, to a lesser degree, computer science in general).