Monster blood tattoo, Book 1: The foundling, by D. M. Cornish

Here I go, trying to churn through some very brief reactions to the books I’ve read over the last few weeks. I simply don’t have time to go into much detail as I madly get ready to fly to Canada next week.

I don’t tend to read much fantasy. Not that I have anything against it, there’s just so much to read and it’s something I’ve never really got in to. Having said that, I picked up The foundling for two main reasons. First, it made the CBC awards shortlist. Second, I heard and very briefly met D.M. Cornish at the Reading Matters conference. I really liked his illustrations, and he seemed to be a super nice guy. So I bought a copy of his book and got it signed.

The foundling is the first book in a planned trilogy. The second should be out in April 2008. In brief, the story concerns Rossamund, a foundling (orphan) and his adventures in a world of people and monsters. In terms of the level of technology, the world seems probably a hundred or more years behind our world. But, there is really neat stuff like people having surgery to insert extra organs that allow them to discharge electric shocks into monsters. Ship engines, instead of being purely mechanical are driven by some sort of organic muscle grown specifically for this purpose.

Cornish has obviously put huge amounts of work into creating this world. A quarter of the book is made up of a glossary, maps and charts. I felt the story started a little slowly, but this is in part due to this whole world and the lead character being introduced to the reader. Once it gets going, the story is very engaging. I won’t bother telling you much more, you’ll have to read it for yourself. All I’ll say is that after I finished, I was dying to read the next installment and was bitterly disappointed to learn how long I’ll have to wait.