Book: Foundling (Book 1 of Monster Blood Tattoo), by D.M. Cornish
Set in a painstakingly detailed world of arcane science and alchemy. D.M. Cornish has been building the Half-Continent from his imagination since 1993, filling notebooks with illustrations, maps, character descriptions, etc. There are monsters and multicoloured oceans and somewhat morbid ideas (having strange organs surgically sewn into your body so that you have electrical powers). Cornish's world-building is stunning, almost comparable to that of J.R.R. Tolkien. His maps. Oh my gosh. The detail. The place names (many which are Latin-based!). The artwork.
The story itself, unfortunately, I didn't find stunning. It's good. It's an entertaining fantasy tale. But by itself it's not brilliant. It had a few too many cliched parts for my liking--in particular, the whole 'lowly orphan rises to great adventures' thing. Some good points are the various secondary characters and their quirky names. Anyway, the awesome world-building and flair makes up for it. Thus, I will be reading the rest of the series!
Rating: 8/10
1 comment:
hellooo~
nice to see you liked it enough to review it! and a very good reviewer you make, too~~ i've finished with the second book, so i will hopefully get it to u sometimes after the next week is over (assessment frenzy ;_;)
something to wonder about: i do take your point about the story concept, but i think it fits well for the overall book. like in art, if the focal pt of a story needs to be prominent, the other elements must naturally be diminished? i think the focal point here was the complexity & uniqueness of the setting, & having also a complex plot would overload it a bit.
also, i found out that the author is actually a really strong christian, which is maybe why there's kind of a moral undercurrent to the story.
hope you're still having time to relax even during the busyness of it all!
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