Book Chop: Monster Blood Tattoo #1 "Foundling"

Title: Monster Blood Tattoo #1: Foundling
Author: DM Cornish
Genre: Fantasy
Verdict: A delightful little book about nothing.

Weird. But cool.

After reading this one, I had to do some research on it. The Wiki page revealed something that makes a lot of sense. But I digress.

FOUNDLING is set in a world where monsters are real, humans fight them, and a mashup between life and mechanics isn't all that uncommon. (Ships, for example, have living monster organs "grown" into them.) Likewise, people can undergo surgeries to gain what are, in effect, superpowers. In the midst of these warring superhero monster-killers and the monsters themselves is our young hero, Rossamund.

Rossamund is a "foundling," a fancy way of saying he's a wandering orphan who go picked up. He starts out at the orphanage, hoping that one day he'll get drafted into the navy. Too bad! He gets picked up to be a "lamplighter" instead, which sounds like a crummy job. When he leaves to report for duty, he gets picked up by slavers poising as businessmen.

The slavers get shot at by the military. Rossamund escapes by jumping off their boat into the rivver. Then he meets Europa, a lady with surgical lightning powers. They have a run-in with monsters and kill them. After some more wandering they meet a mailman, who's pretty cool. Then they run into the slavers again, and the lightning lady kills them. Rossamund reports to the lamplighters for duty a few weeks late.

The end.

I'm actually serious. That's the end of the book.

It seems like I'd destroy it for that being the entire plot, but it was really enjoyable for some reason and I can't put my finger on it. Maybe because it was technically fantasy, but with suspended sci-fi explanations for a lot of things...which I haven't seen a whole lot in YA fiction, and I like. A lot.

But to the backstory: Cornish developed the world for the story in his spare time over the course of many years. Eventually an agent picked up his world and liked it, and offered him a rare contract, one wherein he would turn in 1000 words per work for very small advances. Eventually he got a story set in this very detailed world (I mean the map alone is more detailed than most epic fantasies I've read) and the first book was born.

The second and third books are about twice as long as the first one. I can only imagine how much deeper the story gets as it progresses. I'm intrigued enough to keep reading, but yeah--it's a good little book wherein virtually nothing happens with regard to plot. It was still fun though. So I tip my hat to Mr. Cornish.