Summary | Excerpt | Reviews | Beyond the book | Read-Alikes | Genres & Themes | Author Bio
Critics' Opinion:
Readers' Opinion:
First Published:
May 2006, 404 pages
Paperback:
Sep 2007, 448 pages
Book Reviewed by:
BookBrowse Review Team
Buy This Book
Monster Blood Tattoo sucked our then twelve-year-old son in on
the first page and spat him back out a couple of days later once he'd read
the book cover to cover (including the glossary and the 100 page appendix, which
particularly fascinated him) and pored over the maps and illustrations. In the intervening period we did see him from time to time - for meals and
breathless plot updates - but in essence, although his body was with us, his
mind was somewhere in the Half-Continent! With illustrations reminiscent
of Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast trilogy, this is a book to kindle the imagination
of any child who revels in fantastic worlds filled with fantastic creatures.
Dyan Blacklock, publisher with Omnibus Books (an imprint of Scholastic in
Australia), recalls how she became aware of the Half-Continent world: D.M.
Cornish, a young illustrator earning his daily bread doing illustrations for TV
and advertising was in her office (presumably showing illustrations for some
other project) when he reached into his backpack for some gum and accidentally
dropped a book of illustrations. She says, "A publisher is, by nature, a
stickybeak ..... A journal with the number 23 written on the spine in Wite-Out
was bound to excite my curiosity." Before handing the book back, she flipped
through it and saw "delicate drawings in black ink with copious spidery
handwritten headings, followed by detailed descriptions ... [and] felt the hairs on the back of my neck rise up ... Here was the kind of thing
every publisher dreams of discovering. This was a work at once beautiful and
unique. It was illustrated with such intensity and love that it had the power to
move a reader with the barest of information."
What she saw was much more
than just pictures - the books contained an entire history, geography, languages
and place names (the result of 14 years of work). She suggested he should
work a novel. At first he resisted saying that he was an illustrator
not a writer, but eventually he was persuaded and for the next two years he
worked diligently to deliver 1,000 words a week propped up by one small advance
after another.
Although this is the first of a planned trilogy,
Blacklock sees the Half-Continent series continuing long past three books due to
the many extraordinary creatures and people that won't fit in the first three
volumes, she also foresees add-on works such as an encyclopedia of the world and
perhaps a volume or two of history!
This review was originally published in The BookBrowse Review in July 2006, and has been updated for the
October 2007 edition.
Click here to go to this issue.
If you liked Foundling, try these:
by Laurie Forest
Published 2018
A new Black Witch will rise…her powers vast beyond imagining.
by Frank Beddor
Published 2007
An intruiging re-imagining of Alice in Wonderland, in which Wonderland exists, and Alyss is a princess escaping a bloody coup to hide in Victorian London. Lost and alone, she tells an aspiring author the surreal story; but he believes it to be mere fantasy. Now, years later, she is found by a loyal bodyguard, and together they fight to regain her...
The House on Biscayne Bay
by Chanel Cleeton
As death stalks a gothic mansion in Miami, the lives of two women intertwine as the past and present collide.
The Flower Sisters
by Michelle Collins Anderson
From the new Fannie Flagg of the Ozarks, a richly-woven story of family, forgiveness, and reinvention.
The Funeral Cryer by Wenyan Lu
Debut novelist Wenyan Lu brings us this witty yet profound story about one woman's midlife reawakening in contemporary rural China.
Your guide toexceptional books
BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.
