Set in the world of the Half-Continent—a land of tri-corner hats and flintlock pistols—the Monster Blood Tattoo trilogy is a world of predatory monsters, chemical potions and surgically altered people. Foundling begins the journey of Rossamund, a boy with a girl’s name, who is just about to begin a dangerous life in the service of the Emperor. What starts as a simple journey is threatened by encounters with monsters—and people, who may be worse. Learning who to trust and who to fear is neither easy nor without its perils, and Rossamund must choose his path carefully.
Complete with appendices, maps, illustrations, and a glossary, Monster Blood Tattoo grabs readers from the first sentence and immerses them in an entirely original fantasy world with its own language and lore.
Foundling, the first in the planned Monster Blood Tattoo trilogy, sucked our then twelve-year-old son in on the first page and spat him back out a couple of days later only after 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. (Reviewed by BookBrowse Review Team).
Kirkus Review
This epic fantasy, though solidly based in classic form ....., flounders under cluttered writing.
Booklist - Cindy Dobrez
Starred Review. .... enough secrets, promises, and mystery to create impatient demand for part two.
School Library Journal
Starred review. A delightful, refreshing standout in a sea of cookie-cutter fantasy worlds.
Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. From the pre-industrial English feel to the sprawling setting and backstory, this book feels every bit as substantial as its heft implies.
Tamora Pierce, author of the quartets Song of the Lioness and Circle of Magic
I felt constantly at the edge of a gasp.
Michael Cart, writer, professor, expert in children's and YA literature
Meticulously plotted, prodigiously imagined, and richly realized.
Lloyd Alexander, Newbery-winning author of The Chronicles of Prydain
..A remarkable new world, complete in every detail, totally convincing.
Recent Reader Reviews
Rated of 5
by Sam R Gasp I have been reading the Redwall series, and i love that series but this book took me out of it and was not going to let me go I read the book in a week and instantly wanted the next book to come out. This book is great for children and adults who... Read More
Rated of 5
by Forrestt Monster blood Tatoo This book was the best book i had read for quite a while!I have read many good books and i would put this book as one of my top 5 books!
D.M. Cornish was born in time to see the first Star Wars movie. He was five. It
made him realize that worlds beyond his own were possible, and he failed to eat
his popcorn. Experiences with C.S. Lewis, and later J.R.R. Tolkien, completely
convinced him that other worlds existed, and that writers had a key to these
worlds. But words were not his earliest tools for storytelling. Drawings
were.
He spent most of his childhood drawing, as well as most of his teenage and adult
years as well. And by age eleven he had made his first book, called "Attack from
Mars." It featured Jupitans and lots and lots of drawings of space battles. (It
has never been published and world rights are still available!)
He studied illustration at the University of South Australia, where he began to
compile a series of notebooks, beginning with #1 in 1993. He had read Mervyn
Peake's Gormenghast novels, The Iliad, and Paul Gallico's Love of
Seven Dolls. Classical ideas as well as the great desire to continue what
Mervyn Peake had begun but not...
'In poetic prose, Stewart and Riddell invent the magical realm that culminates at the Edge. The narrative will cast a spell over readers from the beginning with its utterly odd, off-kilter sense of logic and a vocabulary that is equal parts Dr. Seuss and Lewis Carroll'. Ages 10+.
The dread fortress of Azkaban held an infamous prisoner - said to be the heir apparent to the Dark Lord, Voldemort. Now he has escaped and Harry isn't safe, not even within the walls of his magical school.
These are 2 of the 7 readalike suggestions for Foundling. Members have full access to all readalikes. If you are a member, please login. To find out more about membership, click here.
Stranger than fiction, blending tragedy and farce, How to Create the Perfect Wife is an engrossing tale of the radicalism, and deep contradictions, at the heart of the Enlightenment.
Z, the novel about the life of Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald is at points charming and; like another reviewer, I kept thinking of the movie, "Midnight...
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Although heavy on the scientific details, which slowed down the story for me (OK, I admit, I was one of those liberal arts majors who skipped out on...
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Loved this book. Magical, quirky, enchanting I could go on. All books do not have to be literary fiction, sometimes it is just so comforting to read...
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U.S. ebook sales up in 2012, but rate of growth is slowing(May 16 2013) In 2012, trade book sales (i.e. non academic book sales) rose 6.9%, to $15.049 billion, and e-book sales continued to grow, although the rate of growth...
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(764 words).
Kirkus Review
Tamora Pierce, author of the quartets Song of the Lioness and Circle of Magic
of 5
by Sam R
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