When Monster Blood Tattoo: Foundling, by D.M. Cornish, opens, Rossamünd Bookchild is a foundling raised in an orphanage. This young boy, somehow growing up with a girl’s name, is about to leave behind the only home he’s ever known for what he believes will be an unremarkable apprenticeship to lamplighter and a secure, if not terribly stimulating job. It’s not the life of excitement he’d imagined, but it’s at least a way out of the foundling home.
Almost immediately, young Rossamund is tricked into a different path than a lamplighter’s apprentice, and find himself setting off in a new direction. While this starts off based on strange and shady happenings, and then story is full of strange and shady events, this isn’t really a bad thing for him. In the orphanage, Rossamund dreamed of exploring and seeing the world, and now travel and adventure are about to find him, whether he’s ready or not.
This wider world is incredible detailed. There’s an entire glossary for the professions and customs of the Half- Continent, as well as a complex, well-maintained Monster Blood Tattoo fan wiki. There are many fantasy novels framed as factual accounts by a traveler who’d experienced that world and is recording their adventures. Monster Blood Tattoo: Foundling isn’t told with that style, but the extent of the worldbuilding notes gave it that overall vibe. There’s a massive amount of detailed and specific vocab needed to explain the lore to bring the world to life, and the overall feeling is more like a fascinating and vivid travelogue from a strange world. Parts of the story are slow, but those long descriptions are key to developing the world, and the setting is full of detail and unique lore. I particularly liked how the world felt old — you could imagine the customs and cultures forming over time before the book opened.
Because Rossamund has been fairly sheltered in the orphanage, I felt like he was discovering the world along with me. On his travels, Rossamund discovers teratologists, who follow and hunt monsters. These teratologists can have all different kinds of with special powers, like electricity, and have all different reasons for hunting monsters. There’s an entirely different vocabulary needed for this. As Rossamund discovers more of the world, he begins to wonder whether the monster stories he’s heard are completely true, and he might find himself with some sympathy for these monsters.
Monster Blood Tattoo: Foundling is the first in a trilogy, so the ending of the book doesn’t answer all the questions raised. It’s not a frustrating or unsatisfying conclusion, though, because the main draw of the book is more about discovering the world than following a plot arc.