A review by havoc
Foundling by D.M. Cornish

2.0

This was one of many books I picked up at a going-out-of-business sale (sad). The cover and illustrations caught my attention; while the line may be 'don't judge a book by it's cover' - I certainly do. Turns out the author started as an illustrator and spent years world-building before writing this series. You can tell. The narrative comes second to describing everything, it seems like every other word is a name for a creature or ship or tool that the reader must decipher, and while showing characters have accents is cool - having the reader slog through dropped consonants is not. The last 100 or so pages consists of a glossary, an atlas, and illustrations of clothing, weapons, and ships. I will say it was a happy surprise suddenly being done with the book when I had thought I had 100 pages to go, which goes to show my feelings on the story.

So the main character Rosemund is an orphan (or a foundling) who has finally been selected for job placement. He is naive, gets on the wrong boat and shenanigans ensue. The book ends with him finally arriving where he was supposed to go in the first place to start his new job. "Mysteries" (pretty sure know what the answers are) have been set up for the sequel as well as some characters. Took me somewhere between 100 and 200 pages to get used to Cornish's style of writing, namely seeing a new made-up word every sentence, and at the end I still felt as if nothing had been accomplished, I wasn't invested in Rosemund's objective of getting to a specific place.

I've yet to decide if I am going to continue the series. I went to half-price to see if I could pick up the sequel and ended up buying four different books, so we'll see. I don't recommend.