Book Reviews: Foundling
I read even less YA (that’s young adult) fiction than I do science fiction. Under normal circumstances I never would have picked Foundling up off the shelf, let alone read it. It’s YA. It’s illustrated. It’s not the sort of book I would expect to enjoy. When I opened it, things went from bad to worse. The first name on the acknowledgments page was God. I don’t begrudge anyone their right to believe whatever they want, but I really think people need to learn how to take credit for their own hard work. I also get a little turned off by the idea of fiction as a soapbox, a thinly-veiled medium for getting across some sort of “message”. So the bar was set pretty high for Foundling.
Now I should start by pointing out, this was D.M. Cornish’s first book. There are teething problems. It’s a little unsteady in the beginning. Also, some of the explanations were repeated too many times, especially in light of the glossary which takes up a good quarter (or thereabouts) of the book’s bulk.
But that glossary (or explicarium — spurious list of invented or obscure words drafted to apparently make some fabulous, fabricated tale more palatable), the appendices and the maps, not to mention the illustrations scattered throughout the book all add a richness to the world which may not have shone through otherwise. So many fantasy worlds are little more than sketches of the story’s immediate vicinity. The Half-Continent spreads out well beyond the borders of Foundling.
The book itself is the story of Rossamünd Bookchild and his adventures upon leaving his childhood home, Madam Opera’s Estimable Marine Society for Foundling Boys and Girls. There they had raised him to aspire to a life on the vinegar seas but to his dismay he was hired on as a lamplighter instead. They sent him out, all on his own, to make his own way to the fortress where he was to be trained. Only things, as they tend to do in books, went awry and he found himself stumbling from one dreadful situation to another.
As the tale unfolds, Rossamünd meets some dreadful human beings and some kindly monsters. He’s been raised to think of all monsters as evil and deserving of death but comes to question that after the fate of the Misbegotten Schrewd and later befriending a small monster named Freckle. Indeed, perhaps the most evil character in the book is human, as well as the most morally ambiguous.
In spite of the intended age group for Foundling, I adored every page. The vocabulary isn’t over-simplified to the point where it borders on talking down to its intended audience and it’s not empty, fluffy drivel (like another recent YA read I shan’t name here). There’s a charm about it which for some strange reason puts me in mind of Roald Dahl. The author has a gift for naming his characters (Sloughscab? Seriously?) which is just delightful. Also: not even a little bit preachy.
Read it. Now.