A regular feature of sweaty bloggopotamus, Friday Reviews is a look at from one to a google plex things I've read, watched, heard, felt, tasted and/or smelled. While I hope these reviews to be of recent or interesting things, they will always be of things I love or hate or which have surpassed or sorely missed my expectations. In other words, its my two cents (which after adjusting for intellectual inflation and multiplying by the 'insight factor' and dividing by the quality of the review, is actually one cent - and that's on my better days).
All right, I didn't read a book called Cruorpunxis, but I did just finish the Monster Blood Tattoo trilogy, and in the books the term the author uses for a monster blood tattoo is 'cruorpunxis'.
Wow. This was such a fresh read for me. A new kind of world which is obviously based on one far more familiar, which becomes more obvious the further you read. It's a YA (Young Adult) novel and is essentially the coming of age story of one Rossamund Bookchild, who is a foundling, more literally than most as this is Cornish's term for orphan.
The book is full of bad guys and good guys and very few characters who are of ambiguous nature. "This might become limiting", I thought to myself, "but for now it allows for some good conflict."
I was warned before I started the series that the author spends a lot of time 'world building'. I prepared myself for the likes of one of Jordan's behemoth boooks full of this lord and lady wearing these colors, and that mayor wearing that kind of suit, etc. But instead was met by different names/words for many common and some quite uncommon things. It was a nice mix, I thought.
I liked this book so much that I recommended it to my ex-wife, with the caveat that I hadn't read the rest of the series, and passing on what my librarian had told me about the world building.
This books gets 4.5 out of 5 stars.
You know all that stuff about world building and about how ther person recommending these books to me said it as a warning? Well, Cornish added so much of it in the second book as if to make up for not adding some extra in the first book. I don't know who the editor was, but she was slacking on the job.
Right around page 400 as I was ready to just put the book down and never pick ut up again, I got to the bookmark Elizabeth had been using in her unsuccessful attempt to get through the book (she's the one who recommended and lent the books). I fully understand why she stopped. To be honest, the only reason I read on after a day or two break was so that I could tell her that she picked a good place to stop, but after one more relatively short chapter of boringness, it picked up and Cornish made up for the middle 200 pages by cramming in almost too much action and story development. This 600+ page book could have been a really good 350 page book, really, really good even. But in the form that it ended up being, it was too damn long and boring in the middle.
This book gets a 6.36457 out of 10 on the review-o-meter.
So, the third book is set up to either make or break the series. If I didn't have an audiobook version to listen to for part of it, I wouldn't even have started. (I read the first two, which is a big deal for me.) And, while there were points where the editor was yet again asleep at the pen, for the most part the story moves on in a pleasant enough manner.
The author does something in this book, that he did in the second book, but is a much bigger deal in the third because it puts forth the resolution of story arcs, and that is move the story along with a letter from a character not seen since at least 500 pages ago. Two of the minor villains from the first book meet their end in the third, but not in a way that impacts teh main character at all - but he learns about it in letters. One of the main villains from the second book is likewise dealt with. And while it could have worked, the main character hardly reacts to it at all. It's like Cornish suddenly went, "Oh crap! I forgot to tell wrap up the XYZ storyline! Here's a little note to explain what happened."
The end of the book and the trilogy is obvious from the first part of the book, but that doesn't mean that he handled anything wrong. It was a satisfying conclusion, I felt.
This book gets a B grade.
The series, which was originally marketed as "Monster Blood Tattoo", was rebranded "The Foundlings Tale". Lame. I hate it when they do this. But, this isn't the author's fault, it's the damn publishers trying to get more money and make it harder for librarians and library users to keep track of what's going on.
