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A Bright Light In Fantasy Genre

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By AMY SMITH LINTON

The Tampa Tribune

Published: July 6, 2008

"Lamplighter: Monster Blood Tattoo, Book 2" by D.M. Cornish (Putnam, $20)

When last we heard - in D.M. Cornish's fantastic first novel, "Foundling" - from the unfortunately named Rossamünd Bookchild, the orphan boy had avoided death at the claws of monsters and perfidy of human villains.

He had left his friends at Madam Opera's Maritime Home for Orphans and traveled through dangerous wastelands, falling in with the Brenden Rose, the glamorous and dangerous fulgar (monster slayer). In this second volume of the projected fantasy trilogy, Rossamünd continues to be plagued by bad luck and an uncertain conscience as he starts his apprenticeship as a lamplighter.

Although Rossamünd understands it is a crime against mankind to show mercy to the monsters of the wastes, he cannot help but wonder whether the myriad creatures deserve to be killed. And he suspects that someone within the lamplighter fortress has a hand in the very dark art of "habilisms" - making patchwork monsters from the scraps of corpses. But he has little time to consider his theory before being shipped off to the most dangerous lamplighter outpost of all: Wormstool.

Rossamünd's strange and wonderful story stands with the best of the fantasy genre, with better characterization than J.R.R. Tolkien or Robert Silverberg, a more outlandish setting than J.K. Rowling or Tamara Pierce, and the same breadth of vision as Philip Pullman or Ursula K. Le Guin.

Amy Smith Linton of Tampa is a freelance writer.

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