Foundling, book one of the Monster Blood Tattoo Trilogy by D.M.Cornish.
"Beware the monsters, me boy! Ye've been safe in here all yer life, but out there..."
Rossamünd Bookchild, a foundling from the city of Boschenburg, has lived his entire life at Madam Opera's Estimable Marine Society For Foundling Boys And Girls. He is often bullied for his girlish name and his small size and if it weren't for his dormitory masters Fransitart and Craumpalin, and Verline, a parlour-maid he would be having a horrible time.
Rossamünd dreams of heroism on the vinegar seas, of great battles with slavering sea monsters, of becoming a vinegaroon in the Empire's service. So when he is summoned to begin life as a lamplighter by a leer named Sebastipole he is shocked and disappointed.
A Lamplighters life is a life of adventure he is told, "a life of land-locked boredom" he thinks as he sets out on one of the most dangerous, interesting and certainly exciting journeys of his life.
Foundling contains the beginning of a marvellous world where mechanics are replaced by bio-mechanics and alchemy mystery and monsters abound. Fun and easy to read, I like it.
