Monster Blood Tattoo

Rossamund Bookchild, an orphaned boy saddled with a girl's name, leaves Madam Opera's Estimable Marine Society for Foundling Boys and Girls to begin his career as a lamplighter of the Half Continent. The humans of the Half Continent are engaged in a permanent war against the monsters of the wilds - the bogles, the shrewds, the grinnlings. And out alone in the world for the very first time, Rossamund encounters more than a few of them on his journey to begin his new - and dangerous - career. He also meets his first lahzar - a fighter of monsters - and sees his first monster-blood tattoo, the mark of a kill. (http://www.thebookbag.co.uk/cornishtattoo.htm)