It’s a trilogy of books by Australian Author D.M. Cornish with some of the most amazing worldbuilding I’ve ever seen, it also goes by the title “A Foundling’s Tale” in some regions.

I won’t spoil too much of the story itself but it’s setting is lovingly crafted and detailed with a lot of vernacular touches and the last hundred pages or so of each book are an “Explicarium” which gives definitions and expanded detail on a lot of the terms in the book. 

The world has humans and monsters, with stunning artwork, and a FASCINATING system of organic chemistry which takes the place of any hard magic system in the setting, with muscles powering the engines of ships, chemical treatment of clothes (called gaulding) in place of most metal armor, specially trained combat chemists, man-made monsters, monster-hunters surgically implanted with ORGANS from monsters to gain specialized powers called lahzars who have to take medicine each day to avoid rejecting their organs and dying and so much more!

There are societies of all-women monster hunters and social reformers called Calendar Claves, a black market trade in the body parts of monsters and people, cults dedicated to ancient undersea monstrosities, friendly monsters, malicious monsters, dutiful soldiers, sinister bureaucrats... I have a deep love of this series, the characters and most of all the WORLD and every day it drives me mad it’s not better known, especially since it lends itself so well to OC’s, Cosplay, and fanfic with so much going on in the books outside of the tiny corner the characters explore.