The Cartographers
Book: The Cartographers by Peng Shepherd
Synopsis:
Nell Young’s whole life and greatest passion is cartography. Her father, Dr. Daniel Young, is a legend in the field and Nell’s personal hero. But she hasn’t seen or spoken to him ever since he cruelly fired her and destroyed her reputation after an argument over an old, cheap gas station highway map.
But when Dr. Young is found dead in his office at the New York Public Library, with the very same seemingly worthless map hidden in his desk, Nell can’t resist investigating. To her surprise, she soon discovers that the map is incredibly valuable and exceedingly rare. In fact, she may now have the only copy left in existence…because a mysterious collector has been hunting down and destroying every last one — along with anyone who gets in the way.
But why?
To answer that question, Nell embarks on a dangerous journey to reveal a dark family secret and discovers the true power that lies in maps…
Rating: ⭐⭐.5/5
My Thoughts: This book is a decent foray into fantasy for readers like me who don’t tend to love the genre. There premise is fully dependent on magic and suspension of disbelief but it also definitely falls in the ✨ magical realism ✨ subgenre. It takes place in New York, the characters have mostly realistic career paths, and the world around the characters is full of regular people living regular lives.
If this book hadn’t been filled with so many frustrating inconsistencies and plot holes it might’ve felt a lot like The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue. Unfortunately, the wonder and cozy feeling provided by a book so centered around maps and the NYPL feel increasingly further away as you get deeper into the book.
The initial definition of phantom settlements makes sense, but the book is inconsistent in its application of their magical qualities. Sometimes they need to be on an official, printed map in order to exist and sometimes they can be part of doodled maps on the back of a business card. When all the maps containing a particular settlement seem to be destroyed, only some of the people in the settlement are sent back to the real world. I get that magic intrinsically bends the rules of reality but it shouldn’t mean things are just made up as you go along. Sometimes it really felt like each scenario introduced a new set of magical rules just so the plot could go in a particular direction.
It was also hard for me to wrap my mind around the “junk box incident” holding as much gravity as it did. I get that Nell’s dad was startled by seeing such a huge, volatile piece of his past reappear. I get that Nell was an intern and her dad was at the top of the NYPL hierarchy. I get that Nell’s dad wanted to protect her. But that still doesn’t add up to blackballing her entire career and leaving her to rebuild her life alone. We only get to meet Dr. Young in flashbacks and his actions as a young man and young father don’t fit with the way he treated Nell after she found the junk box.
My other problem is that I still don’t understand what Nell did to the map at the very end of the book. I don’t want to give away spoilers so I won’t go into specifics but I have no idea if I’m just dumb or if the specifics of such a pivotal moment were meant to be left to the imagination.
On the bright side, this book does get major points from me for having a main character named Helen (although it loses points for giving her a nickname)!
This book has good bones but in order to fully enjoy it you need to suspend disbelief on a multitude of levels.
You can get your own copy of The Cartographers here or borrow it from your local library.
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