It’s a fantasy about maps, and that got me hooked just looking at the cover. It’s a good read, with some vivid characters, suspense, and a mystery. I like the resolution as well. But to me there’s a cosmic problem with the fantasy idea at the root of the story. Still, I’d recommend the novel.
For those of you who don’t know, cartographers are people who make maps. Maps are a representation of the world, a selective representation of the world. This is a mystery of what happens when that selection is a bit askew.
It follows the past disaster generates present-day mystery which leads to present-day danger plot line. Nell Young, Ph.D., is summoned to the New York Public Library’s Map Division, where her father has died, possibly murdered. We know there’s a bit of a mystery about how father and daughter, both cartographers, had a major falling out that led to Nell’s disgrace. It’s the entering wedge to a mystery about maps that has a fantastical element to it.
Or, you can say it’s about people: complicated people capable of errors in judgment, and even a lack of judgment on occasion. For a map causes a tightly-knit group of cartographers to become unraveled due to their personal conflicts and foibles. And it’s up to Nell, the child of two of these cartographers, to uncover the mystery and resolve it.
I like Nell. She’s a complicated person with mixed feelings and the sort of uncertainties someone with a dominant parent or parents often has. While she’s fairly well developed, Shepherd is a good enough writer to keep us wondering about what choices she will make. That’s a tough balancing act.
The story moves along at an accelerating pace. Even if you know or are able to guess some of the author’s puzzles (and I was all aglow about one of them), it’s still a page-turner. And the resolution turns on both cartography and character, which makes for a tidy resolution.
I do have two problems. One is minor. I’m not completely happy with Wally’s development. Okay, he’s meticulous. But I’m not as convinced by his transition into being obsessed, or with the other characters treating him as so threatening, at least immediately after the fire. Maybe I’m missing something here. After all, I had a similar reaction to Mr. Darcy’s apparent character change mid-novel when I first read Pride and Prejudice. But maybe a but more of a peek into Wally’s mind or background would have helped.
The other, well, SPOILER ALERT, don’t read the rest of this one paragraph unless you want a major plot development strongly hinted at. The critical map has a single instance of the central fantastical element at the root of this story. But we learn, as do several of the characters, that this fantastical element is not limited to that map, but is certainly in other maps, for the same reason it’s in this one. Which makes Wally’s original cartographic goal irrelevant: even if he succeeds, there are other completely different maps with the same fantastical element, even within the story. Indeed, in real life I ran into such a map as a teenager which in this fictional world would have had the exact same fantastical element. Shepherd sort of works around this problem by having Wally obsessed with a person, not just a map, but then says that the obsession with the map has superseded his interest in the person. And Wally’s cartographic obsession evolves, which I must acknowledge is another point in Shepherd’s favor as a writer. Still, wouldn’t he have tried to find another map with the fantastical feature, or even created one? END SPOILER ALERT.
Overall, I’d still recommend the novel. As I say, it’s a good read; it had me engaged early on, and I did the last 100 pages at a single setting. And if my cosmic problem bothers you, well, that should give you something more to think about in terms of how Shepherd’s universe works. And that in itself should be some good mind-bending entertainment.
Sillyverse 