From the critically acclaimed author of The Book of M, a highly imaginative thriller about a young woman who discovers that a strange map in her deceased father’s belongings holds an incredible, deadly secret—one that will lead her on an extraordinary adventure and to the truth about her family’s dark history.
What is the purpose of a map?
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 . . .
Perfect for fans of Joe Hill and V.E. Schwab, The Cartographers is an ode to art and science, history and magic—a spectacularly imaginative, modern story about an ancient craft and places still undiscovered.
Thank you to William Morrow for a digital copy for review.
The Cartographers is the obsessive type of fun that academics have digging deep into the dusty, secret halls of the library. Set in the New York Public Library with its wood paneled walls, gleaming chandeliers, tall windows, and secretive archives, Peng Shepherd enchants ancient maps into a modern mystery. With a cast of sleuthing map makers at its center, a novel about obsession draws out old friends’ secrets, lies, and betrayals.
Peng Shepherd draws us a road map inspired by Science Fiction & Fantasy readers’ love for the maps in Fantasy novels.
Nell Young is the daughter of one of the NYPL’s most celebrated scholars. But when Nell comes across some very special maps in the archives, her father gets his daughter fired and her boyfriend. At the start of The Cartographers, Nell works in a shop called Classic. After being blackmailed by academia, Nell creates reproductions of ancient and rare maps for her romantically inclined boss.
It’s the characters that continued to pull me into this novel. Shepherd writes compelling characters with fun quirks.
Humphrey, her boss at Classic, has a love for the aesthetic of academia. He loves maps to have the look of ancient things. He loves the illusions that the way we, as fantasy readers, love the feeling of historical periods turning magical. He’s a tall gentle soul who loves to care for damaged things. In many ways, he adopts Nell as his daughter when her father isolated himself from her. I just think he’s such a swell gentle giant.
Authors, just wave around the ‘adoptive dad taking in the damaged child’ like a piece of candy. It’s pretty much a guarantee that I’ll be obsessed with them.
In the stories her parent’s friends tell, she’s told of their research project, where they imagine what canonical Fantasy worlds would like as a real-world map. Narnia as New York. Earthsea. Discworld. Together, these friends drink wine and make maps for their Dreamer’s Atlas.
Peng Shepherd shows us that there’s magic in modern maps. And it seems she’s saying contemporary worlds are just as magical. In Shepherd’s world, just having the map to these places provides magic. Seeing what’s behind the research gives us a door to magic. That’s what’s so interesting about this book.
A murder mystery with fabulism and dark academia (the real kind!) with a diverse cast of characters is sure to capture my attention. I’m just that nerdy. But it does have some significant faults which I’d like to mention. I’ll be very vague about spoilers.
In between the chapters are these first-person segments told by the old friends of her parents. They tell their secrets, passions, and betrayals directly to her. But it’s structured like we’re in a 1st person narrative. We see things they describe. They tell us their feelings. Other characters see things others don’t. That’s how the mystery starts to loosen.
Sometimes the problem with this structure is that it’s easy to forget how it looks once you look from a distance. The friends are like Nell’s uncles and aunties, like a found family gone wrong. My issue is they tell us things that don’t make logical sense. For example, it does not make sense to me why they describe the very intimate details of their relationships to Nell. That relationship dynamic makes no logical sense given what they tell her. These chapters also often end up creating plot holes. There are a lot of things I found messy and cluttered. Some bad execution went on in the actual structure and rules of the novel. Also, you find some things out about Nell’s parents that genuinely do not make sense. Essentially, Humphrey is the only natural parent here.
Like Gandalf trying to remember the words to open the door to another magical place, Peng Shepherd paints a story mimicking the idea that the map in our fantasy books is a key. A door for us to enter. The Cartographers is not perfect, but it is a fun adventure into the the most hidden and intimately magical places of the library.
