Buzzy Fiction in Review: The Cartographers

Summary: The premise of this book was more compelling than the book itself.

Nell has loved maps her whole life, following in the footsteps of her father, a famous cartographer. Just as her career is taking off, her father ruins her professional reputation over an argument about an old gas station map. Nell doesn’t talk to her father for years, but when he’s found dead with the gas station map hidden like a prized possession, she becomes obsessed with understanding why it was so important to him. This leads her into the path of a dangerous collector who has been destroying copies of this map by any means necessary.

Sadly for me, I found this book to have a fantastic premise but poor execution. It was also lacking some qualities that I think are important to make it an excellent example of any of the three genres it’s billed as – a mystery, speculative fiction, and literary fiction.

First, I was interested in this book as a mystery – what’s up with the value attached to this cheap map and who’s after it? I’m disappointed to report that not only did I guess several smaller twists 100+ pages in advance, the author’s note spoiled the main reveal of the whole book. I found that infuriating! If you’re going to read this, definitely skip the author’s note. Because of the spoilers and predictable twists, this wasn’t successful as a suspenseful read.

Second, I quickly got invested in the fascinating world building going on in this book. Some of the impact of that world building was reduced by the author’s note spoiler. More importantly, it never quite came together in a way that made sense. The mysterious collector’s motives are explained at the end but I still don’t understand what he expected to accomplish. Lack of internal logic in a story is pet peeve of mine. In this case, it made the ending feel anticlimactic.

Last but not least, this book didn’t include thoughtful enough takes on its themes to feel literary to me. The writing was good, so if you want to use literary to mean “well written”, this meets that bar. But it didn’t have anything interesting to say about human nature or the obvious themes (maps as power, found family, etc) that it might address.

I enjoyed getting to know the characters and the author seemed delightful in podcast interviews. The premise of this book was fantastic and the author’s enthusiasm for maps was quite fun. However, this lacked depth, great world building, or any real suspense. I wanted to love it, but I’m not sure I’d give another book by the author a try.

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