The Cartographers

How could I just like and not love a book about historians, BIPOC found family, and adventure? Read on.

Anyone who gets excited over anything historic, vintage, and "the smell of old pages" would probably enjoy this book too if they can overlook the plot holes, underdeveloped characters, awkward pacing. The most glaring plot hole was the flimsy reasoning behind Tam choosing to leave her husband and daughter and stay in Agloe--choosing a map and an empty town over easing her daughter? That's rich.

For the first third of the book, I was so invested in Nell, a shunned map conservator/researcher/copier (she didn't create official maps from scratch so she's not a cartographer), so when the book split into 5+ first-person perspectives I almost didn't want to finish.

Narrative focus wavered many more times with too many characters launching into random flashbacks, which made me want two different books or at least a longer, more linear story to properly develop all The Cartographers.

Then, this book's first half turned into a game of Clue, which turned already underdeveloped characters into caricatures. There were too many moments (grocery store-cooking flashback anyone?) when the pacing was *just* getting good only to be pulled back into a slow, drawn-out flashback.

The magical realism was definitely a high point, but the rules were too vague. There were just more than a few things that pulled me out of the story, especially the map mechanics.

The tertiary characters like Snow and Humphrey were some of my favorites too, but some of the love triangles seemed too contrived--some characters didn't show romantic interest until it was convenient for the story.

The interplay between Nell and The Cartographers when all the cards were on the table was also entertaining, but it took until 66% of the book to get there. I also loved the reveals of some of the Cartographers' true identities.

I loved a lot of things about this book, and I really wanted to love it overall, but I had to settle for just liking this book instead.

This originally appeared at The Irresponsible Reader.

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“What do you know about that?” she asked.

"Not much,” Nell lied. “Ramona told me it was destroyed a long time ago.”

Eve grimaced. “It was dangerous, that thing. Cursed. Everyone who touched it got hurt.” Her eyes drifted back to the compass rose symbol. “And it’s still not over.”

WHAT'S THE CARTOGRAPHERS ABOUT?

This is hard—I tried to describe this to some friends earlier, and I tripped over myself so many times while trying to make this sound enticing while not giving anything away. I'd call that conversation a rough draft of this section, but it was so bad that Anne Lamott's going to have to revise the section in Bird by Bird about sh***y first drafts.

Nell Young has had a life-long obsession with maps—her parents have doctorates in cartography and it might as well have been encoded in her DNA. She and her boyfriend had internships in the New York Public Library where her father works, too. Then one day, she finds a couple of maps in a forgotten corner of the Library, one of which is an old gas station map. Her father flips out over what she found, for reasons she can't really understand—a major argument ensues and she's fired. So is Felix, her boyfriend. Not just that, but her father goes on to wage a war on their reputations—they're finished in academia.

Felix leaves the field and Nell goes to work for an Internet company making faux historical maps. Years pass without Nell speaking to her father, then he dies suddenly. While looking through his office, Nell finds that gas station map and is flabbergasted. Why would he keep that thing?

Nell starts asking questions and learning things about her family, and a whole lot more.

VISUAL AIDS

As is fitting for a book about maps, the novel has some. Not many, most of the ones in the book are described, not seen. But there are just enough—the important ones—to ensure the reader can visualize what's going on—we see what Nell and the rest see.

It's a great touch—I love that Shepherd included those—I'm one of those fantasy readers who rarely glances at the maps in those books—but I spent time on these.

I COULDN'T STOP THINKING ABOUT...

Last week, I quipped that this book was "very Mr. Penumbra-esque." This was too blithe and flippant. And yet...I couldn't get it out of my mind.

Shepherd doesn't write anything like Sloan, the worlds are completely different, and the way they approach character and narrative don't really overlap. Really I think the only thing I can point to that is a demonstrable similarity is the way that they approach Big Tech companies—but this novel's Haberson Global is more like the company in Sourdough, anyway, so I'm not sure it counts.

Again, I couldn't stop thinking about Mr. Penumbra’s 24‑Hour Bookstore. It's about some dedicated and brilliant people whose passion for and pursuit of something that everyone else in the world pretty much takes for granted. There's a little more to it, but I'd have to spoil stuff about both books, so I'm not going to get into it.

SO, WHAT DID I THINK ABOUT THE CARTOGRAPHERS?

I never, not for one minute, thought that a book about maps and mapmakers would be this riveting. And I was wrong. Not that I've spent that much time thinking about books about mapmakers, but you get the idea.

I've read some pretty strong thrillers that weren't as gripping as this. Shepherd paced this perfectly and kept building the tension in just the right manner. Even when I got to the point where I'd figured everything out—even the mind-bendy bits—and was just waiting for Nell and the rest to catch up, I was on the edge of my seat. That tension extends to things that happened before the novel's present time—we'd get chapters of first-person narration from some of Nell's father's friends from when she was a toddler. I knew where certain characters would end up because you'd met them already—but that didn't make the uncertainty about what was going to happen to them in the memory much easier to take.

But this isn't just a thriller—it's a story about a family. One of the sweetest, strangest, and saddest found families you're going to run into. A mantra that runs throughout this book the way Uncle Ben's "With great power..." runs through certain movies* is that the purpose of a map is to connect people. The way that these people are connected would be difficult to map out—the routes certainly are intricate and varied—but the connections are strong and lasting.

* Yes, I know it's from the comics first—but the comics rarely, if ever, beat that drum the way some of the movies do.

I was less than satisfied with the ending—because I thought it was headed somewhere else, and then it seemed to aim in a different direction, and it ended up in a third. I think the expectation problems are all mine, they're not from the text. I'm also sure that the ending we get is stronger than what I expected. Still, it's hard to for me accept what we got since I'd spent 100 or so pages sure we were getting something else.

None of that changes the bottom line of this post—you're going to want to read this book. I strongly recommend it. There are few books like it in the world, and that's a shame. But it means that there's every reason to read this.

Boring

I don't know why this book doesn't have a higher rating... Not many books make me want to immediately start it again as this one did.

The great beginning made the rest of the book feel like a slap in the face. An underdeveloped, at times uninteresting slap in the face. But because of the good beginning and the sheer potential that this book exuded, I'll give it 2 stars.

The Cartographers hooked me right away with its mix of mystery, history, and just enough magic to keep things interesting. The concept—maps that hold hidden power—felt fresh and creative.

The character development stood out. Every character had real weight, and their personal histories and motives came together in a way that made me care about the outcome. The family dynamics, in particular, added some real tension that kept things grounded.

The pacing was solid. It moved fast enough to keep me turning pages but gave enough time to build up the bigger picture. I started to figure out where it was going before the end, but that didn't take anything away from how much I enjoyed it. The ending wrapped things up well and kept me locked in to the last page.

I enjoyed this book about maps and the ways they bring people together or separate them. I had heard about the phantom settlement Agloe before, but I didn't know the whole story. I was glad that Nell's father requested a Sanborn Map as I had not only heard about them but had used them to find an ancestor's childhood home!

the idea was interesting but started falling apart in the middle and then it hit the fan

4.5

It was okay... I didn't like the protagonist at all and the magical realism was unexpected and felt out of place. Some parts were okay and I did enjoy reading this but I didn't like the book.

2.5 stars.

It made me a bit angry, because of all the Paper Towns, they chose Agloe, which is already in John Green's novel. But beyond that, the plot dragged a bit and nothing much really happened.

I enjoyed the book, it was a fun read. But I found a lot of the “reveals” felt pretty contrived. Regardless, a fun read. 

I listened to this on audio but also read along with my kindle book.

This was so good. I think i would actually rate this 4.5 stars. I was so invested in the story of Nell and the Cartographers. I didn't see that ending though, honestly a little lack luster. I want a more defined ending personally.

DNF: this was just not stimulating for me. It's a shame because the plot had a lot of interesting niche points, but overall this was just not executed well. Like all of a sudden it's about murder? I think I was hoping for more Indiana jones less agatha christie. Either way, wasn't for me.

I feel like this is what I wanted the secret history to be like

”I thought we were going to be friends forever. I thought nothing could tear us apart.”

More like books-about-maps and not books-about-books, but similar?

Kind of a mediocre story with a super fun premise. A weird intersection of thriller, maps, and the New York Public Library is where you'll find this book hanging out, and honestly it's a very tough book to rate because of it. I don't have a lot to compare it to.

Nell Young is an ex-cartographer, who once had her dream job working with maps in the NYPL, but was fired by her dad after a disagreement involving an old box of Junk and a gas station map. Now she produces fake replicas to hang on hotel walls, but dreams often about returning to her old job. That old gas station map comes back to haunt her after her father is found dead at his desk at the NYPL, and she soon discovers that it's more dangerous than she ever knew.

Larger story/ending thoughts and spoilers:

So, like, how cool is it to be able to go literally anywhere as long as you have a map that says you can go there? I loved that idea, and wanted the author to play around with it a little more than just setting the story in Agloe, NY (which is a real (fake) place, actually) and creating convenient bolt holes for the characters to hide in for plot reasons.I felt a little let down by the mystery as well. Once I could see where the story was going with Nell meeting the old friend group one-by-one, it became glaringly obvious that Wally was William, just by name alone. A mystery that is no longer a mystery becomes a bit boring to me.

It also read like a love letter to the NYPL. Which, don't get me wrong, deserves all the love letters ever, but got a bit repetitive in story format. Nell waxes on for paragraphs about all the details she misses from the NYPL, details that no doubt exist but the average reader probably has a hard time connecting with.

So, in non-spoilery general terms, I felt let down by the mystery, but did love the overall idea of the book. It was an entertaining enough read, but maybe not entertaining enough to rate it higher.

Overall, The Cartographers did not really do much for me. After the opening chapters and the mysterious death at the New York Library, the book just fizzled out, and I became pretty disinterested. I was hoping that the more magical elements might come together and offer up something fun, but it was ultimately confusing and riddled with head scratching events that could have been solved quite easily with a few heart-to-heart conversations.

// Cartographer Nell Young is called to the New York Public Library after her father, Dr. Daniel Young, dies at his desk. She discovers a map hidden away in a secret compartment in his desk, prompting her to investigate the circumstances behind his death. //

The map that Nell finds in the desk is the same map that had ended her promising career at the NYPL. She had found it in a box seven years prior, informed her father about it, and he had her fired. Since then, Nell could not find a job in the field and has been working for a fledgling artwork re-creation shop. Now, this is pretty much where everything goes south for me. Nell begins to piece together information from her parents' past from old college friends. These flashback segments are pretty dry and lack any real progression to the overall pace and plot. I was waiting for some sort of revelation or juicy tidbit to emerge, but nothing really did. The source of tension was a black car that kept following Nell and a few police that show up at inopportune times. That's about it. Some other associates end up dying at the library, but it seems that most of the main characters, and the police, for that matter, could not be bothered. It never really gave a sense of any looming danger, which was kind of disappointing. If any danger did rear its head, there was a quick out, which everyone seemed to be mystified about, me included.

// “Why had he let her work so hard her whole life, and then ruined it all in one moment?” //

I feel like it's hard to really delve too much into the relationships because there is not much to cling on to. The other thing that really felt underwhelming was the map creation ideas. The Dreamers' Atlas felt more like an exploratory art project than something more profound, and I was kind of baffled by the company Felix worked for. The AI was brought in as a counterargument to paper maps and their usefulness, but it just didn't have any teeth.

// “Maps were love letters written to times and places their makers had explored. They did not control the territory- they told its stories.” //

Other than the thin investigative portions, we learn a bit about a magical town, let's say. Now I enjoy magical realism just as much as the next person, but I need a bit more to go on. I just wish their was more imaginative descriptions, some stakes, some fascinating rules, anything to keep it interesting. I had a hard time looking past some of the plot points, but like I said at the beginning, I just do not think this was for me.

──∗ ⋅◈⋅ ∗── Extra

There are too many ways to give spoilers if I review this book in detail, so I will keep it general. It's about Nell Young, who was considered an up and coming scholar in cartography, next in line to take her father's place as the Map Curator at the New York Public Library, until she fell from grace when she found what she thought were rare and precious maps in a box labeled “junk” in the basement. The book begins 7 years after that, Nell and her father having been estranged for all of that time, when she gets a call from one of his colleagues asking her to come to the NYPL, where she finds out her father has died in his office. The novel tells the story of Nell searching for the answers to all the questions she has about their estrangement, her father's legacy, and his death.

The central feature of the story, once you see it, is pretty interesting, but it takes almost half the book to come fully into view. The author is good at creating suspense and keeping you with her as the story develops, but in retrospect I wondered how much of all that development was necessary. Soon after that, I made some guesses about how things would turn out and, sad to say, I was right. I still enjoyed reading it and you might too, if you enjoy stories about academic scholarship.

I enjoyed this book, and would recommend for anyone who is looking for a story with a little magical realism thrown in, with themes about friendship, family, art versus science, sacrifice, and obsession. This was a book club pick, and there was a lot to discuss.

I threw the penalty flag with emphasis, several times during the second half of the book. How can you whip out something magical in the plot and not give any infrastructure to its existence?

How the heck do these places come into being? According to the plot, they just are and the characters, I have to assume, are ok with that.The author mentions individuals can recognize these places when looking at a map and yet give no details as they do it. Is it something about these individuals? Their mindsets? Comparing 1 map meticulously to another edition of the same map? What?

To the positive, I'll say I've not run into a plot involving map mysteries so this was interesting, and the audio narrator does a good job of making her character voices distinct enough for me to catch when there's a shift in speaker.

3.5 stars

The premise of this story, that mapmakers could create these “phantom settlements,” had fascinating implications for humanity and our relationship to the nature of reality. This becomes more of a plot device than a story in The Cartographers.

Shepherd decided to take the focus another way and make the story about interpersonal conflicts, romantic, family, friendships etc. That might have been entertaining if the characters had been better defined. As it was, each character had the same voice when telling their part of the narration and none of them stood out as especially interesting or likable. Or even fun enough to hate. Characteristics were told rather than shown. (For instance, the college-age version of Daniel Young is described as fun and energetic; when did we ever see those traits?)

Additionally, I would have liked more focus on the Haberson map and how the antagonist planned to use it for his plot. It wasn't clear and was simply brushed aside once some of the family drama was resolved.

A book with potential that feels underdeveloped.

DNF @ 9%. I'm trying to be more committed to DNF-ing as soon as I know a book isn't for me and this one is just not for me. Even after her father's death and her discovering there is something going on with this map I still don't feel the mystery and tension building. I can't bring myself to care about the storyline and from what I've read of other reviewers I don't think that feeling will improve. The plot synopses sounded fun but I was completely bored the whole first 4 chapters and just decided to give up. I don't even care enough to skip to the last few chapters and find out what happens at the end. 1/5 stars for just being uninteresting.

The concept at the heart of this semi-fantastic novel is intriguing. Unfortunately, the story could be more engaging, exciting and thrilling. Not terrible, but not as good as I thought it would be.??

This book had a bit of everything! There was mystery, humour, love, thrills and even magic! I only found this book thanks to a Facebook group!