The Cartographers

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