[LISTENED TO: January 2024] The Cartographers
This book came on a recommended list and WOW did it sound great.
In fact, after the first few chapters, I was telling my wife about the great premise. But I was already warning her about the irritating characters. And, as the story went on, the premise got even better, but the characters got even more and more annoying.
And the repetitions in the book were endless. She kept repeating herself. She was saying the same thing over and over again. Perhaps in a slightly different way. But then she would circle back and confirm the repetitions. So by the end of a chapter you had read the same thing two or three times. And then she might repeat it once more.
The book grew so annoying that I almost didn’t bother finishing it (as many people on Goodreads said). But I hate not finishing things, so I did something that I never do. I sped up my audio book.
I’m not sure if I found the characters especially dull because of their actions or because of Emily Woo Zeller the audiobook narrator. But holy cow, this book dragged on. By the end of the book I had moved the audio speed up to 1.8x and for Emily Woo Zeller, it did not make it hard to follow (some of the other narrators were too sped up at that speed).
The other narrators were Ron Butler, Nancy Wu, Jason Culp, Brittany Pressley, Karen Chilton and Neil Hellegers. It was a little hard to tell when a new narrator came in, because they mostly seemed to be telling the story from different points of view. But sometimes the main narrator narrated their parts as well.
So the premise of the story (and I hope this isn’t a spoiler) is that if a map is made with an error (intentional or not), whatever is on that map actually exists–but only if you have that map. I mean, this is an amazing premise. And it is based on a real event. (more…)
I Just Read About That... 