In a gorgeous package--deckle-edge pages, roomy white space and elegant maps--debut author S.E. Grove introduces a plucky 13-year-old heroine named Sophia Tims in the first of a planned trilogy. The book will attract Harry Potter fans and others who enjoy plunging into a world with alternate universes.
It is the summer of 1891 in Boston, and Sophia has been in the care of her uncle, Shadrack Ellis, ever since her explorer parents disappeared 10 years ago. Readers hit the ground running, as Sophia witnesses Shadrack, the world's finest cartologist, making a case to Parliament against closing the borders of their native New Occident. Ever since the Great Disruption, time has settled differently in different parts of the world; some civilizations are less advanced, other more so. Shadrack is one of the few who advocates permeable borders, and he can read maps from many eras. He fails to sway Parliament, and a brawl breaks out. Sophia flees and winds up on the wharf, having lost all track of time ("to her infinite mortification, [she] had no internal clock"), and stumbles into the line for a circus. There she spies a serene feathered boy, "like a beautiful bird, trapped in midair and dragged down to earth."
Big events happen in rapid succession. When Sophia gets home, Shadrack takes her into a map room she'd never known existed, and teaches her to unlock maps of metal, cloth, clay and glass. Each releases the memories of those who helped construct it, and Sophia experiences these memories as if they were her own. Shadrack also tells her of the carta mayor, a memory map of the entire world that some believe exists, and others think is myth. But when Shadrack is kidnapped, all indications point to a captor who believes in the carta mayor--and believes Shadrack knows its whereabouts.
Grove explores haunting questions, posed by Sophia in terms that young readers can contemplate: Is it right to experience someone's memory, to "take it," as Sophia puts it? What is the nature of time, and why does it seem to expand and contract? And why was the boy Theo--the "beautiful bird"--hiding in her uncle's house after his disappearance? Can she trust him? And always lurking is the larger mystery of what happened to Sophia's parents--if the borders shut down, will she ever find them? Wonderful, wild characters populate her journey--kind pirates and metal-teethed villains, blind Grandmother Pearl who perceives far more than the sighted (including Sophia's gifts), the Lachrima who weep ceaselessly, and Blanca, who preaches the restoration of world peace but uses violence to achieve her ends.
The bookmaking behind this first novel is as elegant as the maps within it. This would make an ideal family read-aloud; as an independent read it's best undertaken in one sitting. Riveting. --Jennifer M. Brown
Shelf Talker: This mind-blowing debut from S.E. Grove takes readers deep into a time-shifting world that requires multiple maps and a moral compass.