Review by New York Times Review
the publishers of S.E. Grove's novel, an ambitious and quixotic high fantasy called "The Glass Sentence," smartly slapped upon the dust jacket an assessment by Megan Whalen Turner: "Not since Philip Pullman's 'The Golden Compass' have I seen such an original and compelling world built inside a book." A sensible precaution; it's easy to suppose that "The Glass Sentence" was written in reaction to Pullman's magisterial "His Dark Materials." I am hardly one to lodge a complaint about that. Great works create their own gravitational field; Pullman wrote under the influence of Milton. The question remains: Does this admirer pull off something worthwhile of her own? I'm not sure I know the answer. Still, uncertainty leaves me in a state of quivery receptivity. To examine this first novel for what it does well is rewarding enough, and I suspect good work, even braver and more coherent, lies ahead. To start, it's refreshing for a major fantasy novel to be set somewhere other than Europe. "The Glass Sentence" occurs in a late-19th-century New World of dizzyingly ambiguous parameters. The prologue avers that, about 90 years earlier, the "Great Disruption" shattered the normal progress of time and arrangement of nations and eras. Though the Atlantic states seem more or less to have remained intact, other areas of the world have become mired in what are called different Ages. If I sound tentative, I feel so. One would think that I was describing a time-slip fantasy. Yet the term "Ages" seems to imply not different epochs but alternative histories that regional development might have taken. Otherwise why would South America be called Late Patagonia? The American Rockies and Pacific Coast are known as the Baldlands. Europe has drifted into silence. This global discordance is presented with a distinct tone of eschatological terror such as we feel when we watch the latest disaster on the Weather Channel. Young Sophia Tims is living with her uncle, the Bostonian "cartologer" Shadrack Elli, when the xenophobic local legislature threatens to close New Occident's borders to all travelers without papers. Sophia is concerned that her parents, who disappeared years earlier on some distant investigative task, will be barred from returning. When Shadrack is kidnapped and his map collection ransacked, Sophia joins forces with an unreliable Baldlands boy from a traveling circus and embarks upon a mad journey, by train and pirate ship, to what we know as Central America. While trying to save Shadrack, the children are pursued by scarred goons with grappling hooks. It's intense. Dickens, Shakespeare and T.H. White knew that earnestness and urgency are heightened by occasional farce, or a droll comic agent. S.E. Grove offers us only one such memorable outsize creation, a mouthy pirate dame named Calixta. We crave more of her than we get. The other characters, if novel, are somber and monointentional. The serviceable prose affords little grip or glister except for the wonderful title. Nonetheless, the book is refulgent with nervy invention. Wheeled vessels of upright, living trees, named boldevelas. Faceless wraiths, called the Lachrima. The carta mayor, a lake-size map. And dinner dishes made of chocolate, suitable for eating as dessert! Also intense. In an unmoored world, the most prized skill is the reading of maps, and in this Sophia becomes increasingly competent. (Remember Lyra Belacqua's unnerving capacity to decipher the meaning of the golden compass.) Maps in "The Glass Sentence," though, are more than two-dimensional diagrams in the Cartesian coordinate system. Maps can be compilations of memory; and maps made of different materials might be layered one upon the other. It is in this central metaphor that "The Glass Sentence" spoke most persuasively to me. We speak of "reading" maps, and what are books stacked upon one another - books by Pullman, Shakespeare, Dickens, Grove - but maps of human apprehension and interpretation, each intensifying the others? Though I got a little lost following the strategies and ambitions of various potentates, factotums, seers and rogues, I am in no doubt about the energy of S.E. Grove as a full-fledged, pathfinding fantasist. "The Glass Sentence" is named "Book 1." I look forward to the next installment to place upon the pile. Intensely. GREGORY MAGUIRE is the author of "Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West" and the forthcoming "Egg & Spoon."
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [June 8, 2014]
Review by Booklist Review
In the late eighteenth century, a great temporal disruption plunged the world into chaos some continents remained in the present, while others were thrust into the distant past, a far future, or an ever-shifting melange of ages. A century after the disruption, Sophie, who lives with her famed mapmaker uncle Shadrack, arrives home one day to find their house ransacked, her uncle kidnapped, and their secret map room housing mystical maps containing memories emptied of all of its treasures. Was Shadrack secretly hiding the key to a map capable of healing the rift in time? Together with her new friend Theo, Sophie embarks on an adventure to distant lands to find her uncle. Encountering pirates, hidden cities, undiscovered ages, and legendary creatures along the way, brave Sophie uses her ample smarts and powers of observation to unlock deep secrets. Though the plot occasionally seems overstuffed, debut author Grove wraps the complex central premise of this series opener in lavish detail and brisk plot turns to sweep readers along through her fascinating, fully realized fantasy world.--Hunter, Sarah Copyright 2014 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
In the alternate Earth of Grove's thrilling, time-bending debut, first in the Mapmakers series, the world was sliced up, seemingly at random, by the Great Disruption of 1799 and reassembled with numerous present, prehistoric, and future "Ages" all connected. In New Occident, roughly the eastern third of the former United States, it's now 1891, but to the north exists the Prehistoric Snows, and northern Africa is ruled by the ancient Pharaohs. Thirteen-year-old Sophia Tims is pulled into a web of intrigue when Shadrack, her famous "cartologer" uncle (half mapmaker and half magician), is kidnapped by religious zealots looking for the legendary "carta mayor, a hidden map that traces the memories of the whole world from the beginning of time to the present." Joined by a boy named Theo and a ship full of pirates, she travels to Nochtland, a kingdom in what was once Mexico, in search of answers. It's a cracking adventure, and Grove bolsters the action with commentary on xenophobia and government for hire, as well as a fascinating system of map magic. Ages 10-up. Agent: Dorian Karchmar, William Morris Endeavor. (June) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by School Library Journal Review
Gr 6-9-When The Great Disruption of 1799 broke time apart, the world was thrown into chaos. Cassandra Campbell's well-modulated tones make Grove's high fantasy world, with its complex characters and landscapes, entirely believable. From teens to terrors, Campbell guides listeners through an alternate Earth filled with astonishing maps and extraordinary beings. © Copyright 2016. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Horn Book Review
In a world fractured into disparate eras during the Great Disruption, Sophia Tims is entrusted with the Tracing Glass (containing a memory thought to be the cause of the Disruption) when her uncle, the cartographer Shadrack Elli, is kidnapped. An intricate fantasy with a Gilded-Age feel, this solidly constructed quest features maps of all kinds and unusual steampunk-flavored elements. (c) Copyright 2014. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
