Peng Shepherd

The only explanation I can give for the broad disparity in opinions on this book is that it is a broad thinking, brilliant metaphor and thorough interrogation on relationships (romantic, familial, societal, self) masquerading as a light, magical fiction twist on the dystopian apocalypse genre. If you are comparing it to The Stand, it might feel silly. If you are comparing it to The Alchemist, it's a treasure.

This book has given me more to parse and think about than any other book I've read show more in a while. Bravo. show less

This terrifically-well-written dystopian novel is engrossing and thrilling, as well as thought-provoking and -- for lack of a better word -- deep. Very few science fiction novels can do that. This is one that will keep you up nights reading it, and keep you up nights afterwards thinking about the issues it raises. Those issues center around memory, connections to others, survival and no less than what it means to be human.

It is beautifully, hauntingly written, and the reader is constantly show more thrust into the position of asking herself, "what would I do here?" By the end, I was desperate to start writing down my life story, as a way to stave off the inevitable forgetting that occurs -- if not to oneself, then to history. How does one make one's story, stories, and life itself permanent and unforgettable?

There is a fair amount of suspension of disbelief necessary here going in, dealing with the source/reasons/logic behind the events. And then a fair amount more required of the reader, towards the last 100 pages, when an even more illogical/unbelievable/ascientific thing occurs that elicited a scornful "Come ON!" from me. A certain amount of illogic is tolerable in science fiction, but I felt the direction the author took the book towards the end really defied the limits of my patience. show less

The Book of M reads like a very long game of exquisite corpse where more and more stuff happens in a never-ending logorrheal discharge of events; and that may sound like I didn't like it, but this game of exquisite corpse actually made for an entertaining book, the kind of 'entertaining' where from one sentence to the next you will say "whaaa?" and finding yourself agog with the notion that someone exists in the world, a writer named Peng Shepherd, whose connection with logic is loose enough show more to have written it.

That's the part I liked. The part I didn't like is that the book is essentially a very long con, a quest story so familiar that it all but promises a certain kind of ending, but delivers instead a "fooled you" reveal in its final pages that left me disgruntled. show less

3.5...Some aspects of this I loved - especially the thought of maps and what they have meant for the history of the world - and how they have changed so drastically in our digital age. When I think how the world map has been re-drawn, just in my lifetime, and appears to be thwarting boundaries again in Russia, it raises questions of immutability and even reality. Cartography is another profession that has become antiquated, yet is the loss of a real art. But virtually visiting places on show more Google maps is pretty cool, I have to admit. All these deep thoughts aside, the story is a mystery/fantasy that was a little too implausible at some points, and like time-travel books, had me occasionally confused. Still I enjoyed being along for the ride. Nell Young has a PhD in cartography and hoped to follow in her esteemed father Daniel's footsteps (as well as her legendary deceased mother, Tamara), but her father himself truncates her career when she finds a box of rare maps in the NYPL's basement, that he insists are forgeries. They don't speak for 7 years, and she is black-listed in the profession, reduced to making 'fake' maps for home décor. When her father dies suddenly and unexpectedly, she is pulled into a mystery of his death, as well as the importance of a certain 1930s NY state road map that he has hidden for her. As she slowly begins to piece together her parents' past, the truth is so fantastical, but also so dire in its current-day implications that Nell is quickly in over her head. Her parents were part of a group of grad school students in the early 1990s (U of WI!) who called themselves the Cartographers and had an idea to revolutionize the field. (not GPS, which would have been brilliant). They spend the summer at a rented home in upstate NY in seclusion and initial happiness, until they make a discovery that brings out all their worst qualities and destroys their friendship. Nell was just a toddler in this mix - everyone's pet, but she remembers none of these surrogate 'aunts' and 'uncles,' but finds them one by one after her father's death. This is when she learns the stakes are so high. With the help of a former boyfriend, Felix, Nell starts to unravel the mystery, but she is racing against the clock and an evil genius and it all comes to a spectacular (if improbable) conclusion. One fascinating true detail (and there are a few here) is the concept of 'phantom settlements' that mapmakers put into their maps, (much like Easter eggs for video game designers), essentially places that don't physically exist - but does putting them on a map make them real? A little mind-bending, especially the way the concept is used here) Quotes I loved: "Cartography at its heart was about defining one's place in the world by creating charts and measurements.....it was not a map alone that made a place real. It was the people." (332) "Maps were love letters written to times and places their makers had explored. They did not control the territory -- they told its stories." (372) show less