The Last Mapmaker by Christina Soontornvat

Exploits on the high seas and complex characters combine in a tale full of both excitement and heart. An engrossing adventure with the feeling of a whole world to be explored. Kirkus Star Review

Sai (full name Sodsai Arawan) is a girl living in a highly stratified society. She is on the bottom rung. Her father is a petty criminal and they live in squalid conditions. Sai, though, has worked hard and found herself a good job with the esteemed map maker. She has managed to find some clothes suitable for an apprentice and each day she travels into the city to work with Paiyoon. She has a firm goal to better herself and to do this she needs the all important status symbol of a lineal or chain. The more of these a citizen displays the higher their social standing. Sai is twelve. Lineals are given to children when they turn thirteen. They show your heritage.

The Kingdom of Mangkon is huge but the Queen wants more. She sets a challenge to the navy to sail to all corners of the globe to claim new lands in her name. 

Of course, these ships will need a map maker and Paiyoon is famous, but he is old now and unwell and his hands keep shaking. He does secure a place on a ship, but he will need Sai to travel with him to assist with the map making. Sai is very skilled with copying documents and maps. She is thrilled she can go on the voyage. Partly because this is a way to get away from her father and partly because there is a reward at the end of the voyage, and this will mean she can obtain a lineal and a better future.

On board the ship there is the crew of course, and one of them is very suspicious of Sai, but there is also the Captain who is the Queen's great niece, Mr Lark a naturalist, Dr Pinching the ship surgeon, Miss Rian Prasomsap - a former soldier, and Bo a stowaway with an interesting back story. The real dilemma for you as a reader comes when you try to work out who to trust. I was suspicious but also very wrong with my predictions. 

The voyage is long and filled with danger but the really interesting part of this book comes when we discover why the Queen wants to know about these distant lands and what she might do there. She has already almost destroyed some of the places they visit on the voyage and that is why I have added the label colonization to this post. 

"I had expected Falhin to be a green vibrant place like Pitaya Island but it couldn't have been more different. From what I could see, Fahlin was made of mud. The streets near the habour were slick and greasy, and the water was stained brown." Keep reading pages 180-181 to hear what Paiyoon thinks about the Queen and her desire to claim new territory.

Horn Book expand this idea: Class structure, imperial greed, and environmental ravages underpin the narrative arc of this fantastical adventure story, resonating with our own contemporary issues. At the same time, Soontornvat’s Thai-inspired culture and geography provide a vivid backdrop. With emphasis on an intricate plot and quick, accessible prose, Soontornvat provides plenty of excitement while bringing questions of expansionism and de-colonization to young readers.

Publisher blurb: As assistant to Mangkon’s most celebrated mapmaker, twelve-year-old Sai plays the part of a well-bred young lady with a glittering future. In reality, her father is a conman—and in a kingdom where the status of one’s ancestors dictates their social position, the truth could ruin her. Sai seizes the chance to join an expedition to chart the southern seas, but she isn’t the only one aboard with secrets. When Sai learns that the ship might be heading for the fabled Sunderlands—a land of dragons, dangers, and riches beyond imagining—she must weigh the cost of her dreams. Vivid, suspenseful, and thought-provoking, this tale of identity and integrity is as beautiful and intricate as the maps of old.

Watch the trailer from Candlewick. 

Reading it, it doesn’t feel like any other book out there. It grips you from the first page. You believe in these characters, in their wants and dreams and fears. You never doubt for a second their motivations, even when they surprise you with their choices. This may even be the kind of book that kids that usually eschew fantasy would actually like quite a lot. Though fantastical elements exist, there’s a strange reality to them. Consider this the kind of book that kids and their adult gatekeepers will love equally. In other words? Rare rare treasure. Betsy Bird SLJ

I have had this book on my list for a while. It was published in 2023. I saw the hardcover on sale in a bookstore but hesitated to buy it which was silly but anyway I now own the paperback.

Awards for The Last Mapmaker:

• 2023 Newbery Honor Book
• New York Times Best Children’s Book of the Year 
• New York Public Library Best Book of the Year
• Kirkus Best Book of the Year
• Walter Dean Myers Honor Book for Young Readers
• Texas Bluebonnet Master List Selection 
• A Junior Library Guild Selection 
• A Common Sense Media Selection 
• Audiofile Best Audiobook of the Year
• Chicago Public Library Best Book of the Year
• YALSA Best Fiction for Young Adults
• ALSC Notable Children’s Book 2023

I previously talked about this book (five stars) by Christina Soontornvat.

A Wish in the Dark

Companion books:

Bartlett and the Ice Voyage

The Girl, the Cat and the Navigator

The Pearl in the Ice

Race to the end of the world

The Mapmakers' Race