The Cartographers by Peng Shepherd

 

This is a really ... stolid novel, really. There are hints of Rashomon in it, with all the various first-person characters flashing in for their own chapters, interrupting the main narration, but all of that first person stuff is remarkably reliable, really, and other than some notion of honesty or fair play I see no real reason for it. And I figured out the big dramatic reveal--who the bad guy was--something like two hundred pages beforehand. Ms. Shepherd has written a novel about some putative conflict between technology and magic, while skittering into "the map is not the territory" territory (heh). The former is a pretty common theme in modern (non secondary world) Fantasy, and the latter at least seems to be, as well--The Book of Doors and The Starless Sea both were playing with very similar ideas with books instead of maps. Given that my reaction to all those books, and this one, was very "meh," it's possible there's something in that that just doesn't work for me.