Sai is Apprentice to Paiyoon, master mapmaker, in the middle grade novel The Last Mapmaker by Christine Soontornvat (published 2022). She hides her undesirable identity as a girl from the Fens, the daughter of a con-man. When the Queen announces an award to the explorers who find and map the Southern continent, Sai sees her chance to buy her way out of poverty. But as she travels with Paiyoon, he and the ship captain are reluctant to search for the Southern continent. Can Sai and her new friend, the aristocratic Rian, convince them to make the voyage anyway?
I loved the world-building in this novel. Sai’s world, with the class distinctions and neighborhoods, the royalty and traditions, felt realistic and modern. In Sai’s world, men and women are equal; the only barriers are those of economic class and family history. Sai longs to have a “lineal,” which would show that she comes from a long heritage of people. But, her world does not allow social climbing. The Mangkon theme, “The tail is the teeth,” reinforces this idea. (We are the past; the past is the future.)
The book begins with a map, to make these island nations come even more to life. Appropriate, since the main characters are mapmakers. It was hard to imagine twelve-year-old Sai being as good at mapmaking and using the navigational tools as is the elderly Paiyoon, but that was easy to excuse in this novel for kids that age. I’m sure they know how capable they are! The ultimate resolution and twists at the end of the book were fantastic and kept me reading. I wanted to know how it all resolved! It was very satisfactory, and such endings are why I enjoy reading middle-grade novels so much. There is peril and intensity and then there is a resolution that feels just right. I greatly enjoyed reading The Last Mapmaker, and it is well worthy of it’s 2023 Newbery Honor.
Get The Last Mapmaker from Amazon.com
