Adventure fantasy for older children set on an island in a parallel world, in which a young girl Isabella goes on a quest to save her friend, who has ventured into the dangerous and unknown heart of the island. Isabella is a cartographer's daughter and has a special affinity and ability with maps and navigations.

I liked the setting and the mythological elements, and at the beginning and the end the relationship between the main characters, but the dialogue was often clunky and the jerky pacing the most unsuccessful part of the book for me. It felt like there was about so many great themes in this book (maps, monsters, gods, the nature of myth, ecological degradation and disaster, injustice, political corruption, friendship, grief, fathers and daughters...) but most weren't fully well-explored and developed--just chucked in there and left to dissolve in mix. Characters were disposable, with multiple unnecessary deaths.

I would would given a lower rating, but in a week where I've been thinking a lot about the climate crisis, I found myself reading the final chapters as having poignant metaphor for the catastrophe the world - and particularly Pacific Island nations - are facing. Maybe the author intended this, or maybe not, but either way it made me glad that I read this otherwise patchy novel.