A New York Times Best Seller
An Indiebound Best Seller
A Kids' Next Top Ten Book
A Summer/Fall 2014 Indies Introduce New Voices SelectionA Junior Library Guild Selection
One of Publishers Weekly’s Best Summer Reads
“Not since Philip Pullman's The Golden Compass have I seen such an original and compelling world built inside a book.”—Megan Whalen Turner, New York Times best-selling author of A Conspiracy of Kings
She has only seen the world through maps. She had no idea they were so dangerous.
Boston, 1891. Sophia Tims comes from a family of explorers and cartologers who, for generations, have been traveling and mapping the New World—a world changed by the Great Disruption of 1799, when all the continents were flung into different time periods. Eight years ago, her parents left her with her uncle Shadrack, the foremost cartologer in Boston, and went on an urgent mission. They never returned. Life with her brilliant, absent-minded, adored uncle has taught Sophia to take care of herself.
Then Shadrack is kidnapped. And Sophia, who has rarely been outside of Boston, is the only one who can search for him. Together with Theo, a refugee from the West, she travels over rough terrain and uncharted ocean, encounters pirates and traders, and relies on a combination of Shadrack’s maps, common sense, and her own slantwise powers of observation. But even as Sophia and Theo try to save Shadrack’s life, they are in danger of losing their own.
The Glass Sentence plunges readers into a time and place they will not want to leave, and introduces them to a heroine and hero they will take to their hearts. It is a remarkable debut.
“I think The Glass Sentence is absolutely marvelous. It’s the best book I’ve read in a long time. The world-building is so convincing, the plot so fast-moving and often surprising, and the ideas behind the novel so completely original. I love this book.”—Nancy Farmer, National Book Award-winning author of The House of the Scorpion
“I loved it! So imaginative!”—Nancy Pearl
“An exuberantly imagined cascade of unexplored worlds, inscribed in prose and detail as exquisite as the ... maps young Sophia uses to navigate such unpredictable landscapes. A book like a pirate's treasure hoard for map lovers like me."—Elizabeth Wein, New York Times best-selling author of Code Name Verity
“Brilliant in concept, breathtaking in scale and stellar in its worldbuilding; this is a world never before seen in fiction . . . Wholly original and marvelous beyond compare.”—Kirkus Reviews, starred review
“A thrilling, time-bending debut . . . It’s a cracking adventure, and Grove bolsters the action with commentary on xenophobia and government for hire, as well as a fascinating system of map magic.”—Publishers Weekly, starred review
Customer Reviews
Most helpful customer reviews
48 of 51 people found the following review helpful.
I want to be a mapmaker!!!!
By Cheetah Chrome
The story is about Sophia Tims who at the age of three is raised by her Uncle Shadrack (who is a world famous cartologer) when her parents disappeared while going on an expedition. One day her uncle sends her on an errand only to return to the house and find it in utter disarray. Her Uncle Shadrack has been kidnapped. And that is where the true adventure of The Glass Sentence begins. And what an adventure it is.S.E. Grove took her time and great planning to bring forth this lovely, thoroughly imagitibve piece of work. Not since His Dark Material (Phillip Pullman) and the Harry Potter series (J.K. Rowling) have I’ve been excited, fascinated and totally absorb with a story. A story that is breathtakingly beautiful.S.E. Grove has done a wonderful job with the world build. Top Notch. I felt like I was there with Sophia riding the steam train, sailing on the pirate’s ship with the briny wind blowing through my hair and on my face.If you love original, innovating writing and storytelling, then The Glass Sentence is for you. Whether you are an adult (as I am) or a young child. Let the maps take you on a ride that you will never forget.P.S. It’s rare but S.E. Grove is great at making you fall in love with the main characters of the story as well as the minor. Each had their own personality and were well developed.
24 of 25 people found the following review helpful.
Great Read!
By Amazon Customer
I read a lot of fantasy and science fiction and the world described in this book is unique, detailed and very intriguing. While intended for young adults, I (a grandmother) enjoyed the story a great deal. The main characters are very likable and even the most minor characters are interesting. Some of the concepts described regarding assorted maps/mapmaking and different ages take careful and thoughtful reading and may prove challenging to younger readers. With the exception of the epilogue, which seems to introduce the next adventure, this book could easily stand alone, but I am looking forward to the next two installments to complete the trilogy.
13 of 13 people found the following review helpful.Stunningly original middle-grades fantasy is a welcome change from the plethora of dystopian novels flooding the market
By Gary K. McCormick
With so much of the middle-grade and YA fantasy that is being published these days being some variant of the "Future Dystopia" theme, with magic and/or supernatural elements sometimes thrown in for variety, it was refreshing to find a book that is as fresh and original as "The Glass Sentence".A cataclysmic shattering and reshuffling of the space-time continuum called the Great Disruption has left Earth scrambled into a patchwork quilt of different time periods. Sophia, a bright 13-year-old girl, lives in a near-familiar Boston of the late 19th Century which lies in a time and place (an "Age") called New Occident; roughly equivalent to the original 13 American colonies, plus the Carolinas, Georgia, Florida, and part of the Deep South and Midwest. New Occident encountered the Great Disruption in the year 1799, but other parts of the world exist in different times, in different stages of civilization, some earlier, some possibly later than New Occident, as though the Disruption occurred on different parts of the Earth's surface at different times.The temporal and physical disruption of the world has set each "Age" on a different path, so New Occident, while it would be familiar to a 19th-Century American, would also seem strangely unfamiliar in many ways (for instance, women have the vote!). Sophia's parents, famous explorers who have traveled to other Ages to try and solve the riddle of the Great Disruption, disappeared some ten years before, so Sophia lives with her uncle, Shadrack, her mother's younger brother.Shadrack is a cartographer, or mapmaker, and in this new world order, mapmakers possess abilities far beyond what we think of when we hear that term. Maps are fashioned on, and of, parchment, paper, wood, leather, metal, glass, and even water - and they are magical, mystical artifacts which may contain worlds of information. When Shadrack is kidnapped by a mysterious group which seeks to exploit his skills and knowledge, Sophia and her new friend Theo, a boy from the Age known as the Baldlands (western North American and Mexico as we know them), set out to track down the kidnappers and rescue Shadrack.On the journey Sophia and Theo encounter great danger, good friends, and sinister enemies, and find themselves delving into much deeper mysteries concerning maps, the Great Disruption, and the nature of the forces that threw the world into chaos, than they had ever dreamed of.This is a most impressive debut novel, and readers in the target age groups will, I am sure, be thrilled with it. It is written to the target age group in a manner which brings them along for a fantastic tale without descending into cuteness or talking down to them. Adult readers will detect the elements of the narrative which distinguish "The Glass Sentence" from YA or adult novels, but it is still an enjoyable light read for older readers. I took my greatest enjoyment from the story from the realization of how much middle-grade readers will like this book - and how much they will look forward to the further adventures of Sophia and her associates which are forthcoming.
