The Quantum Cartographer: Book of Cruxes is a cross-genre book. Outwardly it seems like science fiction and mystery thriller, but as you read on you get to witness the unusual blend of genres.
The year 2033, Nevada: The former scientist Eliza, who happens to know so many things and the darkest secrets about the organization she has worked with, gets into trouble. Strangers trespass her house, and she attempts to save herself and her little son. She understands that those strangers are behind her son and try to escape. In the attempt, she lands up in a situation where she has to push her son in a condition she doesn’t want to, but that’s what destiny necessitates. With the help of Nour, one of the persons who opened the gates of time, she transports her son to the future via a time machine. Her son lands up in a city called Kressya.
While Eliza’s son is on an adventure through time travel, Eliza stays with Nour. She learns everything about the past events from Nour. Also, Eliza finds out why she and her son are involved in this. She gets to know about a book of cruxes, a sacred text that carries the greatest of the secrets, and her son’s unbreakable bond with the Cartographer, someone who started it all.
But will her son find this out too? Will he succeed? What lies ahead in his journey? Will Eliza and her son ever meet again?
“It may feel like it now, my boy, but soon, you will see - you will see that everything you are afraid you are not.”
The story starts with the strangers invading Eliza’s house. I loved the first chapter. It was like a perfect start to build up the suspense, but as the story started moving ahead, it was laborious to concentrate with the introduction of new characters, shifts in the location, time frame. Once you reach 45% of the book, there’s no coming back. It’s a page-turner. You get to know why the book is titled so, and everything starts making sense. The one chapter in the middle connects both the halves. It tells the secrets of the past and future, and the role of some people and objects in the entire story. It all makes sense. And that makes you read it ahead.
Throughout the story, the writing style was very consistent. Important characters described sufficiently. The ending is brilliant and impressed me. Overall, it was a gripping read for me as the plot was unprecedented for me.
I recommend this book to those who love to binge-watch some sci-fi thrillers. You will enjoy this book.
Favorite Quotes From The Book :
To enter a future is to have created it. And while technically we’re always travelling into the future, tomorrow is only an idea- or an agreed-upon imaginary place. The closer it becomes, the further it actually is. In transposition, the past is a fixed dimension. We know the when, where, and why. It’s very targeted. The margin for error is narrowed by the sheer precision. What we know as a ‘future’, is actually billions if not trillions of possible outcomes. There are too many variables. Too many versions to isolate one and arrive successfully. Time is not linear; it's a dimensional map spread out across the dark space we know as the void. Our choices define futures- there’s no way of cheating the process.
The future is, like you previously insinuated, no-man’s-land. What manifests is as dependent on the minds of the voyagers as the conditions of the reality they left behind. Everything matters, because it is not simply a by-product of space and time so much as a continuation of space and mind. In order to enter this realm, a guide is needed, an extremely powerful one no less.
Our loved ones have a curious way of finding us, you know. Across land, air, and time, no matter how lost you may feel, no matter how immersed in adversity and doubt, love will come through it all - to find you.