Review: The Unmapping - Denise S. Robbins

Genre: Literary Fiction, Sci-fi/Speculative Fiction

Published: Bindery Books, June 2025 My Rating: 3/5 stars

The Unmapping was one of my most anticipated debuts of 2025, and I feel a little guilty that it took me so long to write a proper review on my ARC. That being said, I needed some time to process my thoughts. In concept, this should’ve been an instant new favourite, and yet for some reason, the moments of brilliance were buried under the dominant feeling I was left with after finishing it: this was underwhelming.

What I loved:

We start our story with perhaps my favourite premise for a speculative novel recently: every night, at 4 AM precisely, New York City descents into chaos as every buildings, blocks and street in town switches places randomly. You could go to sleep in the Bronx and wake up with your house suddenly connected to the foot of the Empire State Building on Fifth Avenue.

In the shadow of this ongoing crisis, the lives of the New Yorkers are scrambled just as much as the buildings. Through multiple pov’s, specifically focusing on 2 members of City of New York’s Emergency Management team, we explore themes of climate change, political unrest, and life in a state of emergency.

Conceptually: chef’s kiss. I wish this had been my idea and have absolutely nothing to add. Then why did the execution not work for me…

What I didn’t love:

I think I could summarize my main critique of The Unmapping in 2 words: scope and depth. When writing in this subgenre of “literary-apocalyptic spec-fic”, there are two routes you can take. You can either go panoramic, zooming out and focusing on the event itself and its societal implications. Mostly, these stories will use the apocalypse as an allegory for a societal issue or a moral failure of humanity. Alternatively, you can go intimate and narrow in on the lives of a few individuals against this background.

Basically, I think Denise S. Robbins could’ve gone either of 2 ways with this novel, but by trying to do it all in the same book, she spread herself too thin. Instead of critiquing every element of the book, I’m going to describe the two version of this book that I think would’ve worked better:

Version one takes the more traditional sci-fi approach. We focus on the event of the Unmapping as a metaphor for the disconnect in society, and follow multiple fragmented stories of people working together to fix it. We see Denise S. Robbins make a start at this with her wide scope of characters, called only by their function-titles (e.g. “The Mayor of New York City”). She also works in various allusions to different themes: climate change, capitalism, societal inequity and lack of cohesion, etc. as possible catalysts for the Unmapping. Yet she never picks a single one to develop further, and elevate the message beyond something akin to “plastic Christmas-trees and pollution are bad…?”

Of course, not every sci-fi concept needs to be explained. Instead, in version 2, Robbins could’ve leaned full into surrealism and left the Unmapping completely unexplained. That would fit a more character-driven, intimate story best. Unfortunately, in their current form, our protagonists lack the depth and development to carry such a story. Both Arjun and Esme are flat and one-note, and any growth they do show near the end feels unearned. For example: Arjun has anxiety; we know this because he mentions his medication about every 2 chapters. In the epilogue, he’s seen having reduced his medication and being able to work through his attacks in other ways thanks to his therapist. Yet we never got to see the in-between stages of that journey, nor his therapist, on page. We just jump straight to the conclusion.

Esme is a different story entirely. Her arc revolves around one man at the start of the novel, and another man at the end. Outside of the men in her life, I’m not sure what her goals are.

This lack of focus isn’t helped by the stream of consciousness-style of writing. I think I understand why the author chose it for this particular story; as it could’ve added to the surrealist, almost dreamlike feeling of it all. In combination with the aforementioned, it felt less “dreamlike” and more “insubstantial”.

Overall, this book had so much potential, but unfortunately didn’t live up to it in the way that I hoped. It should be said that this is a debut novel, by a new imprint, and with ideas like these though, I’m very curious to see what both this author and the imprint do as they grow.

Many thanks to Bindery Books for providing me with an ARC in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

You can find this book here on Goodreads.