The War of the Maps (The Vanished Kingdom, Book 3)
Author: Jonathan Auxier
Published April 29, 2025
Page Count: 448
The final book in The Vanished Kingdom series finds our heroes, Peter Nimble, Sophie Quire, and Sir Tode discover that magic has been slowly disappearing to make way for “progress.” When a group called the League of Maps tries to stop their investigation and mission from Professor Cake, they must confront a coming war where one side is fighting for magic and the other logic, or "what if" versus "what is".
Reading Audience:
Middle and High School
Stuff to be aware of:
Gore/Violence - You will recall from previous books that Peter Nimble had his eyes poked out by ravens, which is why he is blind. This is brought up again in this book.
A character mentions chopping off someone’s toes so they can’t run. Another character mentions cutting a person’s head off. One character is asked to cut his eyes out and give them to someone. One character tells someone to slit their throat.
There are a few scenes where people get hurt and bleed, and/or taste blood. In one scene, a large creature gets stabbed multiple times and has spears stuck in its hide. He eventually dies. One character is described as being “limp in a pool of her own blood.”
There is a vine, plant-like appendage that attaches itself to a person’s arm. The vines go into the skin. When it is removed it gets ripped out and there is a lot of blood mentioned.
There is a creature wants a blood sacrifice.
Language - There is minor name-calling.
Bloody - 1
Scary - There is a huge six-eyed woman monster with sharp teeth and odd objects coming out of her. One character has a two-headed goose monster that has sharp teeth. In one scene it has blood on it’s white feathers.
Sexual - A female character says, “I don’t like boys!” in disgust. This did not appear to be an LGBTQ moment, but a stage-of-life moment, whereas little girls don’t like anyone romantically or sexually.
Spiritual - I am not sure if these things were meant to have a Christian connection, but I thought they did. There is a kind of mystical, godlike being that doesn’t have a set origin, and he says, “I am.”
Other - A “drunken brawl” is mentioned. A man smokes a pipe. There is a scroll that is said to be made of “human flesh.”
Overall
As far as the items above, you won’t find this book to be much more intense, sexual, or violent than the ones that preceded it. While The Vanished Kingdom series is not my favorite books by Jonathan Auxier, they are entertaining and make the reader think the differences in wonder and science, and what one believes. Auxier continues to be just as quirky in this book as the others, with a good dose of “dad jokes.”
One of the fascinating aspects of this book (and this series) is that it takes simple concepts and makes them more abstract and makes you think about them in different ways. The last book used the idea of “story telling” and this one forces the reader to think about the line between magic and science, and can everything we see be explained?
Axuier is a great writer, even if this story wasn’t as compelling to me as the middle book in the series. I will continue to pick up what he writes and check it out.
Special Note:
Not only do you need to read the two previous books, to fully enjoy this story, the reader may also want to read the Auxier’s young reader series: The Fabled Stables. These books connect to this story in a fun way.
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