Interesting idea but poorly executed. Sometimes I was lost in the details and the writing was scattered.

I received this copy from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
For thousands of years, we have been fascinated by strange new lands, existing just over the horizon and across the sea. The Un-discovered Islands takes a look at those islands that were once believed to have existed in the era before satellites and other modern mapping tools. This was a time when earthly island paradises and disappearing islands were taken as fact.
Tallack examines some of these islands, looking at their origins in myth, legend, and early ocean voyages. I've always loved the idea of undiscovered lands being found, and their discovery wonderously described upon their finders return home. Things like that don't happen anymore, so it was fun to read about such places, and it was especially interesting to see how such places that never exsisted came to be an accepted reality. Scott's illustrations were a beautiful addition The Un-discovered Islands.

I believed this book on The Un-Discovered Islands: An Archipelago of Myths and Mysteries, Phantoms and Fakes to address islands that either no longer existed due to destruction or finding an error in past cartography efforts. While it was a curiosity to browse through the illustrations and short descriptions, the book was shorter than I anticipated and did nothing more than wet my appetite for more through information from a trusted source of reference. I would envision it as a coffee table conversation starter or for a casual explorer. Full Disclosure: I was allowed to read a copy of this book for free as a member of NetGalley in exchange for my unbiased review. The opinions I have expressed are my own and I was not influenced to give a positive review.

This title has been provided by the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Tallack’s look at mythical isles in ‘The Un-Discovered Islands’ is oddly timely in the age of Google Maps and Fake News. The short volume explores islands throughout the age of exploration and beyond, paired with lovely illustrations by Katie Scott. I gained plenty of insight into the early practices of cartography and the common causes for such errors. Although the topic is compelling, the cases covered are quite short and I sometimes wished for more information on how the myths developed and continued rather than how they were debunked. That said, this is still a worthwhile and beautiful read for map nerds and travel lovers alike.

‘The Un-Discovered Islands’ is available now through booksellers and libraries large and small.

This seemed like a promising read, and at first it was. But as I went through it, I gradually lost interest. Is it fiction?
Is it a book about existing islands? Or about islands that different people believe exist? I wasn't quite sure what it was about. I may have found out if I stuck to reading, but I lost interest quite early and did not, unfortunately, finish reading.

What a treat! This book is all about islands people believed existed. The information is fascinating but the illustrations are what make this one a must!

I think that this will be a beautiful book once it's printed, since the illustrations were choppy in the ARC but still interesting. The stories themselves, like many, are rather hit or miss. Some were more interesting than others, but I don't regret reading this.

I appreciated how this title tracked island myths across different cultures. It would be a good fit interdisciplinary tie-in for classrooms teaching mythology and religion. I also liked how this title was laid out, integrating imagery in the margins.

This was a really interesting book that called to me. I'm always interested in reading about fantasy or mythological lands and this book definetly covered some of that. After reading this book I learned a lot of about the way islands were discovered (prior to GoogleEarth!) and how cartography evolved.

My only gripe with this is because I recieved this via NetGalley and it is an ARC, that the beautiful maps weren't included and that the images that were included made the pagination of the book a little bit wonky.

An interesting, light read that gives a good introduction to the concept of fake/imaginary islands. The author does a good job of mixing the history of myth, fraud, and human error that all often contributed to the creation and perpetuation of these islands.

I have previously worked for over ten years at a local maritime museum, and because of that found the cartographic history to be the most interesting part of each story. The early map-making years, for North and South America especially, are endlessly interesting to me and it was nice to see some of that represented in this book.

I was very interested in this NetGalley grab but the file has some serious flaws that make it unreadable. The few sentences I can make out seem well-written, easy to follow, and have nice sentence style and vocabulary variety. However, the paragraphs and even parts of sentences are all jumbled up. The first couple pages seemed ok, something I could skip back and forth and figure out, but then: "wheN MAOri peOple first passengers in those canoes were the ancestors of began to communicate with Europeans today's Ma_ori. in the eighteenth century, they insisted that New The problem with this story is that it wasn't Zealand was not their original home." This seems like a pretty major error. Whereas before I would have read the description and probably purchased the book, I'm not leery of whatever might be going on with this publisher and whatever else they might put out. (OK, so Macmillan is a pretty big name, but what's this Picador imprint and why can't they get their smeg together?)

Also, the author tosses off locations (seas, islands, etc.) without mentioning where they are-- I'm looking for [sea], [hundred] miles north of [more widely known landmark] sort of thing.

The ultimate armchair travelers book, because you can't actually visit any of these places. From ancient myths, to medieval cartographers mistakes to out and out fraudulent lands, this is a book best enjoy in print or on a tablet so readers can enjoy the gorgeous artwork