The Map of Bones is the fourth and final book in the Joubert Family Chronicles, “ an epic multi-generational historical saga, sweeping from France to South Africa, via Amsterdam and the Canary Islands.” I absolutely loved the entire series, and it was wonderful to be back with this magnificent family full of warrior women who carve their own paths through history.
I listened to this one as an audiobook. It takes place in the 1600s and 1800s in the Cape of Good Hope, South Africa.
We follow Suzanne Joubert who flees persecution and personal trauma in France and sails, with her grandmother, to the Cape. She’s on a mission to find out what happened to her ancestor, Louise Reydon-Joubert. I adored reading about the strong-willed Louise in the third book of the series, The Ghost Ship, and was delighted that she features so prominently here. Louise, a courageous unconventional woman captained her own ship in the early 1600s, waging war against slavers. We’re also constantly reminded of other long-gone members of this great Huguenot family who I remember so vividly despite having read about them several years ago.
The Map of Bones reads almost like a mystery thriller as Suzanne, and then, two hundred years later, Isabelle, seek to unearth what happened to Louise, about whom nothing has been heard since she disappeared upon reaching the Cape of Good Hope in the early 1600s. It turns out to be a major quest, involving adventure, misfortune and grave danger.
Kate Mosse’s brilliant way with words, and her rich, evocative descriptions place you right there in the story: you’re in that filthy tavern, in those chaotic streets and walking tensely through the African terrain.
I highly recommend this series, which is best read in sequence. The Map of Bones, in particular, would lose much of its magic if read as a standalone.

After being driven out of La Rochelle by sectarian violence, Suzanne Joubert travels to Cape Town in search of her ancestor, the pirate queen Louise Reydon Joubert. She works with both the VOC and the indigenous people to trek across the interior but what she finds is a surprise. Two hundred years later their descendant Isabelle wants to close her research into her family so she travels to South Africa to meet her distant relatives.
This is the final part of an four-part series which has been a really enjoyable read. A little more intelligent than the usual 'sweeping saga', Mosse has pulls on some background from her own family. Here the anti-Huguenot troubles of the 1680s in France and the establishment of Cape Town as a Dutch settlement. It is predictable in places but a good read.

We start on a ship approaching Cape Town in 1688. On board is Suzanne Joubert, arrives in Southern Africa to find out what happened to her cousin Louise who landed 60 years previously, 1862 their descendant Isabelle Lepard arrives to continue the search. The Map of Bones by Kate Mosse is the fourth and final book in the Joubert family chronicles which follows the fate of the protestant Joubert family from southern France. The series starts in in 1562 as the Wars of Religion begin to flare and follows the family and fellow Hugenots to Paris, Amsterdam and South Africa. Each book can be read on its own but as suite they are a tour de force.

Thank-you to NetGalley UK and Pan McMillan for an eARC in return for an honest review.

I'll preface this by saying that I loved the first three books in the Joubert Family Chronicles. I absolutely devoured The Ghost Ship, and then went back and filled in the history with The Burning Chambers and The City of Tears. Kate Mosse writes believable engaging characters - particularly strong female ones - and authentic fleshed-out settings. I was excited to find out what happened to Louise, and finish off the story.

However, this fourth book felt simultaneously drawn out and rushed compared to the previous three. Suzanne's story just didn't grab me in the same way as Minou or Louise, so a lot of the book felt like padding. She was a much more one dimensional character, and it felt like she had less agency and complexity. Then, after [significant plot point] the whole thing just sort of speeds up and jumps to the end. The ending of the book felt like a brief outline written for a fifth book, that the publisher had said wasn't enough to stand alone, so it was subsumed into this one. I was glad to finish the story, but disappointed in this compared to the rest.

There’s a certain awkwardness to encountering an obviously deeply researched and fully fleshed series in its final volume. So first I’d like to thank Kate Mosse for giving just the right amount of information for me to figure out what had come before while staying focused on the present story. The series focuses on the French Huguenots (Protestants), who lived an often-precarious existence in France in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Mosse lays out the rough outlines of this history in a note at the beginning, and she makes it easy to follow its twists and turns as they affect her character.

We encounter Suzanne Joubert, the main protagonist of “The Map of Bones,” in 1687, eight years before Louis XIV’s Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, which unleashed persecution once more. Dragoons are stationed in Suzanne’s family home, and one drunken soldier rapes her. To protect her from further assault, Suzanne’s grandmother defies the state order preventing Huguenots from leaving France and spirits her away to Amsterdam, where a Protestant government will accept its co-religionists, if somewhat reluctantly. There Suzanne discovers records of her first cousin twice removed, a female pirate captain, and with her grandmother sets out for South Africa to discover what happened to their relative.

Mosse follows that main story to its natural end, but the book continues with a third part set in the mid-nineteenth century, where Isabelle Lepard, a descendant of the Joubert family and would-be travel writer, undertakes her own voyage to South Africa in search of one missing piece of Suzanne’s puzzle. The whole thing is well handled, taking several less-well-known times and places and turning them into a genuinely gripping read.

I will be interviewing this author on my blog (link below) around the time of the book’s release in January 2025.

The fourth and final chapter of the Joubert chronicles does not disappoint. Yet again brilliantly researched and observed by Kate Mosse. she creates such strong historical depictions of her female characters and this time I felt the heat and intensity of the settlers as they came to southern Africa following their escape from France.

I love that Kate Mosse describes part of history that I wouldn't normally know about or explore, and does so weaved into a brilliant and gripping storyline.

I also had the pleasure of meeting Kate Mosse at a recent event promoting the new book, and she was brilliantly engaging and fun on the night,

Thank you to netgalley and the publisher for the ARC in exchange for my honest review.

I’ve not read the previous novels in this series of stories but had heard good things about the author.i therefore decided to give this one a read when it appeared on the UK.
I need to worried about not reading the previous books as this book stands well on its own. I think if you read the other books you will begin to feel a kinship with the women that have followed throughout the story. This one picks up where the last one left off with a , adventurous young woman in the 1680s emigrating from Holland to South Africa to escape religious persecution. In the novel, we meet her descendant equally courageous and independent who in the 1860s travels again back to South Africa to find out more details about her history
This is a well written historical novel using fictitious characters. The author does not have to stick to strict historical facts and is able to develop interesting storylines that keep you entertained.

The author has a clean clear easily read writing star which flows nicely. The novel was a relaxing read
I’d recommend this novel for two lovers of historical novels, particularly where there is good character development as well as an interesting storyline
I read an early copy of the novel on NetGalley UK in return for a review the book was publishing in the UK on the 10th of October 2024 by Pan McMillan
This review will appear on NetGalley UK, Goodreads, and my book blog bionicsarahsbooks.wordpress.com. It will also appear on Amazon UK.

The Map of Bones is Kate Mosse’s conclusion to the Joubert family chronicles - an epic tale that spans centuries and continents following French Huguenot religious refugees as they fled persecution.

My followers may remember my review of the Ghost Ship, that follows the story of Louise, the granddaughter of the original characters Minou and Piet. This book picks up this story of Louise and her piratical ways but ends in a mystery - which Louise’s descendants in the 17th and 19th century try to unravel whilst dealing with ghosts of their own.

What I love about Mosse’s writing is how easily she brings complex women characters to life with her stories - they are of their time but show such determination and I liked how they all took strength from their pasts and the actions and character of their families.

This series has shed so much light on a people I knew little about, and I found their struggle to find a place across time and the world an important reminder of the humanity that often gets lost in the discourse about people seeking asylum from persecution. The complexities and the horrors of colonisation were also sensitively handled - the Dutch colonies in South Africa where much of the story takes place are if course already inhabited, and I was glad that Mosse included the characters of Herry and Tia, and members of the Goringhaiqua clan so that we could hear from black voices to better understand the pain and suffering that was caused by European settlers.

Thank you to the publishers @panmacmillan and @katemossewriter for an advanced copy of the book. The Map of Bones is out now!

Even though I hadn't read the previous novels in the series, I highly enjoyed reading this. I did not find it difficult to follow and was very quickly gripped, wanting to know what would happen to the characters. The historical period it covered was interesting and I enjoyed the themes it raised. Highly recommend

The Map of Bones is the fourth and final book in the series chronicling the lives of the Joubert family, a series which has taken us from 16th century France to 19th century Cape Town. I suggest The Map of Bones is best enjoyed if you have read previous books in the series since there is an extensive family tree and a deadly rivalry which extends all the way back to the first book. If you haven’t got time to embark on the whole series, then a good compromise would be to read The Ghost Ship as events in this book follow straight on from that one.

Suzanne’s search for the truth about what happened to her forbear, Louise Reydon-Joubert (the infamous captain of the vessel known as the ‘Ghost Ship’) after she arrived in Cape Town, involves a perilous voyage of her own and a journey to the interior of a country in which relations between settlers and the indigenous population are fragile and likely to explode at any moment.

The author’s reasearch is always second to none, and as in all her novels, the period setting is wonderfully evoked so that you can imagine yourself walking the streets of early Cape Town or traversing the interior of the country dodging jaguars and maurauding baboons.

Suzanne’s quest is partly successful, although not before she has experienced great danger, but still leaves many unanswered questions about Louise’s life and the reason she stayed in South Africa. It’s only in the second part of the book that those gaps begin to be filled. I used to think the secret diary a convenient trope of historical fiction but, of course, for many women living in earlier times a journal was the only medium through which they could document events in their lives or express their feelings, so I greet its use by authors with more generosity these days.

Isabelle’s financial situation, the result of an inheritance, may make her journey across the world more comfortable but it’s still a perilous one for a single woman travelling alone. It requires her to marshall all the courage and independence of spirit of her female forbears because when she embarks on her enquiries in Cape Town she finds the legacy of that rivalry I mentioned at the beginning still persists. And what she discovers is a story of violence but also of an intense and loving relationship that could only flourish beyond the fringes of society.

The book’s finale reflects the author’s own passion for bringing the achievements of women, past and present, out of the shadows and into the light.

I would have loved to learn more about the latter years of Suzanne’s life, which is rather glossed over in the book. Perhaps the author is saving that for a companion novel? Although The Map of Bones doesn’t have quite the riproaring adventure of The Ghost Ship, it’s still an enthralling and satisfying conclusion to the series.

I really enjoyed this conclusion to the saga of the Joubert women.

We hear the stories of Suzanne and Florence who escape the Huguenot persecution of the 1680s and start a new life in the Cape of Good Hope colony. Suzanne is determined to find out what happened to her ancestor, Louise Joubert.

Finally Isabelle Lepard journeys to South Africa in 1862 to complete the story and find out the truth of the feud between the Joubert and Vidal families.

These strong women who broke the mould in their own times become part of an archive for the use of future generations.

An inspiring story and a worth ending to the series.

Thank you for allowing me to review this wonderful book. It brings to an end the story of the Joubert Family as they escape persecution as Huguenots. I have enjoyed all the previous books in the series, but I think this surpasses them. Kate Mosse writes excellent historical fiction and puts together her extensive research skills to write an excellent story which is based around historical facts. The descriptions of the localities are amazing. South Africa in the 17th znd 19th centuries is a challenging environment for men and women,but particularly for the women who have travelled across the world. Suzanne had travelled with her grandmother from France to find out about her cousin Louise who had travelled there onboard her own ship. Louise appeared in the previous book The Ghost Ship.. All these ladies are very strong minded, independent women. That have been exceptionally well written. They endure some trials and tribulations, which bring tears to the reader and also times of joy.

I can highly recommend this book and the previous 3 books. Although not essential to have read them, I wouldn't recommend reading out of order.

OH! what a joy this was.

Telling the story of the Joubery family, the women are magnificent strong characters and i cried and rejoiced at the way they survived and cope with the turmoil they faced.

Set in two timelines I crossed the continent to read of Suzanne trying to find out about the disappearance of her cousin Louise.

There is grief and triumph within these pages and of course it is a rollercoaster both in words and emotions.

Mosse is a terrific storyteller, and this series of books are just divine.. I love the covers they are just beautiful..

The Map of Bones is the final book in The Joubert Family Chronicles, and it wraps up the series beautifully! It follows Suzanne in 1688 and her descendant Isabelle in 1862, as they travel to South Africa to uncover the mystery of their ancestor, Louise Reydon Joubert.

Suzanne’s story is full of emotion and historical detail and both her and Isabelle are strong characters. For the full Joubert experience, I would recommend starting with the first book in the series, The Burning Chambers, however, I feel that The Map of Bones can be enjoyed as a standalone read too.

Best suited for: Fans of historical fiction and those who enjoy reads about strong women.

The final book in the series about the The Joubert Family.
This is a book about strong women and women who never give up.
This book finishes their story and is just as powerful as the three other books.
I do not want to give the story away but am sorry the story has ended.
Loved it and couldn't put it down.

After a personal trauma, Suzanne Joubert travels with her grandmother Florence to Southern Africa, a Dutch colony hosting French refugees - mostly Huguenots. Besides finding a new home, Suzanne wants to find out the truth about Louise Joubert-Reydon, who disappeared several decades ago after arriving in the same country. 100 years later, Isabelle Lepard also travels to South Africa to write down Louise's story.

The map of bones is the fourth and final book in The Joubert Family Chronicles and picks up where the previous book - The ghost ship - left off. Louise Joubert disappeared along with her companion Gilles Barenton and half-brother Philippe Vidal on the African coast. We are introduced to Suzanne, the granddaughter of Florence, Louise's niece. They arrive in South Africa and we are introduced to life in the colony.

A second perspective is that of Isabelle Lepard, another woman of the family, who also goes to South Africa in search of a dark secret belonging to Louise and Gilles and this causes yet another fued between two families. In between, there are several other plotlines within Suzanne and Isabelle's story, including the relationship between the original Khoi people and the settlers.

I enjoyes this series a lot, they are all pageturners. Although I must admit that I found Suzanne's story more interesting than that of Isabelle. Isabelle's storyline with the Barentons and the tension created did not end with such a climax as I anticipated. I did enjoy reading about South Africa during this period and following the path of Huguenot refugees.

This novel forms a nice ending for the series, but the first two books still remain my favorites. And I also liked it that Louise's story from book three was now nicely wrapped up. However, I highly recommend to start with The burning chambers. I am curious to see what Kate Mosse will write next, as I loved her last four books.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for a copy of this book in return for my honest opinion.

We finally find out what happened to Louise. A beautiful conclusion to this series. A real insight into the early days of South Africa. The hardships that the first settlers faced and how they coped.

A fitting conclusion to the Joubert series it continues to develop the theme of strong women fighting adversity and gives an interesting and well researched insight into life in South Africa

This title brings the Joubert family chronicle to an emotional conclusion. Another strong addition to this series shows how the Kate Mosse is able to paint a story with words and keep the reader enthralled throughout the story. Many writers attempt to tell stories that span generations with varying degrees of success, but Ms. Mosse shows others how it should be done.
Having read the others in the series ( and pretty much everything else she has written), I was sad for this female led tale to reach an end, however the levels of excitement and interest did not disappoint. For most benefit, read the books chronologically, however this is still a great story in its own right.
Thank you to the publisher for this digital review copy.

A bittersweet tale, a mix of kindness and brutality, over the centuries. I was mesmerised by this startling adventure. An amazing quest for the truth, by strong women, who put family first. I couldn't put it down.