With all due respect to Mr. Butterworth, this book will appeal only to those who really, really like physics (quantum, particle or whatever) and want to know the basics of physics in a round-a-bout way with the never-ending metaphors of being aboard a ship which was done presumably to make this relatable and easy to understand for non-scientifically literate people, but it was a superfluous exercise and it never engaged me, even though Mr. Butterworth went through gravity, dark matter, and the ends of the cosmos.

A Map Of The Invisible is a great book for anyone who wants a guide to particle physics. Written to be easily understood, A Map Of The Invisible is a unique and interesting read for anyone with a growing passion for science.

The first thing that really pulls you in is the writing. Lyrical in moments, Butterworth has a great way of explaining this theory through this book in the form of a journey and how he describes makes this book such a thoughtful read, it can be captivating and it is a great way to explain the theory in this book - the introduction gets you.

The theory in this book is laid out so well. Through the use of a metaphor, Butterworth explains big subject matters incredibly well and combined with the illustrations in this book, the ideas are brought to life. A book I would highly recommend to someone just starting out in science, A Map Of The Invisible is a brilliant read.

I think I bit off more than I could chew with this book. The boat analogy was used very effectively and I am sure this will be appealing to a wide audience however I struggled to stay engaged with the story and would prefer not to continue reading.

Thank you for giving me the opportunity to read this.

New then, this book really pushed me and I’m glad it did. I loved the imagining the “story” was carried out in a boat and for someone who is a beginner in physics, a brilliant idea to keep me interested. My head was scratched regularly, there was a lot of eh? And huh? But in the end I understood! Yep, I understood! Thank you Mr Butterworth I thoroughly enjoyed the voyage you took me on.

I thought A Map Of The Invisible was very good indeed. Jon Butterworth is both a fine physicist and a very engaging writer. The combination produces something rather special here.

Butterworth's aim is to give the non-physicist an insight into the quantum world, from the basic structure of atoms to more recent developments like the discovery of the Higgs boson and also into more arcane theories and theoretical methods and the current directions of thinking in physics. He does this by an extended analogy in which particles are envisaged as inhabitants of islands with their "geographical" position representing the mass/energy level of the particles and means of transport representing the mediators of the fundamental forces. This works well – at least as well as any other analogy I have come across. It can get just a little wearing at times, but as a template in which to anchor so many entities and ideas it gives the book a welcome coherent structure.

Butterworth writes very well. His prose is readable and direct, with a very welcome absence of gee-whizzery and often a nice humorous undertone. As a tiny example which may give you a flavour (no quark pun intended), this footnote about wave/particle duality: "The equation which describes these waves is the Schrödinger equation. Less famous than his cat but much more useful." I found the style carried me well through some pretty tough intellectual workouts and he strikes a very good balance between providing enough technical and mathematical meat while allowing a non-physicist to keep up.

This requires a good deal of intellectual effort; no amount of analogy or clear writing is going to make quantum physics simple. I have a background in physics (some time ago, now) and I still found some of it a bit of a struggle - it's just the nature of the beast. However, this is one of the best, clearest and easiest-to-understand guides I have found to the state of physics in late 2017 and I can recommend it warmly.

(I received an ARC via NetGalley.)