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Currently Reading: The Undivided by Jennifer Fallon

Wednesday, March 9, 2011

Fantasy Maps and Joe Abercrombie's Circle of the World

A couple of posts just for fun today.

One of the staples of Fantasy stories has been the map. If you're going to move characters through a fictional world, let the readers have a clear refernece to help them follow. At least, that was the conventional wisdom. I'm not sure if he was the first to do it, but Tolkien's map of Middle Earth is a very prominent early example of this approach. In more recent times we've seen maps from the likes of Robin Hobb, George R. R. Martin and many others.

The newer wave of authors however have taken it upon themselves to buck the trend. Obviously, if you want to distance yourself from that traditional Epic or High Fantasy, ditch the trappings that are so common. Joe Abercrombie didn't include a full map with The First Law Trilogy or any subsequent book (Best Served Cold has a bit of the map). Neither did he release one online. Here is his reasoning.

However, a fan recently made a map of their own, using information from the books, and I haven't heard anyone argue with it's accuracy (yet). It's nice!

1 comment:

  1. I see a couple issues with it's accuracy... namely, that both Calcis and Uffrith are port towns (which is why Uffrith is taken in the first place)

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