You must log in or register to comment.
Last time I was asked that question, I replied: “Many of my family members believe in god”.
Whoa edgy
I present to you, my favorite book map of all time:
Which book?
I miss the olden days. I remember trying to win some Pikachu crap in a random magazine.
But where do the witches hang out
Great book but mapmaking could use some work. One of these is a lush rich planet, and the other is a near-barren moon. Which one do you think is the moon?
Urras?
You’d think it was Flippy, but you’d be wrong. It’s Hambone
Urras is the moon? Jesus it’s impossible to tell 😅
phantom tollbooth
The original Dragonlance book, Dragons of Autumn Twilight, didn’t need a map. Because a major plot point was that all the maps they had were pre-cataclysm and over a hundred years old. They had smaller local maps, but no explorers had stitched them together as 100 years is short to do that. So traveling over the map outside of where they would normally be in their lives, meant they couldn’t be sure where they were going or where they’d end up.
They went to Tarsis-by-the-sea to take a ship to cut down their travel time, only to find it had become a dry seabed.
They did still have a map, but much more local to where the group started out and lived. I suppose that’s why in most fantasy settings, you need a local map, because big world ones like Tolkien had require a lot of stability over a long period of time, along with trade and a market for large map.
My absolute favorite book series. I’ve probably read the first trilogy 5 or 6 times. I do love your point about the maps being pre-cataclysm but there were some smaller maps in the book that I appreciated having
I remember trying to go as Raistlinn one Halloween. Get rid of the staff and I was Sheev Palpatine.
Lmao. Never made that connection - physically ill body with hooded robe and magical powers
And that’s how you know it was a DM that said: I’ma get around to a map later.
Idk I listened to the entire Stormlight Archives and never thought to look up the map. When I was younger I would have agreed, but now…
I recently reread Eragon and Eldest which I loved as a kid. I thought it was so cool to flip to the back of the book to read elf and drawf translations. This time I found it gimmicky and annoying lol
I’m listening to the audiobook. This time I just remember the meanings. The important ones at least
Terry Pratchett agreed with your aunt
Then he realised that actually he did, and had to go through all the works carefully to figure out a layout that worked.
has a framed Discworld map
❤️🧡💛💚🩵💙💜🩷
I feel like the 3rd book of dungeon crawler Carl could’ve been this but the author put in a note at the beginning saying essentially, ‘it’s too complicated. Don’t try to follow what’s going on and where they are in the map lol’
Just finished book 3 and I will say the added railway layout confusion kinda took me out of the story, I would find myself rewinding full descriptions several times and still not understanding. The author took a lot of time to describe the different train lines and all the stations but I just stopped caring because it really didn’t matter. Just annoying he took the time to explain everything but it still made no sense.
Book 4 starts way better, with the showrunner explaining the rules and the objectives as soon as they get to the 5th floor.
Reading through the third book right now, and either missed or completely forgot the suggestion to try not to follow it, but glad I saw this message because I am often getting confused as to where people are. Still having a blast though! Well written books? Maybe not, but they are very fun.
So far DCC is giving me a nice break from the Cosmere and Sanderson’s in depth world building.
Can you recommend a starting point for Cosmere? Should one start from the beginning and read them in order, or is each series standalone?
I’ll admit I’m a bit skeptical because I wasn’t satisfied with how Sanderson finished the Wheel of Time, but it could have been due to the challenges inherent in finishing someone else’s work.
I know he got the major plot points from Jordan’s notes, but stylistically I felt it was lacking, as well as the internal cohesion that Jordan did so well (such as keeping track of what information is known to each character and what isn’t, and each character’s uniqueness and depth of personality which comes through so clearly in the narration depending on whose perspective a chapter or scene is told from, etc.)
It’s possible that he does a better job of writing his own worlds though, so I’m willing to give it a try if you recommend it.
Everyone usually recommends Mistborn as the entry point. I personally started with the Stormlight Archive (The Way of Kings).
His writing generally gets better with each book, after going from The Stormlight Archive (all the way up to Rhythms of War) and then going over to Mistborn, I noticed a bit of a difference in his writing.
If I were to start all over again, I would go with Mistborn. I thought this flow chart someone made on Reddit to be pretty good.
The Way of Kings is boring as hell, Mistborn is much better
That’s helpful, thank you
There are some attempts to diagram it out online but it really just doesn’t make sense imo
Is it too complicated or was it just not written woth that in mind? I mean, you can follow the fellowships path through the mines of Moria and it’s not like that’s a straight shot.
Comparing to tolkein is just unfair.
That man has the worldbuilding capabilities second only to Eru. Even Aule doesn’t hold a silmaril to Tolkein’s creativity.
The man legitimately never stopped thinking about middle earth. And I am all the more glad for it, since now I have maps aplenty, intertwining stories, and the guidebook to end all guidebooks for fantasy worldbuilding.
Comparing that to someone who knocked out a book in a few years seems unfair.
Yeah, reading Tolkien growing up kind of set me an unrealistic standard for fantasy serieses. After I finished the LotR I became hungry for something as good, and nothing came close. People who only watched the movies don’t understand what a masterpiece those books really are.
On a positive note, it saved me from potentially countenancing some absolutely garbage fantasy works, but on the other hand it left me on some search that could never truly be satisfied. Because lets be honest, nothing else holds a candle.
Now decades later, I just finished the Wheel of Time, and even though I ended up really liking it, I had trouble enjoying it at first because I kept comparing it in my mind to Tolkien. It wasn’t until I finally convinced myself to stop doing that that I really began to appreciate it for what it is.
I’m reading the prequel now, but mostly just because I’m interested in Moiraine’s backstory. (The characters are what really make WoT in my opinion. Without Jordan’s skill at writing people, the plot alone would just be meh. Something I felt Sanderson really dropped the ball on in the last three books, where the characters and dialogue get really awkward and bland except for the chapters that were clearly written before Jordan died).
I also read one of the Earthsea books a few years ago and thought it was really good. I’ve been meaning to read the rest of those, which are probably next on my list.
And I have some of the Ring World books waiting for some more lighthearted fantasy. Howl’s Moving Castle was another fun lighthearted one, but I haven’t read either of the sequels.
Other than that, I’m not sure if there are any other fantasy series that interest me. I don’t think I can get into Narnia. I’m not interested in Song of Ice and Fire or the Witcher. Maybe there’s a gem tucked away somewhere I haven’t heard of yet, but I don’t intend to do much digging to look for it. I recently read about Piers Anthony, so maybe I’ll pull that string a little more. But overall I think Ring World will keep me occupied for a while (after I finish Earthsea, of course). Then maybe I’ll move on to some scifi.
Read Mistborn!
It’s been recommended to me a few times in this thread now so I’ll have to give it a shot
I read it when I was pretty young, but I really enjoyed Robin Hobb’s Farseer series, which I recommend.
It is often described as epic fantasy, and as a character-driven and introspective work.
(from wikipedia)
Sounds interesting enough, I’ll check it out. Thanks!
Have you read any Brandon Sanderson other than the last three WoT books? He’s a pretty amazing worldbuilder. And his hard magic systems are phenomenal. He’s also a master of story structure. The only area he lacks is prose, but he’s been improving on that over time.
No, those were the first ones I’ve read by him and I just finished them. I can see how finishing someone else’s series wouldn’t allow his strengths in worldbuilding and story structure to shine.
The prose was one of the issues I had. How are his characters and dialogue in his own series? I can see it going either way, where his worldbuilding and narrative arc could create strong characters, or his weakness in prose could create weak dialogue. But characters and dialogue are so inherently intertwined that I’m not sure how well one could be done without the other.
If everything else is good and just the dialogue is lacking though, I could probably suspend judgement enough to enjoy the story and the world it takes place in (including its magic system).
Robert Jordan I didn’t find particularly prosaic, but his characters were so well-done that I didn’t mind as much once I decided to look past it. His plotline and worldbuilding were okay, although some aspects of both were really well-done, and the different civilizations and their histories/cultures, the underlying political currents among the nations and different factions were interesting enough to redeem the shortcomings. My point is that the characters are really where his work shines in my opinion.
If Sanderson does worldbuilding and story arcs really well, then those could be the things that shine for me and if so, I can look past a few weak areas as long as they’re not too painfully bad.
I don’t expect every series to have the same strengths. For instance no one could match Tolkien for prose, but politically his world only goes surface-deep. There’s good guys and bad guys, and while there is some treachery and nuance, for the most part everyone is on one side or the other. Still a masterpiece though.
I’m finding it hard to walk away from the WoT though, partly because it’s the most recent one I finished, but also particularly because the characters being the strong-point, I felt deep personal connections to some of them and was invested in their development, only for the story to end abruptly with no way to read further. It was like losing several friends at once. I experienced feelings similar to grief afterwards (and it wasn’t just because some of my favorite characters died).
So it might take a gear-shift, and maybe a period of mourning, but if Sanderson has the strengths you describe then I could probably still get into it…
Wheel of Time was my favorite series, until Stormlight Archive.
He does characters quite well. The dialogue isn’t always there, especially if the character is supposed to have a clever wit like Mat, but he’s getting better at that, too, with practice. But in terms of depth of character and setting he’s pretty fantastic. His characters are flawed and relatable and feel real, wound very well into his mastery of story structure. In Wheel of Time Androl is an excellent example, as that character was almost entirely Sanderson’s.
I recommend starting with either The Final Empire (first book in the Mistborn series) or The Way of Kings (first in the Stormlight series). The series eventually begin to intertwine and crossover to one another in a really brilliant way.
It’s funny that you mention Mat, because his character as well as Nynaeve’s I felt suffered the most in the last three books. They both have such complex characters, though deceivingly simple on the surface. It seemed like Sanderson picked up on their surface simplicity without reproducing the underlying depth.
And yeah, I really liked Androl but he felt different in a way I couldn’t put my finger on. So it makes sense now that you say he’s mostly Sanderson’s work. I can see that, how a newly introduced character gave Sanderson the creative liberty to write him in his own way. The result was a character that didn’t quite seem to fit inside the world, yet was still a good character in his own right.
Not sure if I’m explaining that well. I liked him, but maybe something in the way that so much depth and backstory was packed into the last three books felt a bit unnatural, when all the other characters took so much time to develop in their complexity. Not in a bad way, just different.
But if he’s an indicator of Sanderson’s characters in his own series, then I think I could get into it.
His characters are flawed and relatable and feel real
That sounds promising. The characters’ flaws in WoT is what makes them so interesting to me. Mat would have been bland if he wasn’t a scoundrel, and Nynaeve would have been bland if she wasn’t a bossy-pants. But when the two interact, their flaws create such an interesting dynamic. And the way it slowly develops from a mutual antagonism into deeply appreciating and caring about each other in a really wholesome way was one of the highlights of the series for me.
It’s funny though, because now that I say that I realize I can’t think of a flaw for either Moiraine or Egwene, and those were my two favorite characters. My third favorite was probably Birgitte, but of course she has a reason for being flawless. Eh, love is blind though, maybe they have flaws and I missed it. Oh and Bela. Bela was flawless.
This reminds me of when Ultima Underworld first came out in 1992, and it came with a map of the first level printed on a piece of fabric, and it looked hand-drawn. I was 13, and I have never played a complicated adventure game like that before, so it was extremely extremely helpful in figuring out how the game worked and how to visualize the levels of the game moving forward. Plus, as the character had a map just like that one, it really helped with the immersion.
Considering that, 34 years later, it is still resonating this strongly in my memory, I’m definitely in favor of maps being included in fantasy stories.
By then, they’d already been including such maps for close to a decade!
I don’t recall if Ultima III had one, but IV certainly did. Not to mention those glorious manuals.
I discovered that when I ended up buying Ultima VII next lol
Sadly, ultima underworld ii did not come with a fabric map, but one printed on paper 😔
I miss the days of high production values for every part of the game. Obviously the majority of games from my youth (after dinosaurs and the invention of color, but not much) were mediocre or even flat out shovelware, but the greats are still shining achievements.
Please tell me you still have that map! Sounds awesome.
And the audiobook version needs to have a pdf/png of the map as part of the download.
Why not an audiomap?
sstv map
I also don’t think you need anything beyond a very rough map which sometimes can be directly inferred from reading the book. Anything more is like cover art or illustrations: it competes with my mental picture while I read it and I don’t prefer it.
reminds me when i read 100 years of solitude without family tree, big mistake, but on my defense i didn’t know what i was getting into and it was before the Internet
deleted by creator
What about fantasy open world game. Do they need a dynamic map?
