She Sings From Somewhere You Can’t See

You have to understand that nothing makes me turn in a puddle of Lis quicker than a beautiful fantasy map. Or actually just a really beautiful map period. But for the purposes of this conversation, we’re dealing with the lands unknown except in books and the backs of our brains. I tend to be kind of picky about my fantasy maps–I like them to have both elements of realism and fantasy intermingled. I like the coastlines to look like coastlines: sometimes worn, sometimes jagged, fractal. I like the rivers to meander like real rivers, and flow logically across a landscape. I like there to be peninsulas and isthmuses, capes and bays, inlets and deltas. Give me a good mixture of terrain: tundra, forest, desert, sea cliffs, fjords, rolling breadbasket plains. I also like a dash of the representational. Sure, draw mountains instead of contours, draw little palaces and temples on the map. Sprinkle your forests with tiny hand-drawn trees.

What I don’t like: thin, attenuated maps that end at the borders of the page. You know, the sort of map, where the whole thing takes up one page, consists of two–maybe three–countries, and has about five or six cities and towns between them. There is one lake, one river, one big fat forest, and a really big mountain. It really shrinks the world for me. Give me some geography please. Give me a plethora of distinct countries.

I love city maps too. When I was younger, I liked the Basilica and Hart’s Hope maps from OSC’s Homecoming series and Hart’s Hope. And Elisa Mitchell (no relation) has draw a number of nice city maps for the Wheel of Time books. Below I’ve shown the WoT map of Caemlyn, the city where Elayne’s family has ruled for generations.

When I was younger, I was obsessed with maps. I saved up and bought the Dictionary of Imaginary Places for the maps.

Another one of my favourite maps was the interior insert to David Arkenstone’s In the Wake of the Wind new age album. I used to stare at that map for hours, imagining that I was visiting all the places it portrayed. (Incidentally, the names of Arkenstone’s children were each worked into the map as a place name.) I tried to find a copy of it on the interwebs to show you, but alas, couldn’t find anything but the album cover, wherein the map artwork is covered up by the musician.) Edited to add: I have just gotten confirmation that Kenn Backhaus was the artist of the map on the cover and interior of Wake of the Wind.

Anyway, just the other day I got into a discussion on CA about maps, and IKV Nexis shared a link to the Cartographer’s Guild forums, where I found these lovelies.

Vaniya by Ramah

Vaniya is the land in which the novel I am writing is based. It is a fantasy world in which, although magic exists, it has long since been broken, changed into many different forms that the original users could not comprehend. For decades now the land has been under a terrible blight and the human race is dying out, slowly but surely. The only non-human race in the land are the Mandrai which live in The Ruhks, the great forest to the north. The humans and Mandrai have been at war for many long years.

The map, although ostensibly for my own benefit as a writing aid, has been decorated a little as if it is a communication between Arcanists, the practitioners of Circle Magic situated on the isle of Maloglash. The idea is that it is used as they attempt to chart the increase in The Blight. To this effect, I have added bits of flavour text to the map (I have increased the visibility on most of these since I last posted, but some are still purposely faint), some of which are directly related to my story.

Shegu by Bohunk

I’m loving both these maps immensely, Ramah’s map in particular.

There’s a reason I wrote an entire story about a cartographer.

Anyway, as you might suspect, there are indeed maps for Avynthar, the world of The Novel of Doom. I have everything from big continental maps to doodles of the Keep of the Yn Greneiri. Sometime soon, I’m hoping to scan in the big continental map and give it a nice paint job and get in the major towns and more minor rivers and lakes.

The Continent of Avynthar

Miscellaneous maps of Avynthar: (left to right) Map of Halsbruch, map of the area around The Keep of the Yn Greneiri, and a very very rough sketch of the Keep grounds.

So….what maps do you drool over? What maps made the stories you read seem that much more real to you?