Do you also feel that you can judge a fantasy series based on its map?

[Pilusmagnus]

I had this thought by looking at the cover of the latest Joe Abercrombie novel featuring the map of his world.

I feel like a map for a fantasy world gives you an idea of how the series is gonna be like.

Middle Earth :

http://wallpapercave.com/wp/qjJW7Ng.jpg

It is simply shaped, and you can roughly get the main points very easily, but if you lean on it there are a lot of details, just like in TLOTR.

Now let's have a look at Westeros :

http://x3.cdn03.imgwykop.pl/c3201142/comment_9sg3eIX7cpWRISqgAvevpD9wnitNm6iW.jpg

It is quite similar to Middle Earth in the way that it's shaped, but it's much larger and less harmonious. Also there are different islands and continents so you know that there are going to be plot threads very remote from one another.

The Malazan map :

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_SniTwfm5BwE/S_1KGMFTFpI/AAAAAAAACbo/nwNnJnEtBYg/s1600/Malazan+Book+of+the+Fallen+Cool+Map.jpg

It looks unnecessarily huge and complex, but the names are very uncreative (I only read one chapter of the first book but it's still the feeling I had about it)

The First Law world :

http://www.joeabercrombie.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/Sharp-Ends-wraparound.jpg

It looks like it's a world that has exploded in a lot of small islands. It conveys the idea of overwhelming chaos throughout his books.

And last but not least, the map from the Sword of Truth :

http://vignette1.wikia.nocookie.net/sot/images/4/45/New_world_map.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20100308012633

It's shit.

 

So do you know any other map that gives you an idea beforehand of how the book is gonna be?

[MisterOJ]

I never really look at the maps anymore. I feel like that's something I did more as a teen.

[Darth Richard II]

If this isn't a joke I'm quiting the Internet to become a mountain hermit.

[Gasp of Many Reeds]

I used to basically look see if there was a map and if there wasn't wouldn't bother with the series. Much more liberal these days thankfully. Still, I think a map gives some sense of the level of work that's gone into a world. Square continents and names like 'Westland' and pseudo-Sindarin stuff like 'Rondor' are often a bad sign, though complex geographies and weird names aren't necessarily a sign of quality (Martin and Donaldson use mainly English names for many places and characters, but both have excellent world-building). The density of detail on a map is a good sign that plenty of thought's gone into the mapped region (see the difference in detail between Seven Cities and Genabackis in Erikson compared to some of the continents covered by Esselmont, which I think to an extent reflects less detailed worldbuilding on those latter continents). But its not clear-cut - plenty of good worldbuilding can occur in unmapped or badly mapped series. But digitally done maps in books are a definite no-no in my view.

[Pilusmagnus]

16 minutes ago, Darth Richard II said:

If this isn't a joke I'm quiting the Internet to become a mountain hermit.

Well it's a serious thought I had but I'm stating it in an joke-ish tone.

[Darth Richard II]

A lot of authors have nothing do to with their maps. Usually the publisher has someone draw them. Also see judging a book by its cover.

[Pilusmagnus]

27 minutes ago, Darth Richard II said:

A lot of authors have nothing do to with their maps. Usually the publisher has someone draw them. Also see judging a book by its cover.

I did not say you had to judge the quality of the book by its map, but that it could give you an idea of how the book is structured.

[Richard Writhen]

No, I don't feel that you can judge the quality of a fantasy cycle by its map. The map is just a guide usually to help one visualize the narrative.

[Darth Richard II]

1 hour ago, Pilusmagnus said:

I did not say you had to judge the quality of the book by its map, but that it could give you an idea of how the book is structured.

Thats not what the thread title says.

[Pilusmagnus]

2 minutes ago, Darth Richard II said:

Thats not what the thread title says.

I never said I was supposed to make sense. ^^

[sologdin]

am fairly sure that borges said it best in 'on the exactitude of science':

Quote

. . In that Empire, the Art of Cartograhy attained such Perfection that the map of a single Province occupied the entirety of a City, and the map of the Empire, the entirety of a Province. In time, those Unconscionable Maps no longer satisfied, and the Cartographers Guilds struck a Map of the Empire whose size was that of the Empire, and which coincided point for point with it. The following Generations, who were not so fond of the Study of Cartography as their Forebears had been, saw that that vast map was Useless, and not without some Pitilessness was it, that they delivered it up to the Inclemencies of Sun and Winters. In the Deserts of the West, still today, there are Tattered Ruins of that Map, inhabited by Animals and Beggars; in all the Land there is no other Relic of the Disciplines of Geography.

baudrillard, in the famous essay 'the precession of simulacra,' analyzed this as follows:

Quote

 

If once we were able to view the Borges fable in which the cartographers of the Empire draw up a map so detailed that it ends up covering the territory exactly (the decline of the Empire witnesses the fraying of this map, little by little, and its fall into ruins, though some shreds are still discernible in the deserts — the metaphysical beauty of this ruined abstraction testifying to a pride equal to the Empire and rotting like a carcass, returning to the substance of the soil, a bit as the double ends by being confused with the real through aging) — as the most beautiful allegory of simulation, this fable has now come full circle for us, and possesses nothing but the discrete charm of second-order simulacra.

Today abstraction is no longer that of the map, the double, the mirror, or the concept. Simulation is no longer that of a territory, a referential being, or a substance. It is the generation by models of a real without origin or reality: a hyperreal. The territory no longer precedes the map, nor does it survive it. It is nevertheless the map that precedes the territory — precession of simulacra — that engenders the territory, and if one must return to the fable, today it is the territory whose shreds slowly rot across the extent of the map. It is the real, and not the map, whose vestiges persist here and there in the deserts that are no longer those of the Empre, but ours. The desert of the real itself.

 

cool that this has been cleared up, and that OP is completely correct, no?

[The Marquis de Leech]

11 hours ago, Darth Richard II said:

A lot of authors have nothing do to with their maps. Usually the publisher has someone draw them.

Yes, but the author has to supply them with something in the first place.

Incidentally, if we're judging a series based off the map, ASOIAF doesn't come across well. The map looks like it was made to fit on an A4 page.

[Jo498]

Many people like maps per se, be it from RPG or from making up your own fantastic land as a teenager. And there is of course the example of LotR with a rather elaborate geography (reflected even more in the descriptions and realistic travel times etc. than in the maps)

But I think this obviously depends on the narrative. The first law trilogy obviously does not really care about geography and logistics, it's basically: get on a ship and arrive some time later where the next action takes place. (This may be a reason why the now published maps do not seem to align all that well with (at least my) impressions from the books.) But it's not a problem because hardly anything in the narrative depends on that cavalier attitude. E.g., in the second book the travelling in the Old Empire feels somewhat "unreal" which is probably the point and rather independent from our lack of knowledge of the exact geography.

(It's different in Red Country, but I do not remember how well it was handled there).

SoIaF is somewhat cavalier about travelling and logistics but far less so and the geography is at least supposed to be important (to flog a dead horse, it is, like the seasons, unfortunately not important enough for the narrative). Other maps, e.g. Brett's reflect the sophomoric character of the narrative: That's what you draw up in 10 minutes: a desert in the south, a few roads and rivers, mountains and forests to separate regions.

[Calibandar]

I will say that I always appreciate a good map in a Fantasy book, and a dramatis personae as well.

Of course you can have good backs without maps, such as Abercrombie, but even then a map would have been very nice there, as has often been said. I do agree that a detailed map with good names ( and by good I mean the same standards as applied by Gas of Many Reeds) can be an indication of quality and the work that has gone into it. But of course, we have seen books with gorgeous covers, gorgeous maps, that were very poorly written and a total turn off.

 

 

[Werthead]

Quote

A lot of authors have nothing do to with their maps. Usually the publisher has someone draw them. Also see judging a book by its cover.

The author has to create the map, albeit roughly, to give to the artist in the first place. Some authors are actually good enough so they just use their own: Bakker and Tad Williams most notably.

I don't think it's too critical: David Gemmell never drew a map of his Drenai world and Pratchett never had one of Discworld. Both waited until someone else came along and offered to do it for them and they basically said "whatever". Pratchett later admitted he may have made a mistake not making a map earlier: entirely storylines and novels came to him whilst studying the maps and filling in more detail on them.

A good map can be a sign that the author has done some good worldbuilding, but it's no indicator of overall quality. Russell Kirkpatrick and Ian Irvine are good examples of authors who seem to have expended more effort on the maps and worldbuilding than they did on the prose or characterisation.

[The Marquis de Leech]

2 hours ago, Werthead said:

A good map can be a sign that the author has done some good worldbuilding, but it's no indicator of overall quality. Russell Kirkpatrick and Ian Irvine are good examples of authors who seem to have expended more effort on the maps and worldbuilding than they did on the prose or characterisation.

Kirkpatrick's a geography lecturer. Maps are apparently his obsession.

[Darth Richard II]

Yes, I misposke. I didn;t mean that authors don't have input on the map, just that they don't usually make it themselves.

 

This topic is weird.

 

[Gasp of Many Reeds]

23 hours ago, Werthead said:

I don't think it's too critical: David Gemmell never drew a map of his Drenai world and Pratchett never had one of Discworld. Both waited until someone else came along and offered to do it for them and they basically said "whatever". Pratchett later admitted he may have made a mistake not making a map earlier: entirely storylines and novels came to him whilst studying the maps and filling in more detail on them.

I believe Gemmell also admitted that mapping the world might have helped prevent basic errors like placing Vagria both east and west of Drenai in the text of Legend. The Drenai map is actually quite a nice one and did a good job of placing countries that you could only guess as to where they were positioned from the books.

[Switchback the Second]

I'm not sure about whether one can discern the structure of a book/series based on how the map's put together (I'm certainly unable to do it), but I will say that a well put-together and detailed map will almost always lead to me buying your book.  I'm not guaranteeing I'll like it, or even finish it, but I will buy it and start reading.  I love, love, love maps.  Real and fantasy alike.  That 'Cartographers' Guild' site is like crack to me.