Maps - They should be mandatory for fantasy novels

[HokieStone]

So, I'm about halfway through "The Blade Itself" - I like the story well enough so far, but it really bugs me that there's no map. I took a Fantasy & Science Fiction course in college many moons ago, and one of the things I vaguely remember the professor talking about was the need for maps in a fantasy novel.

Maybe it's because I like looking at maps in general, but when being introduced to a whole new world, it seems to me that a map is an almost indispensable piece of information for the reader.

Any opinions?

[Errant Bard]

The one and only Joe Abercrombie's opinion on this: here and follow-up here, with some comments of others posters on the subject thrown in for good effect.

[The Wedge]

Hokie, I agree with you about TBH. I thought a map would be very useful, since the book deals with various regions, but Joe's take in the link above is valid:

I think that maps give a reader a sense of omniscience, of looking down from a great height, which is the opposite of what I was hoping to achieve.

As author, it's his prerogative to keep the reader off balance. If not providing a map is part of that, then so be it. The story so far has been engaging enough without a Rand McNally view.

[Filippa Eilhart]

I don't like maps

[Angalin]

I love maps, but I can live without them, fictionally speaking. Except in Ankh Morpork, because the street names are so great.

[diabloblanco18]

The only time I really feel the need for a map is when there's lots of military campaigning going on. I like to play tactician along with the characters. If that's not there, then a map is nice, but unimportant.

[Bellis]

I don't like them in a book and I'll rarely consult them. Didn't really look at the Westeros maps until my first re-read of ASOIAF. I like to experience the novel from the ground, and I don't usually find it necessary to know where places are relative to other places. IMHO, ideally a map should act more like an illustration - an accompaniment to the story, not an aid to get you through the story.

I like maps in real life well enough. But for cities in which I live, I rarely consult them, again preferring to figure things out based on personal exploration, relative landmarks, etc.

[Lord of Oop North]

I love maps. If the whole story was just told in maps, I would still read it.

I also think that if world-building is an important part of your story, then you should have a map.

Then again, I'm a geek at heart and could just read about a setting all day.

[Gold Storm]

I love maps, and use them when reading a book just to see where they are at. Most maps in books have a very big scale so you cannot get too much information from them they just show where everything is at.

[The Wedge]

ASOIAF is a good illustration of how maps work for a story, as well as how lack of maps work for a story.

We've pretty much always known the confines of Westeros because the maps are provided, but think about the Dany storyline and the air of mystery about exotic far-off places that is aided by the lack of a map of the Free Cities, Dothraki Sea, and points east. Knowing the exact locations of these places would (will in the future?) remove some of the mysterious nature that feeds into underpinnings of the plotlines.

[Werthead]

For a very rough-and-ready map of The First Law check this. I threw it together in about two minutes, but for a very, very, very rough overview of the action I think it works.

[Bastard of Godsgrace]

I love maps. Sure not all books need them, but for secondary world fantasy they are very useful, IMHO, especially if such fantasy is heavy on world-building. Reading ASOIAF or Prince of Nothing without maps would be for me different, and diminished, experience.

[HokieStone]

The one and only Joe Abercrombie's opinion on this: here and follow-up here, with some comments of others posters on the subject thrown in for good effect.

Eh...I'm not a big fan of those answers (not surprisingly). The thing is (and again, I'm only halfway or so through with the first book) - most, if not all of the characters refer to different lands as if they know exactly where everything is in relationship with each other. I can kind of buy the argument if the characters themselves were not that familiar with the geography...for example, as someone pointed out above, with Dany's adventures in ASOIAF. But in this case, all the characters (except maybe Logen) seem to be quite knowledgeable on the geography...so why keep the reader in the dark? Especially when the story starts talking about which noblemen might be more concerned about an invasion by the northmen, etc...

[Werthead]

Casts * summon author *

Bah, he fecked off.

[naz]

I love maps and I love maps in fantasy novels. However, I respect the prerogative of the author to choose the way in which he/she wants you to experience his/her world and if that means you discover it from the narrative, so be it. I feel the same way about most art forms in that people should at least try to view art, films, music, etc. in the mode that the artist, director, musician, etc. preferably wants you to view it, inasmuch as they have the desire to do so. E.g., if an author says that his book is best read while hanging upside down, naked, from an oak tree branch... well, if possible, I'll try to read it that way at least once to see what he means. This is under the assumption that the artist/author is not just saying that to be subversive.

I guess that's why I'm a huge fan of Marcel Duchamp.

[diabloblanco18]

Oops. Never mind.

[Joe Abercrombie]

There's a more complete investigation of the map question on me blog, with way better gags in it. I probably don't have much to add to that, myself. Some folks may not find those reasons compelling, but then that's true of any aspect of the approach you take.

Werthead,

You've got Midderland about right, an island surrounded by the Circle Sea, and the North isn't a million miles off, especially if you make Angland the penis-like land mass on the left. But the rest, not so much. It's the Circle of the World, man, if you draw it in a square you're already off to a loser.

Plus they could just have boated down the coast from Adua to Shabulyan, and boated right back, which would've made climbing those mountains a bit pointless...

Noble effort, though, it's pretty much impossible to do just from the text. I'm looking at my own maps now, as it happens. They're very good. Bit small, but quite detailed. The coastlines are, like, well crinkly.

Slartibartfast would be proud.

[kmgrey]

I'm in the exact same situation as Hokie Stone- halfway through the first book and really wishing there was a map. As already noted, all of characters in the book seem to understand geography well enough that I think the lack of either a map or detailed breakdown of the geography in text form has really hurt some of the scenes where the nobles and such are describing the different factions at play. Heck until I saw Wert's map, I didn't even know that Midderland was an island.

By no means a deal breaker though.

[Werthead]

There's a more complete investigation of the map question on me blog, with way better gags in it. I probably don't have much to add to that, myself. Some folks may not find those reasons compelling, but then that's true of any aspect of the approach you take.

Werthead,

You've got Midderland about right, an island surrounded by the Circle Sea, and the North isn't a million miles off, especially if you make Angland the penis-like land mass on the left. But the rest, not so much. It's the Circle of the World, man, if you draw it in a square you're already off to a loser.

Plus they could just have boated down the coast from Adua to Shabulyan, and boated right back, which would've made climbing those mountains a bit pointless...

Noble effort, though, it's pretty much impossible to do just from the text. I'm looking at my own maps now, as it happens. They're very good. Bit small, but quite detailed. The coastlines are, like, well crinkly.

Slartibartfast would be proud.

I made sense (almost) of Erikson's maps from the text, so I will not be defeated easily!

So (nerd glasses go on) are the North and the Old Empire-continent the same landmass, if they couldn't sail between them? I was also going to whack Styria on the top of the Kantic continent east of Midderland until I realised that that wouldn't make any sense given {spoiler events from LAoK}.

There was a fantasy book published about ten years ago whose name I've regretfully forgotten which consisted of a mainland with two long, curving coasts and a somewhat drooping peninsula extending between them. Rotating the page around about 45 degrees revealed that the adventure was taking place on a gigantic phallus, which was quite amusing as it was blatantly deliberate.

Then there's Diana Wynne-Jones' approach in the indispensible Tough Guide to Fantasyland, where the map depicts the action taking place on an upsidedown map of Europe

[Werthead]

The Free Cities map will be in ADWD. Some authors (cough) listen when their readers demand maps!*

The Terry Pratchett approach is interesting: write fifteen novels set in the world and then get one of your mates to make sense of the text and draw up the maps from your often contradictary text whilst you sit around and make snarky comments and then publish them for profit.**

SF seems to get off a lot easier though. I notice no-one's bothered about Peadar not having maps. Yet.

* Erm, twelve years later.

** Don't even think about it, Abercrombie.