map reveal - Tor/Forge Blog

Map-i-matical Considerations from R.R. Virdi

September 5, 2023September 6, 2023Rachel Taylor3 Comments

Is it really a Big Epic Fantasy Book if there’s no map to be seen? R.R. Virdi, author of The First Binding—Now available in paperback!—says NO WAY! Check out his thoughts on maps in fantasy books, PLUS an exclusive first look at the map you’ll find inside of The First Binding, right here.

By R.R. Virdi

Fantasy reader, or writer, you’ve probably formed an opinion on maps in novels at one point or another. You expect them as normal, especially if you’re a reader from the 90’s. You’ve opened up the Wheel of Time books and have the image of Two Rivers burned into your mind. Maybe you’ve memorized all of Randland. Maybe you’re a collector who has a book full of folding maps of Westeros and all the other lands in A Song of Fire and Ice.

I know I do.

You can’t have an epic traveling fantasy (especially a Silk Road inspired one) without a map that lives up to all of that. The lands, the fantastical, and of course, the epic part. We lovers of fantasy want to see mountain ranges and vasty plains inhabited by strange and wonderful things. We want the sense of wonder that comes with seeing rolling seas in storms and maybe monsters in their depths. I always have, and growing up as a child of two worlds (South Asian heritage, and American birth), I’ve been fascinated by travel and the layout of the world.

Of worlds. Real or otherwise.

So of course I leapt at the chance to have my own map represented and brought to life by the amazing Priscilla Spencer (who’s done work for the talented line up: Seanan Mcguire, Jim Butcher, and more). It’s a childhood dream, and more than that, this is a traveling fantasy series. One full of secrets, including some hidden in places you might not think to look. Or, maybe you would.

Like a map.

Priscilla and I got to talking over the crudely shaped map I’d first made to roughly place the lands I needed where they would be. We dove into the geography, cultures, and trade routes I’d established for my Golden Road, and then slowly, it all began to come to life. Her attention to detail and understanding just how many layers and secrets exist in this series and world shone through in the development.

People who’ve already read the ARCs might find pleasant little secrets hidden within this map, if they have the eye and patience to give it that look. But some of the things I can share?

Priscilla dove into the history of existing maps/records from travelers along the Silk Road of old. Design styles, and storytelling techniques used in maps (and yes, maps are stories of a sort as well. The stories of where we’ve been, would like to go, and what we imagine a place to be). They all bled into the final creation. Every detail in this map speaks to something – nothing is fruitless or wasteful design.

This is a map that shows the roads all manner of people travel, and along those roads, heroes, monsters, and the ones between. Stories, legends, lies, and truths. And sometimes they are all one and the same.

Her creation lives up to all the depth this world and story offers, and all the size and scope of the plot, and Ari’s travels, as well as his legends.

Or lies.

She gave the Mutri Empire the nod to India I wanted, and made it the heart of my world, as well as the map. There are images and nods to things all hidden throughout the first book, and all the ones to come. Something that will make this map rewarding to look at as you continue to read and hopefully, if you so choose, decide to reference this throughout your travels along the Golden Road.

Remember.

A map isn’t just a map. It’s a key, a guide, and a story.

And all of those are secrets, show the way to secrets, and in fact, open secrets.

R.R. Virdi is a two-time Dragon Award finalist and a Nebula Award finalist. He is the author of two urban fantasy series, The Grave Report, and The Books of Winter. He was born and raised in Northern Virginia and is a first generation Indian-American with all the baggage that comes with. Should the writing gig not work out, he aims to follow his backup plan and become a dancing shark for a Katy Perry music video.

**Order The First Binding in Paperback Here:**

Author Features / What's New

Fantastic Cartography: David Edison on Maps

May 23, 2023May 23, 2023a cat

You don’t need a map to find this one! Today we’ve got the awesome interior map of David Edison’s Sandymancer here to share. We’ve also got David himself to talk about the meaning and impact of maps, both as fantasy art, and in the personal sense—their impact on him.

Check it out, and preorder Sandymancer!

By David Edison

Like most map-loving readers, I have an origin story. Sometime in April of 1987, I cracked open the spine of Guardians of the West, the first book in David Eddings’ sequel series to The Belgariad, which was called The Malloreon. The new series’ expanded map didn’t just blow my mind, it blew it wide open. The Belgariad had lovely, intricate maps of the lands explored therein, and I had committed them to memory so I could adventure there in my daydreams. The Malloreon’s map, however, pulled back the camera to show a vast, two-continent spread of imposing nations and territories, all as detailed as the original, with the storied lands of The Belgariad cramped into one tiny corner. I ripped through those volumes as they were published, desperate to learn every story that could be plotted across The Malloreon’s mysterious mountain ranges and scar-like borders.

After all, maps tell stories, and stories draw maps. Both are powered by mystery.

In Jim Grimsley’s excellent, queer, one-volume saga, Kirith Kirin, a map spans two pages, its lines sparsely drawn in a style that’s almost childish, crocheted with regions and locations but also missing important cities, temples, etc. At first glance this seems odd, maybe even misleading, but as the tale builds, the map becomes a cipher—an old toy decoder ring, offering the reader insights and playgrounds while tempting them with delicious, succulent mystery.

Tell me a story. Draw me a map. Readers of speculative fiction are astral travelers – we have packed our kit, set out clean water for the pets and then, nested in our reading nook, we slip out of this world with our spellbook in hand. To paraphrase Sarah Chorn: the real world is plywood and drywall, but SF/F worlds are obsidian and sandstone. Many of us find that unearthly plenitude to be irresistible; what’s the case for drywall?

The same forces pull us into the maps of other worlds: Kansas is a goner, these are Quadling lands now. St. Leibowitz is long-dead and Brother Francis Gerard wanders a Utah the borders of which are less than a memory. Númenor has fallen, but we know to look to the west. (Or turn to Christopher Tolkien’s Unfinished Tales of Númenor and Middle-earth, and find the gem that is the Númenórë map.)

Like the text itself, a map tells a story by what it shows and by what it doesn’t. Think of Númenor, or of Eddings’ original, unexpanded map in The Belgariad. That’s mystery fuel.

The world of Sandymancer, once the Land of the Vine, now 800 years removed from an environmental cataclysm, is a decrepit and desiccated version of its former glory. There are too few people and too much territory to bother with borders, names and places have shifted over the centuries, and the land itself has buckled and eroded as it slowly dies. An ever-expanding wasteland has swallowed most of the world, while folk cling to life on the rind of the continent, watching their sky darken and the sandstorms inch forward, year by year.

At a certain point in the book, Caralee’s nemesis and tutor shows her his left palm, and asks her to imagine that it is a map of the world. He shows her where they have been, and where they are headed. He is ancient; perhaps in his day the land did look like a human hand. Does it still? And if so, are we looking at a sculpted continent, or an uncanny coincidence?

I’ve been holding my breath, waiting to see for myself how the visual art would support the story. This beauty was certainly worth the patience.

Map artist Rhys Davies hugely uplifted Sandymancer with his stunning interpretation of my scribbles and descriptions. The architectural style of the frozen Northen Authorities blows me away – are those windows? – as do the craggy mesas just to the south. Out west, Rhys took Oldmuck, the last of the seasides, and its petrified Stone Navies, and spun a little visual story that’s inspired future storylines. In the southeast, towns like Comez and Grenshtepple’s look just as I described – astonishingly so.

Sidestepping any major spoilers, the Metal Duchy rises, imposing, with its conical steel palace, while the Sevenfold Redoubt towers over the surrounding land, built by magick atop the slope of a red-dirt mountain. The Wildest Wood looks overgrown and impassable, and the settlement at its heart does indeed seem as if it’s been hidden away from the rest of the world.

Rhys didn’t just nail the map by land and by sea, he did a brilliant job of suggesting the larger setting without spelling it out. I won’t ruin that, but the deliberate oval shape of the world, the stark border, and the blackness beyond tell just the story I’d hoped they would. I don’t trust myself to say anything more.

I can’t wait for you to meet Caralee and her friends, mortal enemies, friendly beasts, and the occasional steel harpy. I wish that the cover, the map, and the text spin you a yarn you’ll appreciate. I hope you’ll follow me into the thickets of mystery, an unmappable place where anything can happen—and often does.

David Edison is the author of The Waking Engine and Sandymancer. Born in St. Louis, Missouri, he has spent most of his life living in New York City and California. His passions include rescuing pit bulls, leveling up, and all things queer.

Pre-order Sandymancer Here:

What's New

In the Shadow of Lightning: A Map of the World

June 9, 2022a cat2 Comments

In the Shadow of Lightning is the first in an expansive new epic fantasy series from epic fantasist Brian McClellan (of Powder Mage Trilogy fame)! His new Glass Immortals series introduces us to a world where there is magic and it is finite. Factions squabble to claim the last dregs of power. This land is rife with danger.

And! What’s better for navigating a dangerous land than a map? We’re sharing the interior map that you’ll find within In the Shadow of Lightning right here!

Pre-order In the Shadow of Lighting Here:

Author Features / On Writing / What's New

Mapping The Freedom Race with Lucinda Roy

April 28, 2021December 15, 2021Rachel Taylor2 Comments

Every fantasy world needs a map, right? But what happens when the map needs to come from the hands of the characters you’ve written? Lucinda Roy, author of upcoming speculative fiction novel The Freedom Race, discusses her journey to drawing the maps in her book and how her characters helped shape the art she created. Check out the article PLUS our exclusive map reveal below!

By Lucinda Roy

I was writing The Freedom Race when it struck me in the head like the muck thrown at poor Cersei Lannister during the “Shame, shame shame!” scene in HBO’s Game of Thrones: I needed a map!

Not only did I need a map, I needed a persona map—a map that could feasibly have been drawn by Ji-ji, the main character in the book. Her map doesn’t simply introduce the world to readers, it actually appears inside the narrative and helps catalyze the action.

When I realized I’d assigned myself the task of drawing Ji-ji’s map of the planting, the British/American half of me was gobsmacked—appalled I hadn’t realized from the get-go maps would be a necessity. The Jamaican half of me was laid back about it. I mean, how hard could it be to draw a map or two, man? After all, I wasn’t a virgin when it came to drawing. I’d even sold some of my original oil paintings in the past, and others had been featured on the covers of my poetry collections. A map would be a breeze, right? Wrong.

I soon realized there wasn’t one but two maps I needed to draw for this first volume in The Dreambird Chronicles trilogy. And there was another problem: the world in The Freedom Race isn’t typical sci-fi or fantasy. Instead, it balances on the rim of realism and magical realism. Its angles are satirical and its landscapes feature a bone-chilling nostalgia for the plantations of the past.

I decided to trust my instincts—or rather my characters’ instincts—and see what happened. The first map is drawn by Jellybean “Ji-ji” Lottermule (her signature is there on the bottom left of the map); the second is drawn by an elderly Black wizard known to everyone as Uncle Dreg.

The tone of Ji-ji’s map is rebellious. “Imaging a planting” is a cardinal offense in the Homestead Territories, evidence of sedition. Yet Ji-ji—a biracial Muleseed classified as a botanical—has dared to depict the place where she was raised in captivity. Drawing this map is one of the most dangerous things she’s ever done. If her father-man discovers it, the punishment will be severe.

Yet Ji-ji dares to draw the world she knows because, for enslaved people, there is nothing more powerful than testimony. Speech testimony, map testimony, video testimony—all these tools are used by oppressed people to empower themselves.

Ji-ji’s map becomes an affirmation of who she is as a sentient human being. She’s seen what is really going on in the segregated Homestead Territories. She dares to record it because silence is invariably a form of complicity.

The second map is a gift to Ji-ji from Uncle Dreg, a Toteppi wizard, which is why he signs it “To J from D,” just above the box containing the key, near the three blackbirds. Dreg’s map depicts the Old Commonwealth of Virginia in the Southeastern Homestead Territories, a place that thrived during our time, the Age of Plenty, but which, in the future, is a place of grave jeopardy for people of color.

The tone of Uncle Dreg’s map is one of warning. There are areas to avoid: The Margins, Clan Country, and Militia Regions, and a path to follow up to Dream Corridor and the City of Dreams. This is the race route Ji-ji must take if she’s selected to compete in the Freedom Race. There are clues in the map about what may transpire in the future because Dreg is reputed to have the ability to see through the Window-of-What’s-to-Come.

People who read speculative fiction routinely do something daring. We enter the unknown, a world that exists almost entirely in the author’s head. We trust this stranger to guide us. Maps take hold of the often-chaotic maze of a writer’s imagination and make it orderly and accessible. Amazing to think that a few lines consigned to paper can endow imagined worlds with realness.

The maps in Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire, and Jemisin’s Broken Earth trilogy, to name just a few, function as tantalizing entry points into invented worlds. The best maps whisper: “This strange world is worth believing in. Come inside and see for yourself.”

Having drawn the maps for The Freedom Race, I’ve concluded that authors of speculative fiction who draw their own maps should get extra points. (I feel the same way about undersized ballers, who should be entitled to double points when they slam-dunk because they have further to go to reach the rim.)

Drawing a map is much harder than it looks, especially for a charmingly neurotic writer who’s made a circuitous journey to speculative fiction via poetry, mainstream literary fiction, and memoir. (“Charmingly” being my adverbial attempt to downplay my idiosyncrasies.) The further I got into the story, the more I realized that the characters themselves—particularly Ji-ji, whose point of view drives the first novel in the series—use them as ways to interpret the world they inhabit.

Maps reveal what we value in ways we don’t always recognize. Look at how maps of the world with Europe at the “center” of a flattened, totally unrealistic, and arbitrary depiction of the globe reveal so much about the power dynamic. Which countries are in the center? Which countries grab the most room for themselves? Which are made to look less impressive, more marginal?

The images we carry around in our heads shape who we are, and those who lay claim to the most memorable imagery often win. Instinctively, Ji-ji knows this, which is why she’s willing to risk her life to draw a map of the planting. The map says, “Ji-ji was here.” The map says she witnessed this travesty.

As I write this, I realize there is another reason why drawing the maps made me nervous: the Afro-futuristic world I was depicting intersects closely with today’s world, where the insidiousness and tenacity of racism is again on display. People of color and their stalwart allies are grieving. At a time of racial upheaval, these characters (for it was they who guided me) drew race into these maps. The warnings on Uncle Dreg’s map reverberate throughout the series and throughout today’s world.

Maps make us believe order is attainable. But orderliness can itself be the perpetrator of evil. It can fool us into believing all is well, persuade us that the status quo is beneficial, and that peace at all costs is the preferred way to live. It’s how the secessionist, segregationist steaders in the world of The Freedom Race persuaded other parts of the Union, still reeling from a Civil War Sequel, climate change, and a metaflu pandemic, that peace was preferable to chaos.

But Ji-ji and Uncle Dreg know that peace without justice is a curse. These maps are their attempt to show us why. The orderliness of the wagon-wheel layout of Planting 437 in Ji-ji’s map is what makes it so sinister.

People don’t rule the world—ideas do. And what is a map if not an impossibly large idea projected onto a small page or screen? As we embark on what I hope will be a worthwhile journey for readers of The Freedom Race, the maps drawn by the characters tell me where to go. My hope is that they will also speak to you.

Novelist, poet, and memoirist Lucinda Roy is the author of the speculative novel The Freedom Race and three collections of poetry, including Fabric: Poems. Among her awards are the Eighth Mountain Prize for Poetry, and the Baxter Hathaway Prize for her long slave narrative poem “Needlework,” and a state-wide faculty recognition award. The Freedom Race is available anywhere books are sold on July 13, 2021.

Pre-order The Freedom Race Here:

Author Features / On Writing / What's New

An Ode to the Map in the Beginning of Every Fantasy Book

January 27, 2021December 15, 2021Rachel Taylor

Set in a world of goblin wars, stag-sized battle ravens, and assassins who kill with deadly tattoos, Christopher Buehlman’s The Blacktongue Thief begins a ‘dazzling’ (Robin Hobb) fantasy adventure unlike any other. We are thrilled to reveal the official, full color map for this stunning new universe, coming to you on May 25. In the meantime, join Christoper as he talks maps, books, and more!

By Christopher Buehlman

Maps.

You know them, and, if you’re a fantasy reader, you probably love them.

It’s not so unusual, and it’s nothing new, to love the blues and sepias of a world made small. Our Elizabethan friend Christopher Marlowe, in his chronicle of Tamburlaine The Great (Part II), shows us the conqueror in old age, facing death––the only enemy who could ever beat him––and asking not for a doctor or a salve, but for the thing he will now use to take the measure of his life’s worth and his sons’ legacy:

Bring me a map, then let me see how much

is left for me to conquer all the world

that these, my boys, may finish all my wants.

There’s something of divinity in holding a map; in converting countless miles of cliffs and oceans, valleys, groves, hills, and fields into inches, pressed flat, under a human hand. How big must we be if we behold a city as a pinprick, if a splash of our coffee can embrown an ocean?

Of course, it was Tolkien who wed maps to fantasy, gifting generations with Middle Earth, with its elf-haunted Mirkwood Forest, the Balrog-harboring Mines of Moria, The Lonely mountain smoking beneath the moon. How I loved the little Smaug drawn in red. Later, he would remind me of the warnings of medieval cartography, the edges from which no explorer, so far as the mapmaker knew, had ever returned; but to my young eye he was not a possibility, but a sort of fictional fact – here there be one very wicked dragon.

I tried my own hand at mapmaking as a teenaged D&D nerd, and I wasn’t half bad at it. I began to develop certain prejudices, some of which I still hold:

A smooth coastline should not be trusted, nor a straight border.

Drawing in little trees and mountains is tedious, but makes a credible land mass out of what might otherwise be mistaken for an amoeba.

Place names in the same region should have similar sounds – one would never find a Carath Athnon near a Zurkoya ‘Nazh, for example.

I’m sorry I missed the Fire and Ice novels when they first appeared, but they were a great pleasure for me when I finally read them in my forty-second year. And the world. The beautiful, terrible world. I got a huge fold-out map of Westeros and Esteros one Christmas, and it’s one of the loveliest things I ever unfolded that didn’t name a month.

It was with great excitement that I first realized that the world of my own fantasy debut, THE BLACKTONGUE THIEF, would enjoy the attentions of a master mapmaker. I am thrilled to say that Tim Paul exceeded my expectations – he took the rough map I had sketched out and turned it into geographical art worthy of a 17^th century leather-bound atlas. These places I had imagined – the Snowless Wood, where the Downward Tower of the witch who goes on dead legs stands; the cold, northern port city of Pigdenay with its windows of green glass and its rough, stabby taverns; the kraken-infested archipelagos of the Gunnish Sea; Goltay and Orfay in Gallardia, names as grim in their world as The Somme and Stalingrad in ours, came to life in a way they hadn’t when they were just words on a page. Under Mr. Paul’s gifted brush, the capitals and provinces I dreamed now seem as plausible as Constantinople, or Wessex, or Antioch.

As a bonus, Tim even illustrated the calendar, the ten 36-day months and five seasons that comprise the year in this more mathematically simple world. Here, the full moon is always the first of the month, and the new moon, by the darkness of which one may take a moon wife or moon groom in certain lands, comes every 19^th. The extra season, snuck between Fall and Winter, is The Gloaming – 72 days in which, in northern climes, the leaves have mostly fallen and the worst of the snows have not yet come. A time for hunting, for slaughtering livestock, and for telling dark stories.

The tale I propose to tell you is very dark, indeed. Goblins came and tried to eat us all up. Most of the men and all of the horses died. One does not find many children between the ages of 7 and 15 in Manreach because the women were under arms too. But we pushed our adversaries back, for now. And soon the fields and cities and bays Tim Paul has so exquisitely drawn for us will ring with the songs, oaths and poems of the Holters, Gallards, Galts, Ispanthians, and even giants I can’t wait for you to meet.

Tag: map reveal