Jan 20, 2011

Fantasy Maps and Ebook Issues.

Map from Power and Majesty
I think we can blame Tolkien and his rather anal approach to creating secondary worlds for this one.  It's obligatory for a Fantasy novel to contain maps, nice hand drawn ones if possible, not something that's been sketched out on an auto-cad. I think it adds to the suspense of disbelief the authenticity of the secondary world that's been created.  


Which brings me to one of the drawbacks I have discovered with eBooks (and I am talking about epub versions).  I recently bought Tansy Raynor Roberts Power and Majesty which contains three nice hand drawn maps by her mother Jilli Roberts.  Unfortunately they don't scale up the eReader,so much of the detail is hard to pickout.


Thankfully larger versions can be found on the Creature Court Website.  I wonder then with eBooks on the rise we might see the disappearance of these particular artifacts.

Your thoughts? Do you like maps in your Fantasy books? Are they necessary?






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Posted by Sean Wright at 3:08 PM
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Andrew Farrell's avatar

Andrew Farrell · 739 weeks ago

One of the less-utilised features in eBooks is the ability (in many of the formats at least) to include hyperlinks to external online content, as long as the ereading device is internet-capable.
By posting links to websites with these maps they can still be easily accessed within the ereader, and generally in better resolution &/or with more functionality than is possible with the in-book version.
Hopefully more use will be made of this feature as eBooks continue to mature.
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SB Wright's avatar - Go to profile

SB Wright 110p · 739 weeks ago

Yes I noticed that a book of Joe Konrath's actually has links to the comments section on his blog.
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Kat · 739 weeks ago

I love the maps. I think the beautiful hand drawn ones are pieces of art in their own right. But I do actually refer to the maps as I am reading to get my bearings. I assume that is part of the reason they are there.
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SB Wright 110p · 739 weeks ago

Agreed. I certainly used Tolkien's maps to get a sense of where the fellowship was going. I also think they contribute to the sense that the place is 'real'. Its odd though that many of them are created from modern perspective ie nearly omniscient, if they were artifacts of the time they would be more poetic I think?

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