This is a look at one of the preliminary versions of the maps for The Lascar’s Dagger, done — as usual — by Perdita Phillips, artist. (Take a look at her website here.) 

To see the final expanded versions, you’ll have to buy the book…

Coming out March 15th 2014

Ready for pre-order!

Galaxybooks.com.au (Australia)

Barnes & Noble (US)

Waterstones (UK)

Amazon.com (US)

Amazon.co.uk  (UK

Amazon.com.au  (Australia: ebook only)

Book depository (worldwide)

The book is:

Here Be Dragons

by Stefan Ekman

The back blurb says he “provides in-depth discussions of fantasy maps and how to read them” and “shows how fantasy settings deserve serious attention from both readers and critics”.

 The Isles of Glory map is reproduced in his book as an example of something which is not all that common in fantasy mapmaking. In most fantasy books with maps, there is no unknown world to discover beyond the edges of the map. Sometimes there is only water; at other times the secondary world beyond the edges of the map is simply unknown and unexplored. What Ekman found interesting about the Isles of Glory is that the world beyond the Isles is actually the known world, while the Isles are the newly discovered world. The map makes this quite clear. 

Ekman is intrigued by the idea that “Known and unknown are turned around here, the well-known residing off the map. Wherever the political, financial, and cultural centres are to be found in this secondary world, they belong in the regions beyond the map’s margin – the Isles of Glory, in the middle of the map, are part of the world’s periphery.” 

It’s an interesting book, and an easy read. It’s also loaded with lots of examples. How common is it for fantasy novels to contain at least one map? Of the 200 novels in his sample, 34% contained one or more maps, the incidence being more than double that number if the world portrayed was not the one of the writer and reader, but of a world that we would not recognise — what he calls a secondary world.

The book is published by Wesleyan University Press ISBN 978-0-8195-7323-0