I’ve finished my reread of Ready Player One, which was this month’s book of the month for The Bookies, so I’ve moved onto another book on my list. I’m still very much starting The Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon, and I’m actually kind of getting into it. I’ve blatantly ignored all the reviews that are trying to stir this book up as “too woke”, and just trying to enjoy it as a fantasy book about dragons. I can always get behind a book about dragons.

One thing I don’t like about this and many other fantasy novels is that they rely on the reader to study cartography. They show these, admittedly beautiful, maps at the beginning of the book and then use that map in the story. These authors will immediately use names of cities they made up as if I had spent time memorizing the fake map. I’ll tell you a secret: I skip the damn maps. And that always leads me to be mightily confused about what some words mean in most fantasy novels. I think it may be one reason why I have such a hard time getting to novels that aren’t set in the “real” world. Where the hell is Narnia anyway?

It’s like, if I’ve never heard of The Lord of the Rings before and I get plopped right down into the Shire only to be told we’re going to Mordor, I’m going to be confused, because I didn’t study the map at the beginning. What’s a Mordor?

Maybe I should look at the maps, that’s a failing on my part, but authors should also not count on their readers doing so. A little bit of world building is the responsibility of a good author, and a lot of authors (even really good ones) put a lot of the effort of world building on those maps.

I’m a lazy reader, I can admit that, but I really don’t want to be a cartographer. I just want to read the story. I don’t think that’s too much to ask.