A Sense of Place

In between blowing bubbles with the boys (who are off school for the Easter break) and cutting the hedge at last (gardening is not my strong suit), I’ve been thinking about the sense of place in fantasy writing.

The reason I’ve been thinking about it is that I recently read the third book in an epic fantasy trilogy. I’d read the first two about six months before, but when I opened the third one, I didn’t recognise any of the locations. I had to go back and start searching through the first two books to figure out where all these places were and what their significance was.

Now, part of this is my fault. I tend to read late at night when I’m tired and I’m sure my brain doesn’t remember everything that goes into it. Hell, even when I’m at my most awake and alert, my brain is a colander with giant holes. But it’s also true that the real sense of place for a reader is kind of lacking in many fantasy novels. Part of it is because the names are often generically fantasy and so aren’t that easy to remember or distinguish. Part of it is because there’s nothing particularly memorable about the places.

I’m not going to say what the trilogy I was reading was, because there are many other wonderful things about the series and I don’t want to pick on one author in particular, but I’m sure you can think of books that are much the same.

It made me realise that one of the things George RR Martin does superbly well is give a sense of place. The last time I read any of the A Song of Ice and Fire books was when A Dance With Dragons came out in 2011. Yet I have no problem remembering the locations in the books. Ask any fan, and they’ll easily distinguish Winterfell from Kings Landing, Slavers Bay from Riverrun, Harrenhall from The Eyrie, The Wall from Sunspear. And so on.

There are literally hundreds of named locations in Martin’s series, and dozens which are major locations. But every one is readily distinguishable from the others. This is because all the locations are iconic in some way and their names tend to give hints as to what the location is. You’re not going to mix up Dragonstone and the Summer Isles, even if the books never visit the Summer Isles.

Another author who gives a wonderful sense of place in a much smaller setting is Ben Aaronovitch in his Rivers of London series. All of these books are set in and around London, but even for those of us who only occasionally visit the touristy bits of the city, he gives an amazing feeling for even the most out-of-the-way location. He does this through series of anecdotes about each location and its history, accompanied by ironic commentary on them which gives a sharp fix on each. The locations may be more mundane, suburban, even, at times, but they are every bit as vivid as the wilder, more spectacular locations of Martin’s world.

And now, back to entertaining bored kids…