Authors can manipulate their maps to better exploit this reflective effect to explore the possibilities it opens up for their world-building and readers’ appreciation of it. The map takes on an additional aura of realism once we identify this experience with that of the inhabitants imagined within the world-text itself. Mapping out the fantasy world makes it more realistic for the reader, not merely because it visualizes the world for us, but because such visualization is an essential part of our routine experience. Such maps are not merely about the fictional world, but they are of it.
If we require maps to navigate space, real of fictional, consider the equal necessity of maps to the inhabitants native to a world of fantasy fiction. Since we routinely rely upon maps to navigate our own environment, we expect an analogous representational aid in the navigation of fictional space within the imagination. But this admission only emphasizes the greater significance of maps to the fantasy genre. It is admittedly difficult to imagine the more exotic fantasy worlds of the genre without some form of visual representation acting as a foundation for our imagination to build upon. The illustration is more complex, informative, and naturalistic than a map could ever be an illustration can represent characters, cultures, landscapes, creatures and events in a way that are categorically impossible for a map. What provides a more immersive visualization of Sanderson’s world of Roshar from his Stormlight Archive series: the map of Roshar or the illustration of his character Shallan herself involved in capturing the world around her through her own artistic talent? I am biased towards the latter for good reason. Valued as a purely visual representation, maps fail in comparison to the complexity that can be captured in a detailed illustration. But fantasy maps are far more than mere visual representations of the fictional world and to limit their appeal to that quality alone is to waste the radical potential they open up for the author and reader. If the act of reading fantasy is akin to navigating a foreign world, it is no wonder readers feel more comfortable with a map in their possession. The benefit provided by maps typically cited by fantasy genre fans is that they aid the visualization of the fictional world by laying out its prominent features of geography and civilization.
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