Smart Bitches, Trashy Books

Only if I were an elf or Eomer’s lover would I want to hang out in Tolkein’s world, but I’ve always been a D&D;kind of gal.

For me, even as a 44 year old housewife/writer, it’s the world of Harry Potter all the way.  And Riverside, the world of Ellen Kushner’s elegant, awesome books: The Fall of the Kings, Swordspoint, The Privilege of the Sword.  Swordplay, wit, thwarted love, swordfighting women and beautiful, wildly sexy gay men.  Very swoonworthy worlds.  As a writer I think I try to write worlds I’d like to live in.  My first book was inspired by mad crushes on Reverend Farebrother and Dr. Lydgate in Middlemarch. 
Mary Beth Bass

I’m with you on the historicals and for me it’s Heyer all the way.  The first I read and loved was Simon the Coldheart and I still imagine myself as one of Margot’s ladies.  But I’d also love to live in Heyer’s Regency era. 

Though I wouldn’t say no to spending some time on the Romanian dragon reserve with Charlie Weasley…

I would definitely live in the Harry Potter universe. Rowling created something so rich, so detailed, that it’s easy to picture walking along the streets of Hogsmeade or shopping in Diagon Alley.  My favorite world-builder at the moment, though, is probably Kelley Armstrong.  Her Women of the Otherworld series is very well-crafted. Instead of being direct sequels, her books feel more like a spider’s web, spinning further and further out and creating more and more facets of her supernatural world.  There’s a social structure, a hierarchy and day-to-day workings within that hierarchy, and I think that’s a key when you’re writing a believable universe. It’s very much like how the ton operates in historicals.
That, and I just love Armstrong’s women. I want to be one of them. They’re all unique and strong, regardless of whether or not they’re a werewolf/necromancer/demon.

..can establishment of a historical setting be considered “world building,” or is it more “world reconstructing”?

This is a very interesting point.  Professional historians and archaeologists spend their lives trying to reconstruct - not invent - the past.  It is a process akin to scientific experiment, in that it requires the establishment of an hypothesis (which often depends on insight and imagination as well as careful analysis of factual evidence) and the testing of that hypothesis.  It is always a process that involves both art and science.  This is the process that the best historical novelists use as well.  Though the stories they write may have fictional characters and plots, their attention to the setting is as true to a lost reality as they can make it, and will illuminate the past for their readers.  Imagination and creativity are involved at every level, but certain parameters are fixed because they lie outside the boundaries of fiction.
I have the greatest admiration for that kind of reconstruction.  I have no admiration at all for historical novelists who distort the facts of the past, either through poor research or with malice aforethought, and have no real interest in wholly invented worlds.  Time enough to get interested in those when we have managed to understand the one we live in a bit better.
But everyone to her taste, of course.

I would definitely hang out with J.R. Ward’s BDB or Sherrilyn Kenyon’s DH’s. Reading about dark, brooding, sexy men fighting an evil we know nothing about makes me hot!!!

I disagree with Grossman’s claim that there is no literary term.

There is. It’s called “wonder.” It’s some combination of the unheimlich and…I don’t even know. But there are wonderful (uh…no pun intended) essays on the quality of wonder, and how hard it is to truly define.

His Majesty’s Dragon had wonder for me. The first time I read Charles de Lint’s Jack the Giant-Killer, it was like a revelation.

And, yes, Harry Potter. JKR’s Wizarding World is a never-ending source of fascination and wonder for me.  As much as I liked Twilight, it didn’t have that same effect.

Lois McMaster Bujold is the master of world building.  And not just one world but a mini-universe of them.  Fantastical, yet deeply believable.  I wouldn’t want to live in her universe, but a vacation to Beta would be a blast.

Dorthy Dunnett and Diane Gabaldon.  I read and reread their series not just for the emotional highs, but because I love their universes.  Both are historically accurate writers and yet it is more than that.  It’s their slants on what is important.  It’s the qualities of the people and they way they experience their own worlds.  Love it.

Harry Potter is definitely the pinnacle when it comes to world building.  I enjoyed Twilight, but it did not do the same for me.  I just read Siren by Cheryl Sawyer and that did have a fantastic world, although it is heavy on history for someone looking for a historical romance.  (I loved it - my first ever auto-buy on Amazon).

Anyways, good post.  Really made me think.

I’m tempted by TolkeinVerse, but Middle Earth requires a lot of manual labor and fighting, and I’m a lazy, peaceable bitch.  He NEVER tells how those Elf ladies cook and clean.  Does Elrond leave the seat up?  Are his dirty Elf undies scattered over the floor?  Too much Elvish angst for me, and Gondor is too full of itself.  I’d choke on Civic Pride Week and all the freakin’ filk sings.  If they don’t have any black cohosh to take out my hot flashes I’d soon be insane from lack of sleep!

It’s a bit better in the PotterVerse, since I could hang out with Muggles whenever I needed antibotics and a Tivo fix, but you have to avoid Deatheaters and a bunch of other nasties.  Snape is too busy for romance, and Harry and his pals are mostly underaged.  Wait a sec—the Weasley twins—oh, yeah, I could go for a weekend with THEM!

There’s the Harry DresdenVerse, modern Chicago is more my speed, but it’s even MORE dangerous than the PotterVerse.  OTOH, Dresden is of legal age and has that Repect For Wimmin thing going.  He’ll bust his chops to help you or die trying.  And hey—no house cleaning!  He’s got a hoard of brownies to cover things.  But how to balance that against random attacks by three different types of vampires, ghouls, trolls, Warlocks, rent collectors, and your computer blowing up every time he walks into the room?  But still, he’s a hawt bitch.

The BujoldVerse—good one!  But there’s only one Miles and a woman would be nuts to choose to live on Barayar.  Ugh.  I’d have to wear a dress and put up with a ton of goose-stepping alpha-male piggies who aren’t Miles.  I might do well with That-Idiot-Ivan—except for his mother.  Yikes.

Got it! Janet Evanovich’s Stephanie PlumVerse.  If Steph would just CHOOSE ONE, Ranger or Morelli, I’ll be glad to take her sloppy seconds.  I’m hoping she’ll take Morelli, as Ranger is the hawtest bitch evah, and Steph once mentioned he really LIKED to kiss.  (One presumes he’s good at it!) 

Right, suspenseful, mostly non-fatal, not-too-good at bounty hunting for a job, a couple of hawt guys as backup, an insane but likeable family, and an ex-hooker, a Mafia Princess, and a transvestite lead singer in a band as your sidekicks—yeah, I could go for that verse!

I would have loved to camp out in Robin Hobb’s Bingtown, or at least hang out on one of the ships. I don’t think that the world was especially well created, but she managed to add such a layer of magic to a pretty typical world that I was devastated when I finished the third book.

Didn’t happen to me at all with the Assassin series, and I couldn’t get past the first chapter of the Golden Fool series, so I think she had just stumbled upon the right collection of elements for me with the Bingtown Traders.

For me it’s the right combination of descriptions, both of the main action, and of random daily crap. I need to know and feel that gears are turning beyond the scenes. The unseen needs to have action for me. I get that when I read Tolstoy, and I don’t when I read Dostoevsky. That’s why the earlier HP books did it for me more than the later ones. I felt that the description of the world was giving way to the main action of the plot (as rightly it should have - we only need a description of Diagon Ally so many times).

Nobody has yet mentioned Lynn Viehl’s DarkynVerse, with the chance to meet historical heroes from the past who now live among us ... can’t wait for Robin of Locksley’s story ...

And another they-are-among-us favorite universe for me is the one created by Shana Abe. Loves me some smoky dragon people!

— Bonz

It’s happened so many times over the year. (Think it might have something to do with being an only child in a workaholic family, followed by being a library geek, for some reason…) Most memorably, Diana Gabaldon’s reconstruction of mid-18 Century places literally transported me, and I remember devouring them whilst living/working in a small town in the Canadian Rockies. I turned up to work one afternoon, and I was standing at the sandwich press thinking “There’s something really not right about this. Why aren’t I standing over a fire?” I had such a sense of dislocation. I had emersed myself so deeply (I was sitting down and reading for hours and hours on end during some of the books - I think this occasion I was in the middle of Voyager or The Drums of Autumn. Seeing cars on the street, the coffee machine - but it was really the sandwich maker that threw me. Who knows why!) Sara Donati does it quite well also. Stephanie Laurens does it somewhat - I’ll tend to look around, or go out, and wonder why people aren’t being more courteous, why doors aren’t being opened automatically for me, and why I’m not wearing long skirts and a spencer.

If I could live somewhere, it might have to be the Harry Potter universe though. So close to ours, and yet so different! The sheer wonder of it all. Definitely taking a trip to a certain dragon reserve in Romania to visit Charlie Weasley might be in order :D Just having a look around, although I would probably want a wand - who wouldnt!

Lois McMaster Bujold’s Vorkosiverse, oh yes.

Ellen Kushner’s Riverside.

Dorothy Dunnet’s version of Europe—and you know it’s not ours, not just because of the psychic powers, but if Lymond and Philippa lived, the Stuarts wouldn’t have made quite the idiotic mistakes they did in the early 1600s.

Sherwood Smith’s Sartorias-deles—worked on for forty years.  It shows.

Patrick O’Brian’s world of tall ships, and how 1812 seems to last forever…

The late great Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time ‘verse. I can’t imagine I’d make it in the White Tower or living with the Aiel but I’d love to give life in the Two Rivers a lash.

Of course, I’d have to be married to Mat Cauthon to really feel at home. Sigh. Swoon. Repeat ad infinitum.

Heyer’s Regency London would be pretty fantabulous too. Imperialism and continuing subjugation of Ireland aside. :-D

i agree with LizzieBee, i feel the same when i (re)read Gabaldon…and i also have to agree with the people who said Harry Potter…but personally i love any world with magic, be it HP or in a Nora or in some vampire novel. speaking of Nora, i’m surprised nobody has mentioned the In Death universe! i’d go for that!!! And after i read one, i always feel the lack of an AutoChef keenly the next time i go into the kitchen.
leaving the realm of romance, Mercedes Lackey does a mighty fine job of world building in all of her books that i’ve read so far. you almost expect to look outside and see a dragon flying overhead.

I disagree with Grossman’s claim that there is no literary term.
There is. It’s called “wonder.”

This was interesting new information for me, and I am grateful to learn it, but I have to say, as a technical definition of what people are discussing here, it appears to me less than satisfactory.  The word ‘wonder’ already has numerous definitions, and is in everyday use in many of them, so its technical, literary meaning is always going to be far too easily overlooked and misunderstood.

Incidentally, does everyone else in the universe read fiction this way, by becoming ‘immersed’ in the world of the novel and perceiving it as an alterative reality?  It seems so bizarre to me.  I have read and enjoyed novels for nearly 60 years, and it has only been in the last few years that I even discovered that other readers perceive fiction in that way.  I suppose it explains to some degree why I am so impatient with fantasy and fairy tales, while other people enjoy them.

Diana Gabaldon makes me want to move to Scotland and build a time machine.  Absolutely.

And *looks around and blushes* as kind of a dark dirty secret of mine…Mercedes Lackey’s Valdemar books also keep drawing me in because I love the world there so much.

When I was kid I always read as if that universe the author created actually existed. I was a nerd and I learned that physicists theorized parallel universes so in my kid brain it seemed sorta kinda likely ( as in no one could tell me it was impossible but I couldnt prove it). So often I would rush back to a book hoping the characters didnt leave me behind. And I would always wonder what happened to them after I finished the book. Sometimes I would daydream what would happen if I fell into that universe as myself.

So who builds great worlds for you? What world from a book would you want to camp out in for awhile?

So those are 2 fundamentally different questions. Lots of people build great worlds. Would I want to live in them…

I cant really think of a romance universe I would want to live in. I love Regencies and the whole idea but it only works for wish fulfillment if you are a certain class and race. Maybe Galbaldon’s universe (which is some cross genre delight) but I dont think I could confuse people and say I am black Irish! I am certainly transported when I read in that world but sadly dont feel like there is any place there for me as a woman of color. So I think I would have to turn to the SF-fantasy axis.

Everytime I read anything in Sharon Lee and Steve Miller’s Liaden Universe I think how cool it would be to live there. I want to be a part of Clan Korval and I want pilot reflexes too! And of course finding a lifemate would be super too.

In terms of wonder, I think Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time series has definitely got that covered for me. Potterverse doesnt do it for me at all. Pern by McCaffrey used to do it for me but hasnt stood up the test of time. But your own personal telepathic dragon- very very cool which is what I think Novik captured in her series.

I can think of so many SF series that were wonderful and had the most amazing worldbuilding. However there are so many that I wouldnt want to really live in because of race, class, gender or because the world was in a critical and dangerous period. So while I love Bujold (like Janey D) I couldnt live in Barrayar cause of the gender dynamics and also there arent any people other than European stock. I could only live in Butcher’s Chicago if I was being backed up by Harry or Michael but it would suck to be a person without magic or a really big gun. I love Well’s Ile Rien but thats a civilization in collapse. I could go on and on.

But if I could choose the terms of how I would camp out in a particular author’s world then maybe I would have a longer list. But if I got to determine beforehand “I will go to this world only if I have magic and I am really rich and no one will discriminate against me” that would probably violate the rules of the internally logical and fascinating world that I wanted to visit in the first place.

I’ve wanted to go to Narnia since I was seven, personally.  And, embarrassingly, a handful of Piers Anthony’s universes.

My opinion, is that every author creates a “world” when they write.  I really love a book if the people seem real~real enough that you can imagine running into them at WalMart. LOL Suzanne Brockmann’s earliest SEAL books for example.  Okay, these guys are SEALs, not your average joe to be sure, BUT she creates within them real personalities.  They have faults just like the rest of us. (Nothing makes me more crazy than the romance hero that is “perfect”) One of my favorite SEALs~Kenny~has no filter from his brain to his mouth.  He drives a variety of people crazy with that.  In the books where you are not getting his perspective he comes off as immature and impulsive.  However, when you read his book, those traits along with his very real insecurities (despite being a hot SEAL) make him seam like someone you could run into at the grocery store.  THAT is world building to me.  I haven’t had that same connection with most of her newer books (with the exception of INTO THE STORM). Not sure if it’s her writing changing or me changing *Shrugs*

But when I close a book with the feeling that the people written seemed so real, that I feel I could meet them and have a conversation with them~it’s a keeper to me.

The first world I got lost in was Pinnochio’s.
A circa 1930’s printing of Carlo Collodi’s original story at 7 years old.
Snarkhunter said it well ” wonder” is the ultimate tag for getting lost in that story. If you have kids, get the non disney version of this book and your kid will LOVE it , it’s dark and scary and full of colorful imagery of   Pinnochio’s world.

Jump ahead a couple of years and I was lost in the Prairie. Laura Ingall’s Little House books had me captivated for many years. I think the last time I re-read them was in 2003 or 2004.

As an adult , Jacqueline Carey’s Terre D’Ange and surrounding areas are very well structured, vibrant worlds in the Kushiel Series.

Also, who wouldn’t want to be high up in an Angel’s keep in Sharon Shinn’s Archangel series? When you hit book 2 or 3 that world expands even more so. 

Finally, a sci fi favorite Island in the Sea of Time by S. M. Stirling .
A captivating book that has the entire Nantucket Island and it’s inhabitants going back in time 3000 years. Their world goes with them but he skillfully weaves them a new world in a different time. Excellent!

I’ve wanted to be a Ravenclaw since Harry Potter and the Sorceror’s Stone.  Potterverse is so addictive to me that I’m a fanfic addict.

and I’d love to live in the historical British ton that Johanna Lindsey and Julie Garwood have created. I’d probably be at the lowest levels of society if not actually a slave were I to timetravel back then, but in my imagination, I meet James Mallory before Georgina Anderson does, and we have beautiful beautiful little mixed children…

While reading the Narnia series as a kid (before I was aware of the religious overtones) I desperately wanted to live there. I remember bawling my eyes out at the end of The Last Battle because I’d never get to read a new adventure.

I was a big fantasy nut growing up.  In the early part of the series before all the puns drove me crazy and forced me to stop reading, I used to imagine myself in the Xanth universe by Piers Anthony and had always wanted my own magical power.

While reading Tamora Pierce’s Alanna series in middle school or junior high, I alternated between wanting to be Alanna- a girl who disguised herself as a boy to fulfill her dream of becoming a knight- and just myself within the universe. Usually, I wanted to be Alanna just so I could have George, King of the Thieves, chasing after me.

These days, it’s still the fantasy (and occasional sci fi) books that really do it for me in terms of world building. I love Rachel Caine’s Weather Warden series, Isobelle Carmody’s Obernewtyn series, Charlaine Harris’ Sookie Stackhouse series and S.L. Viel’s Stardoc series. My favorite world building book is definitely Harry Potter, though. I don’t re-read them as much as I do the others, but even as an adult I’d lose myself in the books, imagining myself a witch attending Hogwarts and fighting alongside Harry and the rest.

Say what you will about Valdemar and Lackey, but hello? intelligent, telepathic horses? Sign me up!

Charlaine Harris’s Sookie Stackhouse series would be the place I would want to visit, however temporarily.  I think it would be exciting to experience the changes in the world when vampires et al came out of the closet.  It might also be infuriating, terrifying, annoying and dangerous.  So I’d want a free pass home :)

Oh, I meant to add I wouldn’t mind visiting one of the universes where this Earth meets aliens, only minus world wars and hostile confrontations.  Right off-hand, though, I can’t think of any particular author’s ‘verse that suits what I have in mind, probably because of the momnesia, not because there isn’t one.

Oh AgTigress! Yes, yes, yes! This is why I love being an archaeologist. The worst thing is when imagination is lacking or is squashed by academia. *sigh* Feeling squashed right now.

I can say with conviction that I would love to go to any world that Terry Pratchett creates. I just want to do some hanging out with the Nac Mac Feegle! As to what world I could live in, I don’t want to choose just one. I think I’ll just keep visiting them all whenever I get the chance.

Perhaps it’s easier to do when you’re a teenager - I’m fairly sure I lived in Pern for a while. I know that if I’d read Rowling at that age, it’d have been the same. Rowling’s probably the closest I’ve got to that feeling as a grown-up.

My 14 year old is like that about Twilight - rereads the series constantly, and has the actors from the film as her screensaver.  All her friends seem to love the books too. I thought they were very readable, but they didn’t transport me anywhere.

It’d be worth going to Barrayar to meet Miles.

S.M. Stirling (while not a romance writer) created two worlds (the first in his Nantucket series and the second in the book Conquistador) that I always find myself day-dreaming back to.

I’m wondering if rituals and repetition have something to do with a book’s—or a series’—ability to immerse you in their world.  They hyp-no-tize you, in other words.

The Potter books are fantastically redundant—based on the predictable cycle of the school year, and the revisiting the annual rituals within that space.  Jacqueline Carey’s beautiful Terre D’Ange has its own cycles, and one of my favorites for really sweeping you into another time (though its neither fantasy nor romance) is Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey/Maturin series, wherein there is alway time for another cup of coffee, or a concert below decks.

This is an aside to Yvonne, from a much older archaeologist:  my apologies to others here.

The worst thing is when imagination is lacking or is squashed by academia.

Believe me, it is a whole lot easier today when publishing archaeological work than it was when I was starting out (I published my first paper in a learned journal in 1963).  One of the little-known beneficial side-effects of feminism has been the way in which academics (of both sexes) have been liberated and allowed to give alternative explanations for the same set of data, and have also been allowed to state in print that something is a personal opinion rather than an incontrovertible ‘fact’.  In the 1950s, everything still had to be written in an impersonal, pseudo-objective style rather like a scientifc experiment (‘this indicates that….’ rather than ‘I consider that….’), and even worse, alternative explanations were simply not allowed.  You had to decide on your story, and stick to it. 

It may not have been quite as rigid as that in the USA, but that was certainly the standard situation in Europe up until the mid 1960s.  I think everyone has always known that the detailed study of the past requires a large dose of imagination as well as rigorous assessment of evidence, but it used to be Bad Form to admit to the imagination.

Evie I think that’s what makes them our “comfort” reads.
Pick them up, get lost in with make believe people in make believe worlds that are familiar to us.

I wouldn’t mind being a D’Angeline. Not one of the Night Court, but a merchant of some kind.

Historicals?  It seems “reconstruction” is more apt, especially considering how fussy readers can get about accuracy of detail. 

What I find fascinating about historically rendered worlds are precisely the things that make me recoil from them: the realities of daily life.  I find myself wondering about public sanitation, personal hygiene, the comfort of the clothing, prevailing attitudes toward women, the savoriness and safety of the food, crime prevention, birth control and general health care, the logistics of cooking and laundering and traveling, etc., etc.

Buzz killers, all.

I’ve kind of wanted to live for a while in an animated cartoon from the 1930s or ‘40s.  They’re just so utterly charming—simple and colorful and clean.

Jack Vance’s “Araminta Sation” and Julien May’s “Plieostine Era(sp)”

Thank you AgTigress. (and with my apologies to others as well) Archaeology is much changed I’m sure, and I have plenty of respect for people such as yourself that have made it so much better for someone like me.

Oh, yeah, Lymond and I married and had hyper-gifted children 15-20 years ago. And we do it all over again once in a while. Sigh.

Good, solid characterization goes a long way in pulling me in and making me believe a story, but some authors really do have a talent for world-building beyond that. I agree with most of those authors already mentioned and would add these:

Austen’s villages
Dorothy Sayer’s world of Wimsey
Charles Stross’s Merchant Princes world
Elizabeth Bear’s world in “New Amsterdam”
Kay Kenyon’s “Entire and the Rose” world
Elizabeth Moon, anything she writes up to and including her shopping list (I’d wager)
Weber’s Honorverse
Naomi Novik’s Temeraire-verse
Elizabeth Peter’s Peabody-Egypt
Kim Harrison’s Hollow
Julia Spencer-Fleming’s Millers Kill
and of course we mourn the loss of the LKH-verses, which so sadly exploded in a mass of hairballs, fur and KY

So many great books, great memories of getting lost in those alternate worlds!

You know, I read My Fair Captain after seeing it in the DA BWAHA contest, and that gay Regency planet thing was way cool, too. Oh, and I just read a new one that looks very promising: Ann Aguirre’s Grimspace. I saw an ad for it on SBTB that looked intriguing, and the book did not disappoint. Should be interesting to see how she fleshes out the world in future books.

Those old time Wuxia epics by Louis Cha.  As grand as Lord of the Rings, as fun as Harry Potter, as heartbreaking as anything by Laura Kinsale.  Some of the most addictive books I’ve ever read.

I agree with you, snarkhunter, on the Temeraire series. I’ve really admired Novik’s worldbuilding, and I’m glad her books have done well. Her voice has a true-to-period feel that I enjoy, particularly as an Austen and Heyer fan from way back.

The worlds I would most want to live in are those I’ve explored in roleplaying games. My favorites of all time were built by our now temporarily retired DM (new baby), and I can’t WAIT for him to get off his arse and finish the novels he’s writing for that setting.

When I was a kid, Anya Seton took me back to 14th century England and I’ve been there ever since.

Well, okay, parts of me still live there.  If I could have that life minus the lice, rats, outdoor plumbing and Bubonic Plague, I’d go.

I have to agree with Tracy.  Brockmann knows her world well when she writes her SEAL series but the writing has changed over the last couple of books.  They aren’t as attention grabbing and “Into the Storm” nearly didn’t get finished.

Gabaldon is good but even she seems a bit long winded as well in some parts.

Is it a case of the writers are that comfortable in their genre that the words keep coming even when they shouldn’t?

Delurking for the first time. Wonder why it was a discussion of ‘verses that did it? Must be the fanfic writer in me ...

The first book that ever hooked me completely was The Boy with the Bronze Axe by Kathleen Fidler. I was 10, I think. It was fiction masquerading as fact masquerading as fiction and thoroughly engrossing.  Directly responsible for my first forays into historical fiction (became a huge Rosemary Sutcliffe fan) and a lifelong fascination with archaeology. Several years back I visited Skara Brae for the first time and could see those characters and feel their anguish as the sand took their homes ... I cried.

AgTigress, for me to fall into a world like that, there needs to be a rare conjunction of the planets or something. I’m a very quick reader - too quick - and most books get read in an hour or two and then cast aside. Even wonderful, wonderful novels that I really enjoy.  They are just books, however.

Others are something more than that, and I suspect they strike some very personal combination of hot buttons - strong heroine, admirable hero, intellectually stimulating surroundings ?? - that does it for me. There’s no rule as to what I’ll fall for and what I won’t ...

In order of obsessions after Fidler -  Narnia; Frank Herbert’s Dune books ; Jean M Auel’s Earths Children; and then, the universe I would pay to live in - Katherine Kerr’s Deverry, particularly the first four books.

Since then (15 years or so ago since I first fell in love with Kerr’s novels) very little in the way of utter immersion. I love historical romance but because I use the library rarely get to read series in sequence; my fantasy reading ground to a halt with The Wheel of Time because I hated WAITING for the continuation of the verse. (I loved Harry Potter but never got round to borrowing the last few books ...)

Or maybe its because I have young children and am trying to finish my degree. Time is at a premium and I have few opportunities to read uninterrupted - a prerequisite for total immersion?

Love the Bitches, by the way. Sheer genius.

Oh lord, the list would go on for pages…

—Narnia. Always Narnia. If you see someone trying to walk through the screen at a showing of “Prince Caspian” in a few weeks, it’s me.

—I would have sold my soul to get to Pern when I was a teenager. Still wouldn’t mind a visit.

—Terre D’Ange. I’m sure my husband and I could agree on something to do in the Night Court.

—Fionavar, from Guy Gavriel Kay’s Fionavar tapestry.

—Fawn and Dag’s world, from LMB’s Sharing Knife series. I’m buying the third one next week!

—Westeros, from George RR Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire. Only in a much less dangerous time period than the books are set in.

And I would love to go on a picnic with those Bedwyns.

As a little girl in India, I was mesmerized by the Bobbsey Twins and the Chalet School series.  Since then, definitely Heyer, Dunnett, and Sayers. To live in, I think I’d pick Angela Thirkell’s Barsetshire, but either before or during WW2.

No one has mentioned Steven Erikson’s Malazan world.  I wouldn’t want to live there, it’s too dangerous and depressing, but man is it fascinating. 

It doesn’t have to be a full-blown worldbuilding effort to hook me.  I remember when I was reading Cormac McCarthy’s All the Pretty Horses,  I looked up from the book and was startled to see I was in my living room.  Right now, I’d like to spend some time at the Burbage Theater in New Burbage (Slings and Arrows).

I wish I could remember where “wonder” as a technical term derives…it’s a term used in fantasy criticism, or at least it was before I cold-heartedly abandoned that field in favor of one that might actually secure me a job. I want to place the blame on Tolkein, and I think I’m correct in that, but I don’t have the entire text of “On Fairy-Stories” available to me.

I mentioned Temeraire, Harry Potter, and de Lint, but my very first head-first fall into another world? Laura Ingalls Wilder when I was six, and then, on my seventh birthday, my grandparents gave me Narnia. And Narnia became the basis of nearly all of my games until I was almost a teenager. Others? LM Montgomery did it, too.

In terms of sheer brilliance in world-building, I do have to give credit to Susanna Clarke. The world of Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell is pitch-perfect in terms of atmosphere; like Novik, if it weren’t for the magic, you might forget that this isn’t history As We Know It. (Like O’Brien, it’s hard to remember that she’s a contemporary author.)

Although I don’t know that I’ve ever read a book where I didn’t live in that world while I was reading. Even very bad books do that for (to?) me…which is one reason why I’m often obsessively careful about what I read. I can’t always separate myself from the book…and the better the book, the harder it is.

(Also, yeah. Whoever mentioned Valdemar? I’m totally with you. She may be batshit crazy, but Lackey created a nifty playground.)

Another vote for Tamora Pierce’s worlds - except Briar’s mine - I’d have to find someway to reverse the flow of time to make it semi-legal but it’d be worth it.

I’d also like to have met one of the ‘Cynster clan’ before they got attached - I wouldn’t keep them long, honest….

Finally, I’d love to live in the Mageworlds universe created by Doyle & McDonald - not exactly safe, but also definitely not boring.

Robin McKinley’s Damar.  After reading the Blue Sword I have had a thing about deserts and dry places, colonization, orange groves, mountains, and just the whole place.  I would have loved to see the place. 

Also, Patricia McKillip’s The Changeling Sea made me fall in love with the ocean in a way I did not think was possible.  Before reading the book, I had preferred land and maybe the ocean if some cool ship or building was involved (maybe an underwater kingdom).  I loved it, and wanted to pack up and move there.

And to Rhea—if you lived in England during the Regency, you probably wouldn’t be upper-class, but you wouldn’t necessarily be among the dirt poor. There were definitely people of color among the servant and working classes. And you *definitely* wouldn’t be a slave, since slavery technically did not exist in England. (It was this whole complicated thing where a slave brought to England might become free. Although I’m still trying to detangle the laws surrounding that. Of course, that didn’t stop the British from cheerfully trading and shipping slaves up and down the Atlantic.)

And, during the last part of the 18th century, at least, (which is pre-Regency, but go with me here), mixed-race marriages among the servant and working classes were neither unheard-of nor totally frowned-upon. There’s a lot of really interesting recovery work being done right now on the Black British population in the nineteenth century.

(I thought I was a Ravenclaw…and then it was pointed out to me that, no, I’m a Gryffindor. Really, really. ::sigh::)

You know, thinking about the servant classes…I would like to read a romance novel between a ladies’ maid and a butler. Or a valet. I mean, wouldn’t that be interesting?

The problem with historicals is that some authors’ desire to introduce modern elements and attitudes which just ruins it for me. I’m almost there then a huge anachronism..“Rafe like bossy, mouthy, low-class servants. His dukely loins stirred as he watched her use a most amazing contraption which made so much noise while seeming to wash the dishes for her!”

Rowling and Tolkein never break down for me.  Neither does Stephen King…but I need time to recover from his worlds.

I am fascinated by Megan Whalen Turner’s Thief series.  The worldbuilding/politics is fantastic.  She really sucks you in.

Also Patricia Wrede’s Sorcery and Cecelia-I am so there Regency England with Magic.

I am a big Mercedes Lackey fan too, especially her Elemental series.  I would want to be a Fire master-I love those Salamanders.

Harry Potter-you just get the feeling that she knows everything, every miniscule detail.  I would love it if she would write The History of Hogwarts.

I enjoyed Twilight, but her latest Eclipse was just such a turn off it ruined Twilight for me.

I love to get lost in a well-created literary world.  I think that’s partly why I love to read and reread my favorites over and over again.  (My family doesn’t get it at all, thinking there’s no point in reading something if you already know what’s going to happen.  I’ve given up on trying to explain it to them.)  I’d love to visit Terre d’Ange, Charles de Lint’s Newford, Kim Harrison’s the Hollows, Amelia Peabody’s Egypt, and Francesca Lia Block’s Shangri-L.A.  Sometimes I do have to imagine away aspects of myself; like that I don’t have magical powers, for instance, or in some cases my terrible eye-sight (if the world has no technology to fix it).

For me, there are wonderful examples of world-building where I’d never want to live; they are very real, and I get sucked in completely, but I don’t want to be there myself—put Westeros (GRR Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire) in that category for me, and probably Pratchett’s Discworld.  But Kaye’s Fionavar? Oh yeah!  I also think that the Potterverse, Lackey’s Valdemar, and Carey’s Terre d’Ange would be great places to live.

For me Gabaldon’s totally engrossing works are different, because so much of what she writes is historical, and that’s a different kind of world-building.  A really rich world is so satisfying!  I could go on and on, because to me that’s the best part of reading fantasy fiction, and why the majority of my reading is in that genre.

I have to mention the series that was probably my first real addiction in sci-fi/fantasy, and that was Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Darkover series.  Rich, complex, detailed, amazing place.  Say what you will about MZB (and I’ve said plenty, may she rest in peace), she built a fabulous world—and she not only encouraged fan fic, back in the days before the internets, but she also got it published!  Eleven volumes, if memory serves.

While I have no interest in living in this universe, I feel that the Dune series is so vivid. It’s so alien from everything we know and yet it’s done in such a way that the reader just gets it.

Even though I’m an adult now (much to my chagrin) there are some YA authors I will follow until there’s nothing left to read. These include anything written by Tamora Pierce and the Wizarding series by Diane Duane. I’m just so invested in the characters and places that I have to keep buying

Incidentally, does everyone else in the universe read fiction this way, by becoming ‘immersed’ in the world of the novel and perceiving it as an alterative reality?

For the good books, I get sucked into the world. I’m not sure how much I see them as alternate realities, but I picture them as a universe, and have created after I finish the books (in my head, at least), characters to interact in that universe, or kept going after the ending was finished with the characters already created, or…basically, fanfiction without writing it down. :) But I consider good stories the ones I get hooked into enough to forget these are words on a page. (Not sure how much I answered your question, if at all).

For excellent world building, Anne Bishop, esp in her early years. (Have no specific desire to live in the worlds, unless I can wear the Gray or better and have some kindred friends, but I love’em).

I didn’t get as into Meyer’s world as I did Potterverse (would totally live there), but overall, I liked her stories (though frankly book 2 and 3 were basically hundreds of pages of created drama and miscommunication). Discworld is basically home but Gods are more present and the government runs better, so no strong desire to live there either. Wouldn’t mind Majorie M Liu’s world if isn’t wasn’t for the superhuman god people (much rather it just be filled with psychics).

And no way would I want to live in a historical, esp before they invented indoor plumbing and the printing press. I like my collection of books and shower, thank you very much.

My opinion, is that every author creates a “world” when they write.

excellent point, Tracey. I do think those that have to build almost new worlds have it a little harder though. ;)

mean25: yes, i was having mean thoughts about Anne Bishop’s latest books. i want her old writing back. *whine over*

I think that the full term is “Sense of wonder”, not just “wonder”.

And if I had to pick a fictional-universe-in-which-I’m-not-a-mundane, it would be Diane Duane’s Young Wizard series, where a wizard can visit the moon or see a galaxy rise over an alien horizon.

Joan Vinge’s Catspaw has sucked me in repeatedly since I first read it.

Anne McCaffery’s Pern series, until about the 10th book when the world changed so much.

Patricia Briggs assorted worlds.  I love Hurog, and her Tri-cities.

Matthew Woodring Stover’s Heroes Die (not entirely pleasant, but it sticks with you).

Bujold, of course.  Both the Vorkosigan universe, and the Chalion one.

Patricia McKillip’s Forgotten Beasts of Eld blew my mind when I was about 11.

It’s too late to think of more, but my favourite books suck me in again and again and again because they’re so visceral that I’m almost tangibly there.

The world I would love to set camp in would have to be Jacqueline Carey’s “Kushiel” world. Love them. I read them over and over again. Carey’s world has such a richness to it that it comes alive to the point where I get into a zen-like state and believe I’m there (but only for a few minutes, because that would be crazy. Right?)
My second choice to be a tourist in is Ann Bishop’s “Jewel” world.  Love the intricate details, role reversal, and hot men. *sigh*

I’d love to step into the world Patricia Briggs has created in her Mercy Thompson series. Oh, and Underworld (the movies), would be a good world to visit for a while.

Alan Dean Foster’s Midworld would be my choice of residence I think. One thousand meter high rainforests, green,lush vegetation, oh yeah that’d be the place for me.

When I was a kid, I wanted to find the doorway to Middle Earth. And then I roleplayed, a lot, and was all about D&D;.

Now? I’m having way too much fun being God of my own worlds to simply be a player in them. ;)

I don’t think I’d like to live anywhere that wasn’t modern.  Hot showers and indoor plumbing are must haves.  I remember thinking when I read Bujold that Beta Colony seemed almost idealistic and wouldn’t that be wonderful if our society evolved to that point some day.

As to believability I have to agree with SonomaLass in George Martin’s Song of Fire and Ice series.  I’ve never had characters feel so alive to me as the Starks and I would get so upset when someone I really liked was killed.  I wouldn’t want to live there, but oh man am I looking forward to the HBO series when it comes out of A Game of Thrones.

I agree with many of you so far. My original ‘world to escape to’ was Narnia. When I build my dream house, there will be a wardrobe that takes me, if not to Narnia, then at least to my library that has all my favourite books (nods).

Word: ‘plan85’ - Why yes, this would be one of my grand plans, but it is definitely rated higher!

For me the essence of good writing is when I get lost and involved in both the world and the characters. To the point where I pick up phrases from the characters and use them in conversation, and worry, speculate, and dream about them.

Diana Gabaldon does that for me. And though she doesn’t write any more, LaVerle Spencer. I have read Years many times and each time I am transported to the South Dakota prairie with its winds and wheat.

The early Anitaverse was transporting, which is why so many of us were horrified and upset at the direction it took later. It was a very real world to us and some of us felt it was being willfully destroyed.

One of my current favorites in world building is Lilith Saintcrow with her Dante series, now unfortunately done (I would have gone on and on with Dante and Japh).

Robert E. Howard with Conan the Barbarian. What a magnificent, lush, well rounded world he built. Mysogynistic in a way that would offend a lot of modern female readers but man when I was 13 did I have a crush on Conan!

Definitely the Dunnettverse, especially the Lymond Chronicles, the Heyerverse, and Eva Ibbotson-land, and more recently, Sounis, Attolia and Eddis, thanks to Megan Whalen Turner’s Thief trilogy. Also really enjoy the Temeraire books by Naomi Novik.

I would argue with the original article.  “Twilight”, for me, was not transporting because the world was so intricately mapped out and immersing (in fact, until the third book, a lot of the supernatural elements are a little muddy), but because Bella has been written so convincingly as a real teenager.  I’m really impressed at the way Meyer seems to be able to access all those thoughts and feelings of being a teenager even after she’s grown up.

Not usually a Bertie Small fan, I did however find her new series “The World Of Hetar” a very good fantasy read. I’ve enjoyed the world she has created. I will admit though the third book had me needing a long hot shower to scrub the “ew” off. If I ever found myself within a 300 mile radius of a certain man in the book…I would throw myself off a tower.

Oh, I forgot Sarah Monette. Her Melusine books have that weight of detail behind them that lets you know the author has a much larger conception of the world the characters are inhabiting than can reasonably fit in one story. I love that because it’s not only more interesting and complex an experience for me as a reader, but holds out the promise of further adventures—and more good books to read!

I’m not sure I can explain the difference in quality between the kind of byzantine exposition that bores me silly and the seemingly incidental details that flesh out a scene and make it come alive, but you all already know what I’m talking about anyway, I suspect. I don’t think it’s the repetition or ritual aspect someone mentioned earlier that’s finally convincing for me, but rather this local color. That and a sort of inevitable internal logic to the world the author creates, that lets it stand apart from the current story and encourages the reader to imagine what might happen outside the frame.

I can say with conviction that I would love to go to any world that Terry Pratchett creates. I just want to do some hanging out with the Nac Mac Feegle! As to what world I could live in, I don’t want to choose just one. I think I’ll just keep visiting them all whenever I get the chance.

Oh, GOD yes!! I can’t believe I forgot the Discworld. I just wanna live in Ankh-Morpork and get to meet Sam Vimes, Captain Carrot and Moist von Lipwig. Wonderful.

I kind of never got over Narnia, Middle Earth, Pern, and Valdemar not being real - I guess that is why I am a socialist. Most of those worlds involve too much work for me, and have aspects I really don’t like, and they are far too “safe”. But when I was 12 or 13, I would completely have jumped at the chance. I still would be all for living in Pern if it meant a dragon (Lackey’s horses are way too messy, and also the lifebonding thing creeps me out). Because those dragons were seriously awesome.

The HP universe is a big example of the diffeence between the questions “So who builds great worlds for you?” and “What world from a book would you want to camp out in for awhile?” I don’t think anyone questions the assertion that Rowling built a great universe. BUT, there are some big problems with it. For example, the education system is kind of ridiculous. Can ANYONE not in Ravenclaw read? Can they write essays? Are they familiar with history or thought at all? There are so many gaps in the system of education that I’m convinced if they were real there would be terrible gaps in the wizards and witches too…they are not people I want to spend time with. (Even if I did somehow magically manage to sleep with Sirius Black.) Guy Gavriel Kay’s worlds are another example of excellent worldbuilding - there is absolutely a sense of wonder - but there is something hollow in the worlds he writes for me. I’d never go to Fionavar or Tigana. Something about them makes me kind of angry, actually.

Patricia McKillip’s worldbuilding is always fascinating, in the way medieval tapestries are fascinating. I would definitely pack up and move to the countries she talks about in her Riddle-Master books, or Ombria, or Berylon. I think her Riddle-Master world is the most powerful and resonant, however. Possibly because it takes up three books.

I would completely visit Terry Pratchett’s Discworld. Especially Ankh-Morpork. I think it’s because Pratchett’s made a world wildly different from ours which still capturing the absurd nature of regular life of Earth. Basically, we are ridiculous. The same is true of Ankh-Morpork and the rest of the Disc. Maybe it’s because Pratchett writes about us, only he’s put us in a different setting. That’s not true of all sff authors.

For example, Michelle West. I LOVE Michelle West’s books. (I also love the books she writes as Michelle Sagara, and I think those books are more “human”, more along the Discworld line.) But you couldn’t say writes about “just people” because her characters are all kind of…beyond people. Some of them literally, and some of them not so literally. There are a couple of exceptions - and I think this might be changing soon, if The Hidden City is anything to go by. That was a human book. Still, her world is way hardcore and I would probably die of fright if I tried to live there. Or I would really enjoy it. I’m not sure which.

Three similar worlds, to wrap up: Ellen Kushner’s Riverside, Sarah Monette’s Mélusine, and Martha Wells’ Ile-Rien. I am more in love with Mélusine and Ile-Rien, and would move to either of those places first (even if everyone in Mélusine kind of takes themselves too seriously…Ile-Rien does not have that problem!). But they all have an edge of - I don’t know any other word for it - violence to the sense of wonder. It really appeals to me. I like it when fictional worlds wrap death and beauty up together and create something new and wonderful (hah).

I’ve rambled enough!

Hands down Robin McKinley’s Damar.

I love her Damar books - The Blue Sword, The Hero and The Crown. They were the first worlds I believed in and got sucked into and they will always last in my mind.

i’m a college student…who would LOVE to drop out of school & enroll at hogwarts. sign me up.

that is…until i read twilight. now i want to pack up & move in with the cullens. that’s right…i’m one of those girls.

either there…or p. c. cast’s partholon. i’d love me some yummy shape-shifting centaur.

I would love to live in one of Lisa Kleypas or Julia Quinn’s historical romance novels.  They are my two favorite authors and I love the worlds they create.

Pern, oh I loved me some Pern. Would also love to visit Belgarath and the Vale of Aldur from David Eddings Belgariad. Anne Bishops Black Jewelsiverse, but only in the good bits with kindred pals and my own court. Most recently CL Wilsons Fading Lands and see the big kitties. This discussion has really broughtmy fantasy gene out from hiding and I think I need to dip my toes in some of my favourite worlds again.

I am a Potter nut. Man, I’d move there in an instant. As someone who grew up in the Potter generation (late teens now) I used to wait for my Hogwarts letter. I would adore moving to Potter land.

As for Twilight, I hate the horrible little things. It’s more to do with the morals of the books. I found Bella completely one dimensional, Edward predictable and the overall tone preachy and moralistic. (Bella can’t live without a man! Gorgeous Bella and her love triangle! Gorgeous, poor, swooning, brave Bella. BLEUCH.) But mores to the point unless you’re with the Cullens living in the Twilight world would be awful, you’d get eaten!!!

I could definitely go back in time to a historical romance! I’d want to be rich though. I would simply love to be transported into Julia Quinn’s Bridgerton family ... or any JQ novel!

I have so much to catch up on in my fantasy reading…but for me, some of the first worlds I got lost in:

The Dragonlance original trilogy - I didn’t read all the spinoffs, but the original trilogy sucked me in and made me cry when main characters died. 

I can’t remember whether I read it before or after LotR, which did the same thing, but slightly differently, mostly because Dragonlance was more about personal relationships and had more women in it ^_^ whereas LotR was more an epic about saving the world and politics.

A few novels that I read when I was young stuck with me a long time - I can’t remember the author, but one that had ‘Alpha Centauri’ in the title and featured centaurs, and an early Charles de Lint, ‘Riddle of the Wren’.

There was also a YA series that I loved and can’t remember the titles of - about a girl from our time who is taken to a parallel universe with magic and joins a band of mostly travelling women who have a special bond with their horses.  I loved it - horses, magic, and a cute guy as the love interest! I don’t know if I was really immersed in it, or just liked the setup so much that I overlooked the worldbuilding.

And more recently, of course, HP. I knew that when I started a volue, I wouldnt want to put it down until I finished, so I would always make sure my schedule was clear for several hours :)

The Dragonlance original trilogy - I didn’t read all the spinoffs, but the original trilogy sucked me in and made me cry when main characters died.

YES!!!! When I was a teenager, I’d have done anything to be transported to Solace and go off on adventures with them. The original trilogy sucked me in, but it was the Twins trilogy that kept me there. The last one especially is so heartbreaking and beautiful. Yeah, I’m a sap…

Pern was another one that I wanted to visit. Impressing a Dragon was my dream for many many years.

Temeraire is a recent addition to the list. (Are we sensing a theme here?)

I’d definitely be a Slytherin in the Potterverse.

The Anitaverse up until OB. I think that Anita made me gunshy, because, while I absolutely adore a lot of other author’s paranormal worlds, I just don’t get as lost in them as I did with the early Anita books.

So many of my favourite places to return have been mentioned.  McKinley’s Damar, the lands of Eld, the paranormal worlds which blend “our world” either now or in the future with all the weres and vampires and witches and magic we wished was real (Briggs, Chance, Hamilton, Harris, Harrison, Vaughn and a host of others), Bujold’s worlds, the Potterverse ... but I only want to visit with my mind and not my body.

Someone mentioned Hobb’s Assassin world vs the Bingtown one ... I actually preferred them the other way around, just going to show that one woman’s meat, etc.  All of these places are just too damned dangerous to go to.  They’re in crisis in one way or another, hence making a good story. 

Have you noticed how very few people in exciting stories have time to curl up on the couch with a packet of toffeepops, a cup of cocoa or a glass of wine, and to lose themselves in a book for a day and a half?

Dunno about you, but I’d miss that.

Of books already listed Terre D’Ange, Valdamar, Narnia, Discworld all of these represent for me fully fleshed out worlds that I can immerse myself in. 

Of ones not yet mentioned I loved the “Dark is Rising” series by Susan Cooper.  I wished for months after reading that series that I could be and Old One and go hang out with Will and Bran in an England that the rest of the world didn’t see.

Also Robin McKinley’s “Beauty”  I REALLY covet the Beast’s library of all the books not yet written

As mentioned before (by Kimberly B.), I would definitely live in de Lint’s Newford, probably hanging out on Grasso Street trying to help the helpless.  It’s what I do.

I personally never saw the Twilightverse as world-building.  To me, aside from the necessary climatic aspects of the setting, Twilight’s universe is about the characters (annoyingly addictive as they are), and not the place. 

As for others: Weetzie Bat’s L.A., Jasper Fforde’s England, Garth Nix’s The Old Kingdom, and (if I were brave/foolish enough) The Borderlands.

Robin Mckinley’s Damar

Mercedes Lackey’s Valdemar

Patricia Briggs’ Tri Cities

Jaqueline Carey’s Terre d’Ange

The early Laurell K. Hamilton’s St. Louis

The thing that connects these for me is the richness of the imagery and the attention paid to details about mundane life in fantasy worlds - I am a real fan of authors who include small details - like the fact that fantasy heroes and heroines still have to wash their socks!

Would also love to visit Belgarath and the Vale of Aldur from David Eddings Belgariad.

That would be mine, too!  All of the characters are so much fun to be with I refer to The Belgariad series (to hubby, anyway) as Jokey Tolkien. ;-)

Wouldn’t mind visiting Middle Earth, for that matter. :-)

Lisa Shearin’s (Magic Lost, Trouble Found & Armed and Magical) Mermeia sounds like a cool place - like Venice, Italy, but populated with elves and other magical beings.  Raine, the heroine, is kick-ass without being a Mary Sue.

I love you Mads.  I completely agree with your assessments of both Harry Potter and Twilight.

Spam word is Looked23.  I have looked for the “wonder” in Twilight and not found it.  I have most likely read all of the books in the potter series a combined 23 times.

I was loathe to leave the Twilight world when I finished. The worldbuilding wasn’t as complex as Harry Potter, but there were some very clever elements in this world that came close - especially the Volterra world.

I don’t know why I didn’t classify you as a genius before, Sarah!. My oversight entirely on this topic.I do always love to read your blogs for the latest updates in all topics.
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