Ugh… that keeps me away. If a fantasy work features elves, dwarves, and/or orcs then I’m going to try to avoid it. Exceptions made for dwarves and elves if the author is working on a Norse theme or if the elves are more likely to replace your head with a donkey’s than to hand out magic swords.
I saw Dune mentioned above as a “good” setting and it’s a perfect example of how bad economics drive me away from a book. Spice is the most important substance in the universe; it drives pretty much everything. And in the past thousands of years in which it has had this role no one has done even the basics of trying to improve the process of harvesting beyond fly around until they spot some lying on the ground and picking it up. Bronze age humans had better ideas of how to gather vital resources than these idiots.
It has to feel old and lived-in, not shiny and new. This is something that I think far, far too few world-builders put enough thought into and what is a key to the best fantasy worlds that I’ve read. It’s what makes everything from Tolkien to the Star Wars universe feel right.
It has to be completely immersive and escapist. I can’t get into stuff where it’s merely a fanciful extension of our world (Harry Potter, Narnia).
It’s all about the details and nuances - this sort of falls in line with consistency, but it’s the small touches that truly make it work.
It has to truly be living and changing rather than static, especially if the story or series takes place over many years. My favorite thing about China Mieville’s Bas Lag world is that you see social, economic, cultural, and political changes over the ~20 years that we’ve seen in his three books, rather than “that’s just the way it is in Bas Lag!”
Also, I need fantasy worlds to actually be fantasy rather than just medieval - there needs to be magic, monsters, mysticism, other races, the supernatural, etc. etc. in spades. I could never get into the George R R Martin books because it just feels like I’m reading “Historical Fiction” about the medieval era - there’s no magic, no monsters.
That’s what I don’t like about Guy Gavriel Kay. Thank you for summing it up so concisely. His protagonists are generally sort of agnostic and rationalist, which doesn’t work at all in a setting based on, say, Medieval Spain.
To be fair - you’ve got killer sandstorms, with gargantuan worms and (literally) bloodthirsty Fremen all actively trying to kill you, an Imperial Planetologist purposefully hiding the true nature of the local ecological system, and a Spacing Guild that won’t put satellites in orbit because you’ve been outbribed. How do you suggest they improve harvesting, given the nature and source of melange?
I must admit, the mega-tome almost-hyper-realist settings like George RR Martin’s don’t do it for me, either.
What I love about Martin is that when the fantasy creatures are introduced they seem that much more fantastic for being so rare. Like Daenarys Targaryen’s Dragons are an undisputable sign and source of power. There is no doubt that she is coming up to be a badass sorceress queen from when she is but a teenager. If everyone was pulling cantrips at the pub, it would make magic more banal.
One thing that I like is the idea of manipulations of power. Rather than having vulgar magic right there in your face with fireballs and magic swords, have people who wield power through things that seem magically but are potentially explainable. The Emperor who keeps power through his spy network, and knows what is going on in his kingdom with a sense of knowledge that is beyond the ken of the average person. I’ve always liked the idea of Wizard as Scientist before his time, someone who can read the threads of reality that are right in front of him but seem disconnected and unrelated to the peasant. Written communication is magic to a society that cannot make dyes.
Any one of us with our basic high school knowledge of science could go into a medieval setting and be one of the great alchemists of the world. That in and of itself is an interesting idea. Someone of average intelligence and little creativity who knows deeper secrets of the universe, baffling the alchemists who know deep in their hearts that they are far smarter than he, but cannot fathom how such a dullard came to know such hidden mysteries.
The setting needs to take into account what it’s people know, and how they use that knowledge. When the Europeans came over to the new world they nearly starved even though there was food all around them. A master herbalist needs to own practically nothing because he can eat by merely reaching out and grabbing a mushroom and pulling up an onion as he wanders the forest, anywhere you go in most forests is a snack ready to be tasted, but if you don’t know what you are looking for you can starve amidst plenty.
Perhaps your setting is a mechanistic capitalist system that just bulldozes ecosystems to build strip malls. Perhaps it is a shamanic tribalism where everyone has a working knowledge of local flora and fauna. Perhaps it is something in between. Is there something like a Shogun/Emperor? Is it Democratic? Is it a system of laws or an honor system where everyone is so culturally similar that the unwritten customs are considered law? Do our characters violate custom unwittingly, falling prey to the locals who cannot fathom people not understanding basic social decency? How is it governed? How does the black market factor into it? Is the economy controlled? What are the sources of power? What do people eat? What do they cook? What drugs do they take? Do they cook at all or eat food raw? What color do they wear to funerals? Do they have a sentimental relationship with death where they have funerals at all? Are children raised by parents or is there a specialized guild that raises all children?
Well for one thing I’d try to grow it which in itself would reveal an awful lot about its properties. For another I’d map it’s locations over time which would rather quickly reveal its worm origins.
It’s one thing to say they’ve just found it and aren’t sure but they’ve had spice for at least three thousand years. They’ve been dependent on it for a period of time equal to the fall of Troy to the present day. To say that “It’s too hard to do” or “Someone would cover it up” or “No one was interested in finding out” is a pretty weak cop out in the face of absolute dependence upon it for thousands of years. It would be like if we still gathered iron by stumbling across ore laying on the ground.
I don’t think “someone will cover it up” is a cop-out at all, it makes sense in more than one way - it keeps the Spice rare, therefore profits up for CHOAM, and it goes with how the Guild are represented elsewhere (decidedly conservative and risk-averse). Also, remember, we’re talking about an entire civilization that has turned stagnant. Scientific enquiry left up to hereditary sinecures like Kines. Not a climate for asking deep questions.
I see your broader point - The economic situation in Dune is a highly artificial one - but this is part of Herbert’s point, too - and easily shown by how artificial Spice is introduced in later novels under a different political setup. You see the economics as immature, I see Herbert as aware of this and playing on it.
Which is a great idea until the fact that you haven’t bothered to understand the basics of what you’re using turns around and bites you in the ass like it does in Dune.
These aren’t deep questions or ones to cover up. Spice is more important to the functioning of their civilization than oil is to us and they don’t even bother to try to understand it. They might be stagnated to the point that no one bothers to try to make a shield that doesn’t blow up when lasers get near it but to put all of civilization in one basket and not know what basket you’re putting it into is just plain crazy. Especially when there’s been thousands of years to figure out what’s going on.
And that’s a starting point to understanding it. Organic substances don’t just pop out of sand spontaneously, it had to grow somehow. When they work out that it isn’t a proper plant or fungus (which is something that won’t take very long at all) then they’re well on their way to getting to the source.
“Hmmm… lot of worms near here yesterday and now there’s a spice patch that wasn’t there before. I wonder if there’s a connection…”
More on the religion thing – if there is religion, I like to see the characters have different takes on it. Even if you live in a religious society, you are going to find people who are truly devout, and people who are more sort of culturally religious – they are happy enough partaking in the traditions, but don’t think too hard on it. You’re going to have some who are way more into it than others to the point where even other religious people think they are going too far, and some who privately don’t put much stock in it, but go along with the outward signs of practice because it’s easier than being shunned by your neighbors.
In general, I often enjoy “less is more” type fantasy worlds. Worlds where things are very much like the real world, only with a few differences. I especially like it when there are things you get to figure out for yourself – characters might refer to a certain thing, and only gradually do you come to the “a ha!” moment. A few references are made to something being “about the size of an elephant” and when you put them together, you realize that in the book’s world, elephants are small.