Fifth Season Ch 14 & 15

Apocryphal

@NeilNjae I think it was one of the very first things I picked up on and commented on. I tend to prefer well crafted works like Middle Earth, but I don’t inherently mind these scenery worlds in some contexts. Oddly, though, in some reviews, people are praising the world building, which I find odd since there’s so little of it. One thing for sure - the world presented here isn’t like any other I can think of in fiction, so kudos to Jemisin for that.

NeilNjae

@Apocryphal said:
@NeilNjae I think it was one of the very first things I picked up on and commented on. I tend to prefer well crafted works like Middle Earth, but I don’t inherently mind these scenery worlds in some contexts.

That just shows I should pay more attention to my betters!

@Apocryphal said:
Oddly, though, in some reviews, people are praising the world building, which I find odd since there’s so little of it. One thing for sure - the world presented here isn’t like any other I can think of in fiction, so kudos to Jemisin for that.

I think the world has verisimilitude because it hews close to a series of tropes and touchstones about the world. They all make sense in isolation, but when we try to put them together in a coherent whole, nothing quite connects.

dr_mitch

Yes, I think Jemisin cares about consistency in geography and technological detail about as much as Tolkien cared about plausible economics. It does grate a little, as fantasy readers are used to some sort of geographic consistency in fantasy, even including such things as maps. Which is probably one way Tolkien influenced the whole genre.