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I've been reading various books in the Nine Worlds series by Victoria Goddard, so far all in the Lays of the Hearth-Fire and Red Company Reformed sub-series, and they are fantastic. The story is so good, and the writing is so artful, and the world is so fascinating! And as I've been reading, it's been inspiring me so much to think about my own original fantasy worldbuilding in a way I haven't in a really long time.
That's such a cool thing about fantasy, isn't it? Obviously creativity (of any sort) takes inspiration from all around us. I've named a character after a street sign before. But this series specifically seems to have absolutely hit me in this particular worldbuilding spot, and I think that's a thing that some fantasy series do very well. They give you just enough information about how this world is different from the real one, and that gives you enough room to build up within that fandom AND for your own potential new worlds.
So the thought process goes something like: There's a place in the Nine Worlds that refers to itself as the home of music, which is such a beautiful idea! Do I also have a home of music? Or a home of language? Especially since language is a big deal in my fantasy world because magic is conceived of as being someone's "native language." Oooh and sometimes music can be linguistic and is often communicative - does my world have a culture that conflates magic and music? And so on and so forth! It just keeps snowballing with new ideas.
(Also the world of the Nine Worlds is surprisingly reminiscent of Emelan, which will always be a series of my heart, so that absolutely endeared me to it!)
All this has given me more ideas for my fantasy world where there's fantasy Jews who have a kabbalistic-style goddess with aspects of the seasons, a polytheistic culture has a triune of three queens that reflect their three goddesses, and another has a statue as its ruler and the actual ruler is conceived of as being the voice of the statue.
Fantasy! Worldbuilding! Joy! Reading! AHHH!
That's such a cool thing about fantasy, isn't it? Obviously creativity (of any sort) takes inspiration from all around us. I've named a character after a street sign before. But this series specifically seems to have absolutely hit me in this particular worldbuilding spot, and I think that's a thing that some fantasy series do very well. They give you just enough information about how this world is different from the real one, and that gives you enough room to build up within that fandom AND for your own potential new worlds.
So the thought process goes something like: There's a place in the Nine Worlds that refers to itself as the home of music, which is such a beautiful idea! Do I also have a home of music? Or a home of language? Especially since language is a big deal in my fantasy world because magic is conceived of as being someone's "native language." Oooh and sometimes music can be linguistic and is often communicative - does my world have a culture that conflates magic and music? And so on and so forth! It just keeps snowballing with new ideas.
(Also the world of the Nine Worlds is surprisingly reminiscent of Emelan, which will always be a series of my heart, so that absolutely endeared me to it!)
All this has given me more ideas for my fantasy world where there's fantasy Jews who have a kabbalistic-style goddess with aspects of the seasons, a polytheistic culture has a triune of three queens that reflect their three goddesses, and another has a statue as its ruler and the actual ruler is conceived of as being the voice of the statue.
Fantasy! Worldbuilding! Joy! Reading! AHHH!
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