A sample:
And, last but not least, who could leave the realm of sci-fi and fantasy books of the 70’s without mentioning the greatets masterwork of all, “Tenacles of Dawn”! Authored by this very own nerd’s father, Robert Wilson, it’s about a guy who wakes up in an egg in a cave and, after dodging a giant bat and some “wild wagon women” goes on a quest for the “Watcher of the World.” That’s my dad!
A map at the front of a fantasy book worked as a kind of blurb, a promise of the adventures to come - you just knew that the mountain-ringed forbidden city or the skull-shaped island fortress jutting from a wreck-garnished sea was going to crop up somewhere. It would be a hell of a tease if they didn’t. Moreover, the map is part of the escapist promise of fantasy: that you are entering a fully realised world, one that extends beyond the bounds of the story, and that even if the stinging deserts and haunted swamps are barely alluded to, they they can exist more fully in your own imaginative rendering of the world.
— Will Wiles from Flaw Plan. I also love the maps in fantasy books. One of my recent favorites is the Half Continent map from the Foundling Series.
