The perfect Hanukkah present: a true escape

Books!  Jonathan got me so many books!  I took a break last night and today from thesis/placement prep and read Inheritance by Christopher Paolini, the last book in the Eragon series.  It was so much better than the last one, I can't tell you.  But reading it so soon after A Dance with Dragons, the fourth book in A Song of Ice and Fire by George R.R. Martin, really highlighted how youthful the former series is compared to the latter.  Both have battle scenes in them, but the Eragon books are made for kids; no sex, no politics, no love, just black and white protagonists and villains. (The series also strongly resemble Lord of the Rings and Star Wars, but then lots of reviewers have pointed that out. That said, they're still fun to read.)  Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire, however, is complicated, nuanced, and completely gray... which makes the characters fascinating and their actions that much more appealing.

The authors of both series, however, DO make up completely different worlds, which I admire.  It is in their honor that I post this map.

Westeros, the setting of A Song of Ice and Fire, made it in, of course.  Noticeably missing, however, is Alagaesia, the setting of the Inheritance Cycle. And then also Cittagazze, the main city in the His Dark Materials series (of which The Golden Compass was the first), but that's neither here nor there.  I love that a corner island is "Where the Wild Things Are" and that they have Sodor, where Thomas the Train lives, and then Florin, of The Princess Bride fame, at the bottom.  I guess Hogwarts didn't make it because it's technically still in the real world of Scotland.

All hail escapes.  Whether books or video games, somehow it's all equally immersive.

Edited to add:  Thanks to Lynn K., I just added The Dictionary of Imaginary Places to my Amazon wishlist.  What a fun-looking book!