Authors build elaborate worlds through everything from carefully-chosen foods to amateur map-making to breathtakingly detailed wikis, their attention to detail a signal that these are worlds worthy of getting lost in. Often these are specific moments in the text, or a helpful hand-drawn atlas bookending the epic adventure, or a bonus feature that’s just a click away. But some storytellers go the extra mile, embedding worldbuilding details into their texts as a sort of “found footage” fictional childhood stories, comic books, or newspaper clippings that appear as excerpts throughout the larger work.
Sometimes, these fictions-within-fictions take on a life of their own and emerge into the real world as self-contained stories in their own right. Crack a book, cross a bridge, hop a spaceship, and check out these eight stories that are wonderfully extra when it comes to worldbuilding, creating children’s stories that can hold up to the classics, spinning off into picture books dr
First things first: I must confess that I have no context for the book I’m about to review. I’ve gathered that it’s a fictional primer of sorts written into Seanan McGuire’s 2019 novel
Middlegame. (There is virtually no pretense to the author of this book, A. Deborah Baker, being a real person, rather than a pen name of Seanan McGuire.) I think this is a
Tales of Beedle the Bard situation, but I have not read
Middlegame, and it seems like a complicated enough novel that I couldn’t find much information on how
Over the Woodward Wall is integrated into it.
Over the Woodward Wall (Tor.com Publishing 10/20) Baker is an open pseudonym for Seanan McGuire, and
Over the Woodward Wall began as a book-within-a-book, a middle-grade fantasy discussed in McGuire’s 2019 novel
Middlegame. The full-length version is a deliberately classic children’s fantasy and begins the Up-and-Under series. “Delectable, a ripe treat for lifelong readers…. It’s filled with adventure and wisdom, and navigates well-worn ideas with fresh enthusiasm.” [Katharine Coldiron]
Terry Brooks,
The Last Druid (Del Rey 10/20) Brooks began exploring the world of Shannara, setting of his bestselling and influential epic fantasy series, with
The Sword of Shannara in 1977. Now, after more than 40 years and 30 volumes, through prequels and spin-offs and sub-series, we have the concluding volume of both the Fall of Shannara saga and the series as a whole, as the heroes defend their land against the invading Skaar.