Maps in Fantasy books

I'm an avid reader of fantasy. For the last couple years, I've stopped buying anything but digital. I've run out of room in my house for books. It seems nearly every fantasy novelist feels the need to draw a map and put it in the front of a book. I never ever look at these and was wondering if that is common or unusual.

So here's the question: Do you ever look at the maps in fantasy novels or refer to them while reading?

I do only if theres multiple books and I want to see where everything is. For a one off book, no.

I never refer to them while reading, but when I was younger and dabbled in writing a map was my starting point for the world I created.

Its quite fun to draw the map of your own world in your brain. Its a corner stone for many creative inspirations.

I look at them. I always like to have a reference in my head on where people are traveling to, how long it might take, the distance, etc. So I tend to refer to them a lot. I like to have a good sense of the land the story is in and the maps help me put it all into perspective.

I dont tend to look at them at all as travel time etc. is arbitrary in books anyway.

I always look at maps if they are present. From horse riding to walking the Appalachian trail a few times, distances have always been of interest for me. I think it adds a measure of perspective to the story, and helps me relate to the journey.

In WoT this proved to be a real problem. In the first few books RJ has the borderlanders constantly harassed by darkspawn and Aiel. When the maps were made there were borderland kingdoms far away from the Aiel and those groups magically didn't have anything to do with them. Several maps have severe problems too, such as Caemlyn. For the biggest city in the world there doesn't seem to be a ready supply of water near by. The two major rivers are miles away and support different cities. Jordan once claimed he didn't want to have any maps but his publishers insisted.

Terry Pratchett early on said you couldn't have maps for imagination (or something like that) and refused to have any for his Discworld books, at least early on. Those books often retconned at his whim before he decided to solidify the world and quit doing things like killing the series' main character and have him alive again at the start of the main book
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Another series that didn't have good maps? Greyhawk. I think that's why it was so wholeheartedly replaced by Forgotten Realms.

I always used to check the maps in Raymond E Feist's books, however I know most of the maps off my heart now. Definitely useful to know exactly how far characters are traveling on their journeys.

I love maps. They help immersion.

I'm with the (apparent) majority here: I love maps, and tend to refer to them often. As said above, they help put the story in perspective. It's the first thing I do usually, study them and get the lay of the land.

That's my one gripe with my Kindle books really: the maps are often very hard to read, and can't be zoomed in to.

I also love the maps, I would often look at them. Especially the wheel of time maps, I looked at them from book 1, so I don't think Jordan did not want them.

I think WOT has one of the most interesting maps, I spent so much time travelling on it, in online games, so I know how good it is

I only buy physical games these days if they have printed maps in them! I love to collect printed fantasy maps.

One of the best fantasy maps ever is the one which came with Morrowind, its pity that the later games maps (among other things) are not to the same standard.

I do read them every time people are travelling, I like to imagine if they're moving east, west, north or south, when they say they're near a landmark, since I'm imagining it I want to get it right (if it's on their left or right, if there's a forest nearby, a mountain, etc). When reading digital books it's something I sorely miss, as it's a pain to go back to the map page then back again to where you were.

Always. I have a crush on beautifully drawn maps.

When I was young, I was about to hang the LOTR map as a poster into my room … Meanwhile others had posters of pop stars, mine was planned to be a map !

I didn't do it, in the end, because I feared that it would suffer, then. So I kept it in the book. Where it still is.

I still love beautifully drawn maps from medieval Europe. You can find some in Wikipedia articles about places in Europe.

I only wish I could draw maps, too.
I once tried it with a demo of that program, Campaign Cartographer. It looks not bad, but still not "hand-drawn". Meanwhile real graphic artists do publish guides on drawing maps, their problem is the Curse Of Knowledge - they actually don't know the tiniest, slightest bit about the troubles of those who are not talented in drawing at all ! - But still try to draw something …

Always study the maps. I have studied the map of England during the viking raids for the Bernard Cornwell books.

Just found an example of a map in Wikipedia - the "fire insurance map" of Tombstone : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:T…e_map_1888.jpg
Be careful : It is big !