Lord of the Rings

I’ve been obsessed with maps since before I knew what fantasy was. The kind you unfold like treasure, with winding rivers, tiny illegible place names, and the promise of ancient secrets hidden in the margins. In my own stories, the map comes first—and sometimes refuses to budge. Which is probably why I have strong feelings about Tolkien’s very tidy mountain problem. Let’s talk about the beauty, the lies, and the suspicious tectonics of fantasy cartography.