World Building Success

This is the final installment of a three-part series on wold building.


I've now talked about why world building is so important and my own process with it in my most recent WIP, so now I'm going to talk about the worlds in other people's books I love.

• Harry Potter Series by J.K. Rowling
• Rowling seriously has one of the best worlds I've ever read. It is intricate and detailed. Every book, we learned something new about the wizard world. Yes, it was fantastical. Yes, it was even crazy. But it wasn't so crazy as to go outside of the realm of possibility. It wasn't limitless because there were rules. And that's what makes good worlds with magic, are the rules.
  
• Hungry Games Series by Suzanne Collins
• This is on the opposite end of the spectrum here. It's very different than Harry Potter's world. This is a desolate world. It's a world that's been ravaged by war. Collins does a great job at making some things recognizable to us then completely changing the structure of other things. She created a world that was livable, but barely. And her political structure is well done and believable.
  
• Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card
• I admit, I've only read the first two books of this series. But the idea and the world have literally stuck with me since I was in 8th grade, so that's saying something. The sense of urgency in the first books with just enough mix of present and future technology rock my world. No really. It was so radically different than anything I'd read before that it stands out. It's a book that I have on my to-be-read-AGAIN pile. Precious few get that status.
  
• The Crosspointe Series by Diana Pharaoh Francis
• This is one of the few adult series on my list. I LOVE these books. The beginning starts out a little slow, but as Francis builds up the world it takes you away. In Crosspointe, where the novels are set, there is magic and gods/goddesses. The magic is entirely unique, however, in how it's used and it's limits. It's also not stagnant. It changes through the novels, like any other natural thing would. And the gods/goddesses? They aren't all powerful, nor are they all-knowing. I devoured the fourth book in about three days, and now I have to wait patiently for the next. I'm not very patient. (Go read the books, people.)

And that's all, folks! So tell me, do you agree with my assessments? What are you favorite worlds and why? I'd love to hear them!

Write on, always.