Art designer James Shadrach Schoenke imagines a modern-day Westeros with a modern-style map that mimics the design of European road maps.

Previously: A Q&A with Fantasy Cartographer Jonathan Roberts.

Map to Globe is an online tool that allows you to transfer a flat map onto a globe. Adam Whitehead has been trying it out with fantasy maps. Some work better than others. Westeros is not one of them, “because the maps of the North and the lands beyond the Wall need to be adjusted so they work on a globe.” Think of it as sort of a Mercator problem in reverse: imagining a flat map rather than a round world: the flat map’s lack of distortion is the issue.

As discussed before, in creating the maps of Westeros and Essos for A Song of Ice and Fire, George R. R. Martin has not really taken projection into account at all. On his maps of Westeros, the Wall is 300 miles long but the distance between Deepwood Motte and Winterfell (hundreds of miles to the south) is also said to be 300 miles long and the south coast of Westeros—3,000 miles south of the Wall!—is said to be 1,200 miles long. These are all in perfect scale to one another, which is not really possible when you look at the maps as a representation of what the planet actually looks like.

Trying to circle the square, so to speak, leads to complications, as Whitehead points out on his Atlas of Ice and Fire blog.

Of course, if your fantasy world is flat instead of round, you don’t have this problem.

Previously: The Library of Congress Looks at Fantasy Maps; Review: The Lands of Ice and Fire.

Previously: Review: The Lands of Ice and Fire.

You should know what you’re getting when you buy this. It’s not an atlas. It’s not even a book. George himself describes it as “a book-shaped box containing a whole bunch of gorgeous, glossy, fold-out maps of Westeros, Essos, and the lands and seas from A Song of Ice and Fire.” There is no text other than on a single-page introduction.

Open the box and you see two sleeves containing six maps apiece. Each map is 24 by 30 inches, single sided, in full colour, and on glossy paper, the kind you can see your fingerprints on. As fantasy maps go, this is a lavish production—a long way from the two-colour atlases we’ve seen for other imaginary worlds. (Some Amazon reviewers have expressed concern about wear and tear from folding and unfolding the maps; bear that in mind.)

I don’t think anything has been done like this before; maps of Middle-earth have been sold at bookstores in cardboard containers, and I’m told that in 1980 there were maps of the Star Trek universe done in a similar fashion, but I don’t think anything approximating this has ever been done for an imagined universe anywhere else. (If it has, please send me a copy immediately.)

Roberts’s maps execute the standard fantasy map design language, but in full colour, with more shades of green (for plains and forests) and white (for ice) than I was anticipating. (I guess I was expecting faded parchment.) I’m fairly certain these were produced (or at least coloured and lettered) digitally, and Roberts has achieved a good overall effect. (Though the cliffs don’t necessarily have the right perspective view compared with other parts of the shoreline.) These maps are competently executed, but not groundbreaking.

The maps are as follows: The Known World; The West; Central Essos; The East; Westeros; Beyond the Wall; The Free Cities; Slaver’s Bay; The Dothraki Sea; King’s Landing (a city map); Braavos (another city map); and Journeys (which shows characters’ travels). There is quite a bit of overlap: many areas (e.g. Westeros) show up in several maps at several scales.

The maps are almost too big. Unwieldy, even. You need a lot of table space to look at a two-foot-by-three-foot map. An atlas would have been easier to use—to browse, to flip through.

A surprising lack of detail exacerbates their size: it’s amazing how empty these maps look (and not just the maps showing the Dothraki Sea, though central Essos is practically blank). But compared with the endpaper maps in A Dance with Dragons, these maps show the exact same amount of detail. Make the maps bigger, and features and lettering are reduced in relative size: the maps look emptier. And endpaper maps are also high-contrast, rendered in black and white, whereas on these maps, hills, plains and forests are painted in the Photoshop equivalent of watercolours, and simply fade into the background.

If the small-scale maps show just as much detail, the middle-scale, regional maps are somewhat redundant. For my money, the Known World and Journeys maps are just the right scale for the size. Conversely, the most interesting maps to look at are the ones that are the most cluttered and the largest in scale: the city maps of King’s Landing and Braavos.

My partner Jennifer, who’s actually read the books (and whose observations about these maps helped me write this review) says she could spend a lot of time studying the Journeys map; unfortunately, this map more than any other will be obsoleted by forthcoming books. It would have been nice to have seen more thematic maps like this, but that’s the sort of thing you’d get from an atlas.

These maps are noteworthy for their unusual presentation, large size, and high production values, but on balance they’re a bit of a disappointment, largely because their unusual presentation and large size aren’t always a good thing.

Buy at Amazon | publisher’s page

Previously: Now Out: The Lands of Ice and Fire; The Lands of Ice and Fire: Westeros Atlas Coming in October.

George explains that this isn’t an atlas; in fact, it’s “not an actual book at all, but a book-shaped box containing a whole bunch of gorgeous, glossy, fold-out maps of Westeros, Essos, and the lands and seas from A Song of Ice and Fire.” (I hadn’t been sure.) Among the maps is an eagerly anticipated world map. George clarifies that “it’s not a complete world map, no. The idea was to do something representing the lands and seas of which, say, a maester of the Citadel might be aware … and while the maesters know more about Asshai and the lands beyond than a medieval monk knew about Cathay, distance remains a factor, and past a certain point legends and myths will creep here.”

The maps are the work of fantasy cartographer Jonathan Roberts. Sample images at io9 and Tor.com.

Buy at Amazon | publisher’s page

Previously: The Lands of Ice and Fire: Westeros Atlas Coming in October.

Previously: Maps of Martin’s “Song of Ice and Fire”; More Maps of Martin’s “Song of Ice and Fire”.