Unfortunately they have needles not leaves. And not the fun kind of needles like pine trees.

Needles !  {{{{{ Shudder }}}}}}
I see enough needles.
I guess a needle doesn't qualify as a Leaf on the Wind :~)

Hard to get to?!?!

Didn't the link work when you clicked on it? Did for me :~)

Mikey

Hells frickin Bells...
or as i should rather say:
Bloody Crows and Great Furies !!

It's by far the most expensive item among them... 465 bucks at the moment... leading by about 300...    <<<<< That's because we'all did good work on this one :~)  Mikey

That's what you get for one-of-a-kind items... and why i could never afford them... *g*

Actually, you hit the nail mostly on the head. I used a lot of "borrowed" earth coastlines when I came up with the map based on everyone's comments.  I used Google Earth, Photoshop, Corel Painter and a couple of other pieces of software on my Mac. For instance for the coastline of the Canim continent, I used some coasts from Norway and Sweden. I went to South Africa for the southern coasts of Alera. I picked up an isthmus from somewhere, don't remember which one but it seemed to work. Things like that. I used Google Earth a lot to do these things. Why reinvent the wheel unless the topo is so outrageous that nothing "real world" would fit it.

Haven't looked at Eragon.  Is it really bad?

Mikey

Interesting POV, I hadn't really thought about whether physics should be a rule.  Furies are not in our physics, after all.  But the Aleran sky is blue & grass is green and north is cold & south is hot, so I automatically assumed that water runs down hill and went right on from there.  Funny how your worldview gets brought along for the ride...

If you want to look at a map that REALLY gets me twisted, go look at the one for Eragon (shudder). 

I wonder if bits of Earth could be cobbled together to put the right scene elements in the right places AND still have the right physics.  Google maps & Photoshop, what fun!

First, let me say that this series ranks way high on my list of most favorite scifantasy stories.  I love the good guys, the bad guys, the dance of intention/information, wow!  Everytime a new book comes out, I reread several of the older ones.  But darn it, the map doesn't rank anywhere near the story.

Okay, the map is really pretty, I like the shading, font & illustrations of Marat & Canem.  It is very visually pleasing at first glance.  I also really like having it, I had everything pictured backwards (the west is always the frontier to me, but jeez, that's because I grew up in the West!)  But speaking as a geologist, it always surprises me how many authors/illustrators make dumb maps.  Honestly, pick up a real map & then do some splicing or have the map checked by someone who thinks about stuff like gravity & glaciation & plate techtonics!

Most of the time they do bad things with water.  That is this map's problem.  Rivers start in topography, not in the flats.  They can bisect topography (ie canyon) but that's hard to do realistically at this scale.  Rivers that come from mountains have speed, they don't tend to build the Mississippi style delta that you see coming out of Kalare.  Those tend to happen with lower relief, bigger drainage rivers like, well, the Mississippi (maybe the Gaul could have ended that way, or the Tiber).  Lakes are also pretty rare in real geography--think about it, they are either in the mountains (glaciation) or they are reservoirs (man made).  Okay, the Great Lakes of North America aren't in a very mountainous region, but they are glacier made.  Unless a lake is important to the story, I'd say skip it, as they are really hard to get right. 

The Calderon valley looks weird in the big map, although they put in a bunch of hill/mountain symbols in the blow up.  That makes it better but it would have been even better to have the Redhill Heights range trend that way. 

Sorry to be so picky, but when you soak in all the great attention to detail in the words & plot line, it wrenches to see lack of detail in the map.

Thanks for the comments xsm. The map was an evolutionary kind of thing. We started on it roughly three years ago and built it up as we received each book from Jim.
I'm pretty sure that Jim ok'd the map before it went into FLF and it reflects how he sees the Carna geography. It is a work of fiction and authors do have and can take literary liberties. The geography doesn't conform to Earth's reality but I kinda think it doesn't have to as long as it matches Jim's imagination. Just like a book of hard sci fi fiction doesn't necessarily have to conform to our reality's rules of physics. I suppose some would argue that no matter what reality we imagine that physics is physics. I guess I don't see it that way. Anyway, hope for the next series, that you'll be with us to help in the map thread.
M.

 

Veselka also does awesome blintzes, but I'm a crepes girl.  And a cupcake girl.  And a pie girl.  Mmmmm, food.  And I'm going to stop this off-topic chatter in this thread and direct it here instead.

Sorry. got sidetracked. Carry on! As you were!
I got kinda lost here once we got into a lot of physics.

Are we saying that the extent of time on Alera is not equivalent to the extent of time on Earth or are we saying that they are roughly equivalent? Or that it doesn't matter since it's fiction and only loosely based on hard science allowing the readers a degree of faith?
I thought that's what the discussion was about? Maybe not? Got confused even though I was trying to follow the discussion.

M.

Still have it up as my wallpaper at home and at work; my work computer, a Mac, has the capacity to switch the wallpaper periodically, so it's cycling between the map and the cover.

Ah, someone else who's almost obsessed as me I have all Alera series covers cycling, and have now included the map.

Mikey

The dedication:

Bows to the map queen (princess?) Priscellie the Magnificent:

"This one owes deep debts of gratitude to my editor, Anne Sowards, who deserves something for having to put up with me. Another big thank-you goes out to Priscilla, for going above and beyond the call of fandom in helping make the map of Alera, finally. Thanks also to the many fans at the jim-butcher.com forums, whose efforts helped us to refine and create the map by providing us with multiple reference points upon the maps they have made.

And, as ever, thank you, Shannon and JJ."

WOOT!!!