BlakeCharlton.com

Spellbound’s Beautiful City Map

Last year I was lucky enough to show of the world map for the Spellwright Trilogy. It was drawn by the brilliant Rhys Davies; if you’re into imaginary maps, you really should click through.

Today, I’m very proud to show off a second Davies map. This one will run in Spellbound and provides detailed cartography of the City of Avel. Here’s how I described the inspiration for Avel in an interview with Civilian Reader:

Avel is a bustling city in the deep savannah of the kingdom of Spires. Its structure and culture was inspired by the medieval cities of Morocco. When I was a teenager, I did a student travel program and I ended up spending a summer in the beautiful city of Meknes. Later when I traveled in Spain, I saw a lot of similar architectural and cultural elements. In particular, a similar use of cumin in both Moroccan and Spanish cooking struck me. Even the languages have many commonalities: for example, the Spanish word for rice “arroz” comes from the Andalusian Arabic word “aruzz.” Even more intriguing to me was remembering that I had encountered many of these cultural and linguistic elements in the Americas. Mexican cuisine also incorporates cumin, and many of the grandest structures built by Spanish settlers have Moorish (i.e. Moroccan) elements. For example, last year I was lucky enough to travel to Peru. In Lima, I visited El Covento de San Francisco and was delighted at one point to find myself standing under an ornate and beautiful ceiling decorated with a “Moorish Star” pattern: the ceiling was almost an exact replica I had seen as a teenager in a very distant North African city. Anyway, my epic fantasy writer imagination had found a source of inspiration. I read up on Al Andalusia, the many different Catholic kingdoms of medieval Spain, the Ottoman Empire in Northern Africa. All of them got mashed up with a dash of pure fabrication to produce the architecture, politics, and culture of Spires. I had a lot of fun dreaming the place up, and I very much hope that readers have fun exploring Avel and the surrounding cities on an adventure.

Let me know what you think!