Fantasy author Joe Abercrombie is everywhere right now thanks to the release of his buzzy new book The Devils. Released in mid-May, The Devils debuted at #5 on the New York Times bestseller list and #1 on the Sunday Times bestseller list, both career highs for Abercrombie. It's gained major media attention thanks to the news that none other than James Cameron (yes, that James Cameron) has optioned it for a film adaptation, which he will co-write with Abercrombie himself. And of course, Abercrombie was also out touring the UK and United States, promoting the book by chatting with other authors like George R.R. Martin, Robin Hobb, Patrick Rothfuss, and more.
Abercrombie also spoke with The Stormlight Archive author Brandon Sanderson at a church in Salt Lake City. And fortunately for all of us, Sanderson has his own personal video team as part of his company Dragonsteel, which means that the conversation was recorded in high quality and is available to watch on YouTube. Check it out:
Why Joe Abercrombie avoided maps in his fantasy books for years
The event was broken up into a half hour of Sanderson interviewing Abercrombie about his work and a half hour of Q&A with the audience. There are a lot of interesting anecdotes and bits of information in there, but one I want to zoom in one in particular: a fun discussion the authors had about maps in fantasy books, and why they can be as much of a hindrance as a help to writers.
Abercrombie is best known for his First Law series, the first five books of which did not feature any map of its fictional world. But unlike those books, which are set in a secondary fantasy world, The Devils takes place in an alternate history Europe. The landscape is familiar, if changed by world events like invasions of cannibalistic elves and a splintering of the Catholic Church, which resulted in two warring sects with different popes.
Abercrombie explained that part of the reason he set The Devils in our own world was because he wanted to do something a bit lighter after his last trilogy The Age of Madness. That comprised the seventh, eighth, and ninth full-length First Law novels, which were stuffed to the gills with lore and connections to previous works. The Devils, which is about a Suicide Squad-like group of fantasy monsters working for a young female pope in an alternate reality Europe, was a nice change of pace.
"You don't have to think up so many names. For a writer that is as incredibly lazy as I am, that is a big advantage," Abercrombie joked. "You don't have to do too much kind of drawing of maps, because the maps are already there. You can just trace them with some tracing paper."
The mention of maps piqued Sanderson's interest. "Don't you dislike maps?" he asked. "Isn't that something I once heard, that you don't like maps?"
"I mean, I love maps, but I think they need to be exercised in the right way," Abercrombie explained. "I suppose what I don't like is kind of a lazy application of maps. 'Here is a map, because this is a fantasy book, and therefore there's supposed to be a map in it.'"
Abercrombie then got into something I'd always been curious about: why the original First Law books didn't have a map. "When I was first writing The First Law, I guess I wanted to write something that was very character focused, that was almost told in tight closeup on the people. And to start with the widest shot imaginable of the whole world felt like exactly the wrong kind of tone to begin with, if you want. So I wanted people to be in the experience of the characters, rather than you know, leafing back to work out how far north one place is of another place."
"It can get you into trouble," Sanderson said. "And once you put the map in...you run into some problems, maybe like some later Game of Thrones seasons where you're like, 'Well how did they get from here to here.' And when you're trying to be very realistic with presenting some of that stuff it can get you into trouble."
Despite the potential pitfalls, Sanderson remains a fan of maps in his fantasy books, which should surprise no one who's read them. But he's "familiar with the arguments against them," recalling that late Discworld author Terry Pratchett "famously said, 'No maps. You can't map imagination.' And so he didn't want maps in his books."
For Abercrombie, it wasn't until his sixth First Law book, Red Country, that he finally decided to make a concrete map for his world. As it turns out, that ended up being advantageous to him when writing that book, because he could design the map around its needs.
"I was kind of fortunate because when I wrote Red Country, I was able to redesign quite radically the shape of a continent, because I'd never published a map," Abercrombie recalled. "And so I could rethink it and get the river the right shape to suit the story. I'd rather the landscape suited the story, than suit my story to the landscape I'm stuck with."
The next book in The Devils will have "a bit of churn in the central cast"
Abercrombie also spoke a little about his plans for sequels to The Devils. He confirmed that he has "signed a contract for three books," so as of right now, "the plan is to write three, certainly."
Despite there being more Devils books in the works, don't expect the overall flow of the series to feel too similar to The First Law. "I guess it's not a trilogy in the sense that some of my other trilogies have been. That is, one big story in three parts," Abercrombie said. "The idea with these books was very much for them to be more like a detective story where you know, each book is its own adventure featuring some of the similar characters. Maybe there's a bit of churn in the central cast, one in, one out kind of thing. Next book's got a talking cat."
I am fully here for a talking cat in the next Devils book. As for how the second book in the series is coming along, Abercrombie told us in an exclusive interview last month that work on The Devils sequel is going "reasonably well."
"I never feel any better than that until I’ve got a draft completed and I feel like I know what to do with it. Then the true work begins," he explained. "But I’m maybe 80% of the way through a first draft, so it’s coming together. A few wrinkles still to iron out and plenty of work to do in the revision, as always. The cast changes some with each book, so there’s a new priest taking charge, of a much more dangerous and driven variety, and a very different plot involving an Inquisition, a mysterious inheritance, a set of ancient tombs, and some witches."
If you want to read more about how Abercrombie crafted The Devils, you can read our full interview right here:
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