Before the story begins, there is a map. It is almost always there, on the two pages that face each other before chapter one. Coastlines drawn by someone who has either studied ac…
There is a question that readers rarely ask out loud because the honest answer feels slightly embarrassing: how many times have you read the same book? Not the books you are suppo…
Something has shifted in what readers want from fantasy. For most of the twentieth century, the genre's dominant mode was essentially optimistic. There was a darkness in Tolkien,…
Every few years, a book about money sells thirty million copies. People underline sentences in it. They leave it on their desks where clients might notice. They recommend it to si…
