Over at The Broke and the Bookish, they’ve got this Top Ten Tuesday thing going on.  You can read all about them here: http://brokeandbookish.blogspot.com/search/label/Top%20Ten%20Tuesday

The one for June 7th 2011 was a corker – Favourite Book Settings.  Now I know this is a little late, but here’s mine:

Narnia – The Chronicles of Narnia

Anyone who’s read the books or seen the films must have dreamed of visiting Narnia, be it through the wardrobe (or grandfather clock), down the back of the sofa, that hold in the tree trunk…  The possibilities for getting to Narnia are as endless as the land itself and, having made it there, you’ll be a king (or queen), or at least someone very important indeed.

Fairy – from the Dresdenverse

Dangerous, full of rules and regulations, beautiful and deadly.  Land moulded to the thoughts and personalities that inhabit it.  The caveat to visiting there has got to be full immunity to anything that goes on around you!

The Other Side of the Wall – Stardust

Almost as bad as Fairy from the Dresdenverse but full of such wonderful locations! Who wouldn’t want to visit Stormhold?  Or the market at Wall? I’ve spent hours looking at Charles Vess’s illustrations for Stardust – the double-page spread of the market at Wall is one of my favourite book illustrations.

The Land – Thomas Covenant

From the Unbeliever’s first encounter at the top of a needle of rock through all the transformations in the books that follow, The Land never failed to draw me in to the story.  Despite the fact that the single good deed the Unbeliever did in the first 6 books was die.  Haven’t finished the final Chronicle yet, so his story is not yet complete and nor is that of The Land.

The Nightside – Simon R Green’s Nightside books

Any caveat applied to visiting Fairy applies double to the Nightside.  This hellish/heavenly otherly place below/around/within London is a place where anything and everything is possible – for the right price.  Predatory cards, somnambulist bodyguards, Merlin, they’re all here and they’re all deadly.  Because that’s how things are… in the Nightside (Don’t get me wrong, I love the books but you do quickly develop a mental filter to any sentence that ends with the phrase “…in the Nightside”).

London Below – Neverwhere

A very different other London to The Nightside.  This is where everything that’s been lost or forgotten goes.  Demons, gods, assassins, islands of time, London fogs and great beasts.  Mind the gap.

The Magical World – Harry Potter series

This one both amazes and confuses.  It’s a wonderful, truly magical, setting.  More internally consistent than most and full of the most beautiful throw-away people, places and things (that’s throw-away as in “just mentioned in passing but deserving of a story all to themselves”).  And yet it conflicts with the real world – some things would obviously be better with the application of a simple bit of technology – why use quills when you could use a fountain pen or a Biro, for example?

The Magic Faraway Tree – Enid Blyton’s books

A different land every time you visit?  Cakes, magical markets, clouds, and the inhabitants of the tree itself!  What’s not to like?

Oz – Frank L Baum’s books

Oz bears a lot of similarities with the assorted Fairy realms – beautiful, deadly, rule-bound.  The imagination run wild!

The Other Edinburghs – My own work-in-progress

Drawing on Neverwhere’s London, a little of the Nightside, a pinch of Fairy and some beautiful postcards, these Edinburghs are both real and not.  What if…?