A review by eeb123
Literary Wonderlands: A Journey Through the Greatest Fictional Worlds Ever Created by Jared Shurin, Lev Grossman, John Clute, Adam Roberts, Kat Howard, Mahvesh Murad, Lisa Tuttle, Tom Shippery, Abigail Nussbaum, Laura Miller, Laurie Penny, James Smythe, John Sutherland, Mary Hamilton

4.0

I bought this ebook at some point based solely on the title and cover. Based on those I somehow expected this would be a maybe pseudo-academic exploration of place in fantasy literature—geographical and possibly psychological place. And it actually is that, sort of, but instead of an extended essay exploring how place functions and looks and feels in these books, it’s a collection of summaries of fantasy literature with interesting settings. Sometime the summaries are interesting (whether or not they actually even address the setting), sometimes they’re full of spoilers (don’t read the Never Let Me Go summary before reading the book), sometimes they’re a little too clever. Overall though, after some initial disappointment that the book was not what I wanted it to be, I enjoyed revisiting books I’ve loved, reading about books I’ve been meaning to read, and getting a long list to add to my to-reads.