I got this book through Librarything's Early Reviewer group. The book is a compilation of blog pages by the author, so every chapter is a few pages long and I'd call it breezy. She takes something from history in various cultures and describes how she might use it in worldbuilding for a story. I enjoy history and learning about other cultures so I found it interesting. ( )

The essays in this book are based on blog posts the author has made concerning worldbuilding. Marie Brennan is the author of A Natural History of Dragons (and series) which tells the story of a woman explorer and dragon naturalist. The world she builds is fun, exotic, and mostly there for the sake of cool dragons. I thought her worldbuilding was good, and good enough for the story she was telling.

In these essays, she gets more into specifics of certain elements, such as weapons and armor and religion. The chapters are short and fairly simple, but that's all you need—as a writer, you need to think about your choices, not make your main character wield a broadsword because you think it looks cool. Swords are expensive, hard to make, hard to wield, not useful for anything other than combat, they are heavy, hard to take care of, and some cultures may not allow people to carry swords. That doesn't mean you can't have a broadsword-wielding mage, but you should understand the world implications.

I write fantasy but even as a reader I LOVE these kind of details. Unfortunately (or fortunately?), worldbuilding is a HUGE topic because worlds are complex, so you are never going to know everything. This book helps you get a basic understanding.

I did not read her blog or her other book, I was delighted to come across this publication and have enjoyed reading it immensely.

Review also posted on Amazon and my blog (https://myrareadthis.wordpress.com). Book received as part of the LibraryThing Early Reviewers giveaway. ( )

This is the second collection of essays on world-building by Marie Brennan. They are initially published on her Patreon blog, and subsequently collected into a single book. As with the first anthology, I was left wanting something more meaty that went into topics in more depth. However, the broad range and demonstration how things connect is useful.

Recommended as a good introduction to the topic.

An anthology of essays on different aspects of the world and therefore of potential fictional worlds that creators might create. In an effort to cover a lot of ground (even over multiple volumes, worlds are big) each one is fairly brief and light - probably more useful to inspire thinky thoughts when I'm in that space than to learn anything substantially new, though there are certainly new-to-me tidbits throughout. ( )

Pros: short essays are easy to read, covers a wide variety of topics

Cons: short essays don’t go into much detail

This is the second book of essays compiled from Brennan’s Patreon. There’s an introduction, 52 themed essays and an afterward. The themes from this book encompass weaponry, honor, cosmetics, clothing, wedding customs, literacy, time keeping, religious practices, superstitions, and some general worldbuilding tips.

I loved that there were a variety of topics, broken down into more specific essays. Each essay is only a few pages long so you can easy read one in a few minutes. Brennan gives several examples per essay showing how cultures differ, so as to get the reader thinking of applications beyond the common. The downside here is each essay is very basic and is more of a way to get you thinking about applications than showing you how to apply each aspect to your own world.

As with the first book, it’s a great collection and points out a lot of worthwhile tidbits for making your fictional worlds feel more lived in. ( )