Places of Power: Six Magical Locations

Credit Tithi Luadthong

Today’s Wyrd & Wonder prompt is Magical Locations. Now, me, I love a good magical location. The sort of place that simply isn’t possible without the sort of forces we can only imagine. So here are six of the best…

Mkalis, Kerstin Hall’s Mkalis Cycle

Mkalis is the spiritworld, the otherworld in Kerstin Hall’s series of phantasmagorical novellas. It is a place of demons of gods, of lethally complex laws and lethally impossible landscapes. I wish it was a comic, for that would be something to behold indeed.

Neverwhere, Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere

Gaiman’s version of the underside of London is filled with strange characters and mystic representations of the city below. Like, Hammersmith’s a big dude, right? While I’ve put the book cover up here (which I’ve never even read), it is also a comic and TV show, so plenty of scope for going “ooh aah”

Fionavar, The Fionavar Tapestry by Guy Gavriel Kay

Kay’s high fantasy world of Fionavar is just absolutely filled with places of magic from the haunted woods of Pendaran to the dead’s place at Cader Sedat, to the dwarves’ crystal caves at Banir Lok to the grove of Mornir’s Summer Tree. Few worlds are as fantastical as Fionavar, for better and for worse.

Arioch’s Castle, Michael Moorcock’s Knight of Swords

In this sword & sorcery adventure, the last of a species of elf decides to exact revenge on this responsible for the death of his family. The ultimate prize is one of the Dukes of Chaos, who lives in exactly the sort of place you’d expect from such a being…

The Island, Marie Brennan’s Cold-Forged Flame

Ree is one of those heroes from another time summoned to fight. But what she has to fight is less people, and more a sentient and deadly island connected to her clouded memories. Great book, great place.

The Wyrds, Anne McCaffrey’s Dragonriders of Pern

It’s hard to get more magical than dragons, even if people are telling you their giant flame-breathing telepathic time-travelling flying lizards are just a completely scientific thing. Pern’s weyrs are just full of dragons; just imagine what it would be like to see one

What’s your favourite magical places in fantasy?