the tough guide to fantasyland by diana wynne jones

In an extended metaphor, the readers (or viewers or players) are tourists authors are tour guides, and their stories are sight-seeing tours or package holidays to this Fantasyland. Its conceit is that the fantasy worlds depicted in many fantasy novels, games, and films are identical, although tours visit different places such as provinces of Finland. Unusually, the book presents itself as a tourist guidebook its title alludes to the Rough Guides series of such guidebooks. 'Our job was to decide whether each entry was necessary, to suggest new ones, to discuss whether some of the entries made sense (many didn't), and to provide examples in support of what each entry said.' Description While hospitalized in 1994, she and Chris Bell worked on projected entries for The Encyclopedia of Fantasy (Clute & Grant, Orbit Books, 1997).

The inside back cover of the revised edition is a 2006 postscript by Jones, 'How I Came to Write This Guidebook'. It is set in a fantasy world that maintains the cliches detailed in the Tough Guide for the benefit of commercial tourism from our world.

(The) Dark Lord of Derkholm (1998) is one that subverts, and a conceptual sequel. Jones has written many fantasy novels, mainly for children or young adults, including some that simply rely upon and some that subvert common fantasy motifs. A revised and updated edition was completed in 2006 and published by Penguin ( Firebird Books), first in the U.S. It was first published by Vista Books (London) in 1996. However, it may be called a fictional or parodic tourist guidebook. Library of Congress calls it a dictionary. The Tough Guide to Fantasyland is a nonfiction book by the British author Diana Wynne Jones that humorously examines the common tropes of a broad swathe of fantasy fiction.

The tough guide to fantasyland by diana wynne jones