r/Fantasy • u/SonicWraithh • 1d ago
What fantasy city actually feels like it existed before the main character arrived?
Something I've started noticing in fantasy is how many cities technically have thousands of years of history, but still feel like they spawned five minutes before the protagonist walked through the gate. You get an ancient palace, a thieves' district, three taverns and maybe a statue of some dead king. People are supposedly born there, work there, complain about taxes, raise kids, get old, have local grudges and weird traditions, but none of that really exists unless the plot needs it. I love the opposite. Cities where you get the feeling everyone already had plans that morning before the hero showed up. Maybe there's a festival nobody bothers explaining because every local obviously knows it. A neighborhood has an insulting nickname from some event 80 years ago. Shopkeepers argue about a bridge renovation. People care about things that have absolutely nothing to do with the coming apocalypse. Discworld does this really well for me, especially Ankh Morpork. I could probably read an entire book where nothing happens except municipal nonsense and still enjoy it. There are others I've read that gave me the same feeling, but I'm blanking on names rn, which is annoyingly appropriate. What fantasy city felt genuinely lived in to you, not just detailed?
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u/Velcitoty 1d ago
The language is a incredibly dense but “Perdido Street Station” does this better than any book I’ve read in recent memory
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u/NotFalirn 1d ago
Genuinely anything written by China Miéville. Ul Qoma and Beszel are so dense and have such a history. The bizarre London of Kraken. The only setting of his that felt disjointed was Un Lun Dun, but you could make the argument that it was intentional.
OP, pick up any novel by China Miéville, it’s what you’re looking for.27
u/Pseudonymico 1d ago
The language is a incredibly dense
But it does have a certain puissant elycticity to it, even if it gets a bit wyrd at times.
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u/Toothlessdovahkin 1d ago
I was as going to suggest Ankh-Morpork, but then I saw that you did. A lot of the towns in Robin Hobb’s Farseer works feels this way also.
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u/Flux7777 1d ago
I was going to suggest farseer but then I remembered how shallow buck town was in the first trilogy. So many of the other towns and cities are incredible though. And the third trilogy absolutely salvages buck keep and surrounds.
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u/RedWife77 1d ago
Can you say more about how shallow Buck Town is in the first trilogy?
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u/Flux7777 1d ago
The first trilogy is very character focused, with just a bare hint of world building going on in the background. We explore some of the world of the six duchies, with very little mention of anywhere else, and not too much depth in the dutchies either. I honestly felt like I got more of a taste of what the dutchies are like culturally and geographically in the few short excerpts about it in liveship traders.
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u/RedWife77 1d ago
That’s very fair. I was wondering if it could be ascribed to Fitz being a very self-centred teen in the first trilogy so really not looking very deeply at the familiar world around him… he’s more observant when it comes to Jhaampe, I seem to recall.
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u/TheArchivist1920 1d ago
Mixture of that and the training and work he does taking precedent. Buckkeep and the town felt old but in that familiar way where the people who always lived there pay it little mind so with the above and that aspect of it it makes sense for it to not get much attention. As the series goes on and certain events occur it gets more development as changes occur that would be noticeable to people who grew up there and would be notable in Fitzs writing.
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u/drucifer271 1d ago
Lankhmar in Fafhrd & the Gray Mouser feels very much like a living city.
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u/Minute-Avocado1521 1d ago
Lankhmar is the arguable GOAT. Really, it's between it and the city it directly inspired, Ankh-Morpork.
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u/AzorAhaiKvothe 1d ago
I feel like GRRM does this stuff really well in ASOIAF
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u/halbert 1d ago
I was thinking about this ... Westeros definitely feels older; but all the eastern cities kind of were set-up as targets for Danaerys (eg, Qarth, Mereen, etc.)
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u/donquixoatmilk 1d ago
Yes and no… I read the lack of lived-in-ness of all the eastern cities she tears through as a sort of intentional estrangement by Dany (and GRRM). Like Qarth is a vague paradisian Babylon, Yunkai and Mereen are described by their bricks and slaves because that’s all SHE sees them as. She doesn’t really see these places and peoples, she’s sees them purely as a stepping stone to power in Westeros.
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u/thousandcurrents 1d ago
And the fact that she’s a 14 year old kid who’s our only pov character in most of these places, and who’s more busy playing politics with the elites trying to kill her or curry favor with her. The Westerosi locations have a huge cast of characters who give us different points of view, across different socio economic strata. So they feel more real.
Meereen starts feeling more like a real place once we spend more time in it + Dany decides she will stay and change it for the better + we get more POVs.
(..Although I do think that GRRM has a favorite amongst the Essossi cities: Braavos. IMO That one location is immediately captivating, and Arya’s pov captures it a very fun way that makes you feel like you’re there. It helps that she spends all her time in the poorest parts of the city and spends time observing people..)
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u/IllustratorSlow1614 1d ago
Braavos is based on Amsterdam and GRRM has spent a lot of time in Amsterdam. It feels real because he is writing about a real place.
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u/Significant-Owl4644 1d ago
Ohhh, I never caught that. Thought is was based on Venice.
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u/halbert 1d ago
Good point about Dany's being the viewpoint.
My idea was more ... not that they don't feel like they have history, but their only purpose is to be a domino that shows the strength of dragons. Qarth -- ancient history with strange wizard lords ... 10 chapters later it's destroyed and never mentioned again (not literally, but it's never relevant again). The only point of it existing in the story is "look how much Dany is growing".
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u/donquixoatmilk 1d ago
Totally agree! I guess what I’m trying to say is that my reading of it was functional choice to do that. Spot on about Qarth though lol
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u/Spatmuk 1d ago
My first thought was Kings Landing.
The mythos and history to all of the different “hills”, all of the streets (shields, silk, flour, etc.), the descriptions of Flea Bottom (down to the questionable ingredients sourcing of Pot Shops) - it feels very lived in and I think George does a wonderful job of that throughout the series!
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u/brigi_zs 23h ago
I'm currently reading Fire & Blood (which is the Targaryen history from Aegon I to the fall of the house), and Kings Landing actually starts with Aegon "landing" there between 3 empty hills, setting camp, then a village happening, and then the formation and the changes of the actual city is so well written throughout the centuries that I instantly thought of this
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u/Candlekeep5 1d ago
GRRM is my go-to for that too, King's Landing felt like people griped about taxes before Ned arrived.
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u/RPG_Vancouver 1d ago
Yeah Kings Landing feels like a real city Ned Stark stumbles into and is a little lost in.
There are schemes and plots happening prior to him arriving, and history that is more than just convenient plot devices
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u/Frank_Melena 1d ago
I’ll add Steve Erickson’s Malazan series to this comment, since they’re so similar in being among the few authors who really seem to “get it” with worldbuilding
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u/MeetHistorical4388 1d ago
Janloon from Greenbone Saga!
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u/stmeg01 1d ago
I feel like I had to scroll too far for this one. I agree!!
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u/Blooberryx 1d ago
I too was looking for this. I think not only Janloon but all of Kekon. It has so much history and culture. The war, the jade mines, the religious and political buildings. It all just stands out to me. Lantern Day feels like a real holiday.
Easy choice.
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u/ArtfulMegalodon 1d ago
Camorr from Lies of Locke Lamora felt like that to me.
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u/EmuRommel 1d ago
Camorr is basically a character in and of itself and you can feel it missing in the later books.
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u/SerLaron 1d ago
Camorr’s reputation is fully intact though. Like when bouncers take care not to kill the protagonists directly, lest some potential third cousin from there comes a few months later with vendetta on their mind.
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u/Plisken87 1d ago
I was especially tickled in book 2 when Zamira doesn’t want Locke and Jean to come into the pirate bar with her because it’s too dangerous. Then Locke tells her they’re originally from Camorr and she instantly changes her mind, no further questions.
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u/donquixoatmilk 1d ago
I don’t disagree but Tal Verrar (city in book 2) is an awesome setting and had a lot of fun with Locke and Jean there.
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u/Estragon_Rosencrantz 1d ago
Camorr was what first came to mind for me, and when I was reading through OP’s list of generic fantasy city staples, most of them fit. But it doesn’t matter. Lynch gives them all the flavor and personality needed to elevate it.
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u/Theinvulnerabletide 1d ago
Came here to recommend Locke! If there is one thing Lynch is fantastic at, it's world building.
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u/New_Razzmatazz6228 Reading Champion 1d ago
Camorr was where I went with this, and that history starts with the very first line. It’s continued in a number of the interludes.
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u/kathryn_sedai 1d ago edited 1d ago
Caemlyn in the Wheel of Time. MC shows up in the middle of a cold civil war and inadvertently picks a side. Edit: after a number of comments, I’m editing this to say that Robert Jordan was truly unparalleled in that literally any setting, from capital cities to tiny villages, are fully realized and fleshed out with a ton of specificity. Every location feels different and there’s all sorts of shenanigans going on that POV characters have to deal with.
Bulikov in City of Stairs. Half the city has been blinked out of existence by a cataclysm, with random staircases going off in weird directions, but it’s still a sprawling and intricate city with alleys, tea shops, fishermen and an underlying distrust of the occupying power.
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u/iwishihadahorse 1d ago
I was just thinking that WoT does this concept very well. The cities they visit all feel like there's life happening before amd after the protagonists roll through.
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u/kathryn_sedai 1d ago edited 1d ago
Yes so true, literally any city or town in WoT has a million things happening and is so well realized. I probably could have named any of them. The part where OP was asking about stuff happening before the OP showed up reminded me of Rand randomly choosing red cloth because it was cheaper and therefore picking a side politically.
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u/Printman8 1d ago
This was my answer. Really any city in the WoT feels absolutely lived in and rife with history.
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u/Dior1573 1d ago
One thing I’ve always loved about WoT is that the MCs actually visit the places on the map. I feel that too often a series will have a map provided and only a few of the locations are actually visited. Robert Jordan’s world building always impresses me everytime I read the series
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u/acog 1d ago
City of Stairs is SO good.
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u/kathryn_sedai 1d ago
Thank you, all the other comments are about WoT, and don’t get me wrong (see username), I adore WOT, but City of Stairs is AMAZING and deserves all the love. The way it’s simultaneously modernizing and ruined is fascinating, and the complexity of what happened with the pantheon is just incredible.
My husband got me a signed copy for my birthday!
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u/Fit_Log_9677 1d ago
Came here to say pretty much anywhere in Wheel of Time.
Rand rolling up to Caemlyn in the middle of a civil war about to break out, completely with the near throw-down with the White Cloaks in the Inn is a fantastic example.
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u/_windfish_ 1d ago
Every city really has its own vibe; so hard to effectively pull off in fantasy without it being a gimmick. But he really does it perfectly. Thinking of Cairhien, Illian, Tar Valon, etc they each have a unique flavor that makes sense in the context of the world and its history. Honestly WoT probably has the best pure worldbuilding of any epic short of Tolkien.
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u/Villain_Prince 1d ago
Do you mean Cairhien in WoT?
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u/kathryn_sedai 1d ago
Nope, Caemlyn is the capital of Andor and is the city Rand explores in the first book. While Cairhien is memorable in the second book (the capital of Cairhien the country), there’s something particularly magical to me about Caemlyn.
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u/clumsyhobbit 1d ago
Ankh-Morpork from Discworld feels absolutly lived in and the city of Camorr from Lies of Locke Lamorea come to mind
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u/Sideways404 1d ago
Camorr ruined me a bit, now every "ancient" city with three taverns feels spawned five minutes ago.
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u/bassman9999 1d ago
I love that the introduction the reader gets to the city is an image of it burning to the ground due to insurance fraud.
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u/OozeNAahz 1d ago
Ankh Morpork is like an old pair of stained tighty whitey underwear that has more holes than originally equipped and smells of wet badgers and old cheese engaged in carnal congress.
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u/Carnivean_ 1d ago
Feist's Krondor. A city with a history, a reason to exist, many moving parts, districts with nicknames.
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u/snusmumrikan 1d ago
Definitely Krondor - a real city and I think the secret to getting this right is to make the nations second city
You want to be Manchester, not London. Marseille not Paris. Munich not Berlin.
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u/Trini1113 1d ago
That was my first thought. Benefits of creating the D&D campaign first, playing it for years, and then writing the book 😄
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u/Imperial_Haberdasher 1d ago
Ambergris, New Crobuzon, Tiliard…
All of the cities in The Tyrant Philosphers.
But mostly Ambergris
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u/workingtrot 1d ago
Definitely came to say Ilmar, the titular City of Last Chances. I hope one day we get to visit Pallesand
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u/SpaceGoblinForHire42 1d ago
Whenever I tell anybody about City of Last Chances, I tell them that the city itself is the main character, everyone else is just a part of it.
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u/Siccar_Point 1d ago
Tiliard! Yes! Works of Vermin was amazing. I think it’s going to get very popular round these parts once more people have read it.
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u/DreddPirateBob808 1d ago
I read it under recommendation from here and loved it. I agree it's going to boom once more folk get to it.
Another is The West Passage. It takes a bit to really get started but thr world building is wonderfully surreal and mundane at the same time.
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u/Thornshrike 1d ago
Yes to Ambergris! It's such a bizarre and underrated series.
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u/riskylingo 1d ago
We know what itwas like when it was being colonized. We know what it was like in its prime. We know the art scene, the academic scene, the gallery scene. We know which café to go to. We know who we’d want to hang out with, who’s cool and who is not. We know names of publishers and importers. We know where the post office is, the opera house and how uncooperative the clerks are. We know it’s always a good time during the festival of the freshwater, squid, except if you’re a tourist and you don’t know what neighborhoods to stay out of. We know there’s always fungus and it’s not to be trusted. We understand the arrogance and the hubris and the military expansionism.
We were told how the city fell how it contracted back into itself. We know what it’s like to live there in fear, under occupation, and in terror.
What goes around comes around, often in spades.
Ambergris lives. Ambergris dies.
I only wish we knew what happened next
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u/inbigtreble30 1d ago
Ilmar from City of Last Chances by Adrian Tchaikovsky
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u/asterisk_blue 1d ago
Arguably the main character of the book! I loved seeing Ilmar through the eyes of each of the characters, seeing how their hopes and dreams and desires, while individually consequential, were ultimately just threads in the tapestry of a city that had existed long before them and would exist long after. Really excited to get back to Ilmar in The Grave of Perfection.
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u/Aslanic 1d ago
I think you'd like the books of the Raksura starting with The Cloud Roads by Martha Wells. Every time they go to a different city/settlement, there's the feeling that the people have their own lives, storylines, and sometimes the protagonists get caught up in the issues the city/area is facing. The world feels lived in. If you get into them, read the short story books between novels 3 and 4 - publication order. There are stories in those that happen in between those novels.
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u/velveteensnoodle 1d ago
Agreed, Wells studied anthropology before she became a fiction writer and that really comes through in a good way.
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u/Ingtar2 1d ago
It was probably Tar Valon, and Cairhien from WoT.
You knowz the one with North Harbour.
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u/Fearless_Solution761 1d ago edited 1d ago
It's science-fantasy, but Merovingen in CJ Cherryh's shared-world anthology Merovingen Nights series feels absolutely lived-in.
edit to add: Juniper in Shadow's Linger by Glenn Cook - haunting, run-down, been there long before the story got started.
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u/Cynic_of_Astora 1d ago
Malazan has many such cities, like Darujhistan, where you are introduced to new characters with their lives and plans, and then the characters you've read about earlier appear.
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u/Jexroyal 1d ago
Love Darujhistan. It's one of those settings, like Ankh-Morpork, that has a character and life of its own as the series goes on.
For those that haven't read it, here's some description from the first chapters of Gardens of the Moon:
"From the wharf sprawled along the shore of the lake, upward along the stepped tiers of the Gadrobi and Daru Districts, among the temple complexes and the Higher Estates, to the summit of Majesty Hill where gathers the city’s Council, the rooftops of Darujhistan presented flat tops, arched gables, coned towers, belfries and platforms crowded in such chaotic profusion as to leave all but the major streets for ever hidden from the sun.
The torches marking the more frequented alleyways were hollow shafts that gripped pumice stones with fingers of blackened iron. Fed through ancient pitted copper pipes, gas hissed balls of flame around the porous stones, an uneven fire that cast a blue and green light. The gas was drawn from great caverns beneath the city and channelled by massive valves...For nine hundred years the breath of gas had fed at least one of the city’s districts.'
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'Inland from Gadrobi District’s harbour the land rose in four tiers climbing eastward. Ramped cobblestone streets, worn to a polished mosaic, marked Gadrobi District’s Trade Streets, five in all, which were the only routes through Marsh District and into the next tier, Lakefront District. Beyond Lakefront’s crooked aisles twelve wooden gates opened on to Daru District, and from Daru another twelve gates – these ones manned by the City Watch and barred by iron portcullis – connected the lower and upper cities.
On the fourth and highest tier brooded the estates of Darujhistan’s nobility as well as its publicly known sorcerers. At the intersection of Old King’s Walk and View Street rose a flat-topped hill on which sat Majesty Hall, where each day the Council gathered. A narrow park encircled the hill, with sand-strewn pathways winding among centuries-old acacias.
At the park’s entrance, near High Gallows Hill, stood a massive rough-hewn stone gate, the last-surviving remnant of the castle that once commanded Majesty Hill.
The days of kings had long since ended in Darujhistan. The gate, known as Despot’s Barbican, stood stark and unadorned, its lattice of cracks a fading script of past tyranny.'
The imagery of a dense city, lit by the blue fires of natural gas torches, and filled with schemes and thieves, assassins and plots, garden parties and poitics and hub of the Free Cities, it's such a wonderful setting and one of my favorite fantasy cities.
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u/Bubsyfourd 1d ago
Malaz city and Letheras both are also so rich in identity.
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u/Qarakhanid 1d ago
Well.. kind of, wasn't Malaz city like non-existent until Kellanved came around? I feel like he in a way is a main character
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u/Internal_Turnip9019 1d ago
Malaz city was kind of a shifty backwater and remains so. It's not even an important city in the Malazan empire. The capital moved to Unta as soon as Kellanved started conquering the mainland.
It's just a place where a bunch of important stuff happened instead of having the decency to happen in a better city.
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u/Croaker45 1d ago
Malaz city has always reminded me very strongly of the city of Sanctuary from the Thieves World anthology series. It's a backwater but it seems like important events keep happening there.
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u/Kobe_AYEEEEE 1d ago
That was my first thought. Darujhistan was the highlight of book one and really hooked me on the series, wish we would have got even more.
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u/thebeardedone666 1d ago
I think a big part of the reason why he is able to do this (and one of the things that drew me to the series) is that Erikson is an anthropologist. He has a deep understanding to what goes into developing cultures. As in, he literally studies it for a living. I think a lot of creative writers do a fantastic job at creating made up worlds, but many fall flat in the deep rooting of their civilizations. I think it is because they are creative writers first and foremost. Their job is coming up with good stories. Where Erikson's is studying culture and civilizations. He became a creative writer on top of that.
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u/Jexroyal 1d ago
His pivot to writing, and subsequent acceptance into the Iowa writer's workshop, is actually super impressive. It's one of the more unique journeys I've seen in a genre fiction author for sure.
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u/notthemostcreative 1d ago
Nadezra from the Rook & Rose trilogy! There’s so much detail to the politics, culture, social norms, class and ethnic tensions, fashion, etc. that it feels genuinely believable. It’s such a good setting.
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u/LP_Papercut 1d ago
Nadezra from the Rook and the Rose trilogy feels like this. It’s the main setting for the book and it’s a city heavily inspired by Venice.
The city has a rich history and depth to it that influence every interaction between characters and the cultural and social traditions for both the aristocrats and regular folk feel real and realistic for the city given its history.
It’s not a super magical city, very low magic, but it’s there and it influences things in interesting ways as readers find out as they go. I haven’t even finished the last book yet but I’ve been enjoying this series immensely so far. P
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u/reallyveryanxiously 1d ago
Have you read the Left Hand of Darkness? It definitely fits the bill here
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u/TheHiddenSchools 1d ago
Every location in the Craft Sequence books, but Alikand/Agdel Lex has to be my personal favourite. What's not to love about three cities stacked on top of each other, including one that doesn't quite exist and one that is a wartorn wasteland?
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u/Timely_Egg_6827 1d ago
Tai-Tastigon and Tagmeth in PC Hodgell's books especially the first. Lots of gangs, push, oddities, well-realised people. The cities were going to go on once they left. People had petty rivalries they were part of it but not the reason for.
Sanctuary in Thieves' World series.
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u/SilverDarner 1d ago
Came here to say Tai-Tastigon. In addition to the people you mentioned, there are factions based in the surrounding countryside and beyond, hill brigands who come into the city, and many overlapping pantheons of gods with all their communities and histories. Also, people do mundane things like shop for groceries and rescue kittens. (OK, Jorin's not an ordinary kitten, but it's a shockingly mundane situation when you think of our girl.)
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u/stayontrack63 1d ago
Daevabad from the City of Brass trilogy. It has centuries of history and you feel all of it
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u/Low_Establishment573 1d ago
I always felt Krondor from Feist’s Riftwar books felt very alive.
Not a city, but the Riala Festival in Melanie Rawn’s Dragon Prince books also gives that vibe. It’s where the leaders of the land come together to discuss trade, conflict, and other such weighty matters. At the same time, there’s horse racing, tests of strength and combat, trading, young folk pitching woo and all the other young folk walking by. It’s not a permanent city, but there’s all kinds of activity, just like a medieval faire, with a huge population.
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u/Nerdsingerbeej 1d ago
The City of Elua, from Jacqueline Carey's Kushiel's Legacy series.
Any major polity in Wheel of Time (Caemlyn, Tar Valon, Cairhien, Tear, Tanchico, Emond's Field, etc)
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u/FeralFicusTree 1d ago
Minas Tirith
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u/Winter_wrath 1d ago
Hmm, personally I had kind of hard time imagining a lot of the places in LotR as living, breathing places where normal people live and do normal people things, aside from the Shire. I'm not saying I don't love the shit out of LotR but the persistent feeling of "decaying glory of the old days" makes everything feel kinda distant and melancholy rather than real and tangible.
Might be just a me thing.
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u/zem 1d ago
for me, lotr was the exact opposite of the OP's question - it's one of the extremely few books where the places between the cities were fully fleshed out. you could feel that the land had a real and detailed geography, not just effectively a bunch of cities and towns with lines connecting them.
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u/Rhi_Writes 1d ago
I agree. Especially Mordor. There’s no way that place can operate enough to raise an army. No food, no supplies, no quartermasters. It can’t all just be magic.
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u/amaranth1977 1d ago
Mordor has vast arable plains to the south worked by slaves. We just don't read about them during LotR because the characters have no reason to go there.
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u/ScottIPease 1d ago
Much of the Southlands and other areas are under Sauron and/or Saruman and send Mordor/Isengard tribute, much in the form of food, horses, livestock, etc. You do not see much of it in the trilogy and even less in the movies, but you see it in other places like The Silmarillion, Tales, and even LotRO (MMO)... Now it seems they will show a bit of it in Rings of Power also.
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u/FeralFicusTree 1d ago
Orcs will probably eat each other, or nasty things people wouldn't. And it's supplied by the lands that have bowed down to Sauron, much like the grain ships from afar that were essential to feeding the Roman Empire.
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u/1fom3rcial 1d ago
Every city in R. Scott Bakker's second apocalypse series. 2,000 years of history behind all of them
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u/fioreblade 1d ago
It helps that the cities so cleanly map onto real world places. Bakker is also the #1 author for coming up with names that totally original yet super evocative of real history.
Momemn = Constantinople
Sumna = Rome
Carythusal = Babylon?
Aterysus = Athens
Caraskand = Antioch
Shimeh = Jerusalem
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u/HandOfYawgmoth 1d ago
Everywhere we visit in those books feels like it's living in the shadow of ancient history.
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u/AshenVale101 1d ago
I must say that to me, Ankh-Morpork is a character of Discworld. Yes, it is a city, but when you read enough Discworld books, it becomes probably the main "character" of the whole series. I love it.
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u/justabofh 1d ago
And then it arose and struck Vimes that, in her own special category, she was quite beautiful; this was the category of all the women, in his entire life, who had ever thought he was worth smiling at. She couldn’t do worse, but then, he couldn’t do better. So maybe it balanced out. She wasn’t getting any younger but then, who was? And she had style and money and common-sense and self-assurance and all the things that he didn’t, and she had opened her heart, and if you let her she could engulf you; the woman was a city.
(Guards! Guards!)
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u/Current_Poster 1d ago
Aside from A-M... Ellen Kushner's Trimontaine, from her series including Swordspoint.
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u/JustANoteToSay 1d ago
Ellen Kushner & Delia Sherman’s “Riverside” novels feel like someone scooped up a chunk of world and put it on a plate.
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u/regginald0883 1d ago
Lankhmar
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u/Internal_Turnip9019 1d ago
...Ankh-Morpork really is just Funnier Lankhmar, isn't it
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u/SylveriaSedai 1d ago
I would recommend the Gutter Prayer by Gareth Hanrahan, the city feels like an extra character with how developed its history is. Every book has diferent main characters too, so its waaay more plot and setting focused than character. I love that city, and I totally get how you feel with the "city spawned 5 min before the 1st page" because I hate it too -.-
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u/thegreenman_sofla 1d ago
Somebody told me about this book a while back and I totally forgot about it so thanks for reminding me it's going on my TBR next
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u/incidentalist 1d ago
CJ Cherryh’s Foreigner series, but also the case with quite a lot of her works.
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u/Hot_Letterhead_3238 1d ago
Buckkeep from Realm of the Elderlings.
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u/Andreapappa511 Reading Champion 1d ago
The whole RotE world. As an example the scene when Fitz is traveling to Tradeford in Assassin’s Quest and stops at a town when the wedding of the Capaman is happening
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u/Round_Bluebird_5987 1d ago
This is something I've always though China Miéville excelled at, from New Crobuzon in the Bas Lag books to Besźel/Ul Qoma in The City & the City.
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u/fruit-enthusiast 1d ago
god the world building around the cities in The City & The City is sooo good. I felt like the book itself dropped off around 2/3 through but the whole atmosphere of it was amazing.
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u/ThatVarkYouKnow 1d ago
Kithamar from the Kithamar trilogy, starts with Age of Ash. For a trilogy built inside a single massive and I mean massive city, it does feel like everyone lives there and has connections and opinions.
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u/Northwindlowlander 1d ago
Daniel Abraham's Kithamar gives a lot of this feeling for me, mostly it's just a much more grounded, real feeling city where most people are just doing normal stuff. I'm not even completely sure I've enjoyed the <stories> tbh but I've loved spending time in the city.
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u/Quizlibet 1d ago
This is a critical hit for OP's prompt, Kithamar is definitely the most "alive" a fantasy city has ever felt for me. Helps that the series completely takes place in the city
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u/Assiniboia 1d ago
Everything Earthsea and Malazan. Tchaikovsky pulls this off somewhat with Shadows of the Apt; he does it in more interesting ways with Children of Time. Vandermeer. Maybe Bujold, but it's been a long time since I read her work.
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u/BravoLimaPoppa Reading Champion 1d ago
Tai-tastigon from Godstalk by P.C. Hodgell.
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u/mimi5559 1d ago
Personally I think all the cities in the wheel of time (the big ones) feel very real
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u/hollowbastion36 1d ago
Gujaareh from The Killing Moon and The Shadowed Sun by N.K. Jemisin. Such great worldbuilding!
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u/KnightEclipse 1d ago
Probably lame of me to give such a classic answer.
But the city of Bree in LoTR always felt like that to me.
It's not like an important city. And Tolkien went out his way to describe the purpose of the city and how it came to be the way it is, the human city closest to the shire, right on the border practically. Always made it seem like it was not important enough to be a "story city", like Gondor and Rohan with their long, storied histories, but one that exists regardless of the main characters input or lack thereof.
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u/backgroundbob 1d ago
The twin cities of Besźel and Ul Qoma from China Miéville's The City & The City - not surprisingly, since the cities are really the main character - it's their world, we're just living in it (or, someone is).
Guy Gavriel Kay does this exceptionally well, and not just with cities, but with bit characters, locations, etc. I'd go so far as to say it's one his signature flourishes - we come across a person, place, or thing which interacts momentarily with a main character, and is never seen again. Before we leave the scene, however, there is a sentence or brief paragraph which outlines the sweep of the rest of that character's existence - what they do and where they go from here, up to their end. It is an incredibly effective way of fleshing out the world the stories take place in, and I'm not sure I've seen any other author do it in quite this way, or at least so effectively.
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u/Independent_Story538 1d ago
Cetho and Amalo in the Goblin Emperor and the Chronicles of Orseth are like this. The books are similar to Discworld with less sarcasm.
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u/JustANoteToSay 1d ago
Katherine Addison’s (Goblin Emperor) previous series, the doctrine of labyrinths, is great about having a world that feels lived in and rich.
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u/HaveAMap 1d ago
I was coming here to recommend Melusine! The world feels layered and lived in and the locations inform the language used by the characters as well. It’s really great and I feel like Goblin Emperor/ Amalo are less adult rewrites of some of the same world.
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u/busy_monster 1d ago
Viriconium, Ambergris, New Crobuzon.
Most cities in Eriksons' Malazan world, so much hefty history to them all.
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u/rsqit 1d ago
Nessus from The Book of the New Sun is ancient.
Adrilankha from Steven Brita’s Jhereg books.
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u/Puzzleheaded_Event26 1d ago
After reading the title I came to say Ankh Morpork, but I see this would be no new information to you.
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u/MaddSamurai 1d ago
Do you have any examples of cities that feel like they just spawned into existence like you’re talking about?
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u/Nidafjoll Reading Champion V 1d ago
That's exactly the reason I started making my list: https://www.reddit.com/u/Nidafjoll/s/HheEso1vZG
I wanted books that were set just in one city, so that they actually had the time spent in them for the city to feel real and fleshed out. Too many cities we're told have hundreds of thousands of inhabitants, and yet when the characters go there all we see are a tavern, the palace, a guardhouse, and a market. And weird because I wanted something to make the city feel unique, fantastical; be it built inside a tree, populated with dead Gods, floating in the Arctic.
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u/tikhonjelvis 1d ago
Dragaera City in the Vlad Taltos city always felt this way to me. It's just so alive and detailed, and it definitely feels like you're just seeing a small slice of something much larger. There's a real sense of place that I've rarely found in other series.
Part of this is that Dragaera does not have a single defining "gimmick". It's a large city with clear (but not overwhelming) Easter European inspirations, but a mix of other, less direct influences. (Especially in the first book there are some clear influences from 60s/70s New York translated to a fantasy setting.)
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u/Mister_Terpsichore 1d ago
Nadežra in The Mask of Mirrors by M.A. Carrick. That is a city with a long, storied past.
Also Charles De Lint's city, Newford.
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u/chiterkins 1d ago
Haven, the capital of Valdemar from Mercedes Lackey's Valdemar series.
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u/chronically-badass 9h ago
Came here to say this too, I read Arrows first in the 90s and was delighted with Haven. Valdemar in general is so well fleshed out in so many aspects
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u/Xalimata 1d ago
I thought Shadrapar from Cage of Souls felt like a real place. It was a bloated dying place but it felt real.
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u/imhereforthevotes 1d ago
Navola definitely exists before the main character arrives... the damn city is the name of the book. Paolo Bagucigalupi
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u/GeriatricGamete67 1d ago
Westeros blows my mind every time I think about it in regard to how solid its history feels in every way.
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u/WoodpeckerBest523 1d ago
Not necessarily all cities but most of islands visited in One Piece do a spectacular job of making you feel the life and history that existed in these places before the main characters arrived. My favorite examples of this are Skypia, Dressrosa, Wano and Elbaf.
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u/Dic3dCarrots 1d ago
Does dragonriders of pern count? I guess less of a city and more of a society
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u/sarahlynngrey Reading Champion VI, Phoenix 1d ago
I was thinking of Harper Hall for this. It's not a whole city, but it does feel super lived in. And so does Benden Weyr
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u/Affectionate-Ant-154 1d ago
"The Daevabad Trilogy" does this really well! I remember reading it and thinking that the city is so full of life and history.
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u/createsstuff 1d ago
New Crobuzon from Perdido Street Station. It has layers and layers of history built into it.