If J.R.R. Tolkien didn't invent the epic, world-building literary genre known as high fantasy, he at least codified and provided a blueprint for most of its conventions. And so we have Tolkien (and his son, Christopher) to thank for one of the genre’s most aesthetically pleasing traditions: detailed, gorgeously drawn maps of imaginary worlds. Anyone who’s ever cracked open the sword-laden cover of some thick tome of dragons, magic, and high-stakes world saving and pored over the painstakingly sketched rendering of a fictional world’s geography printed on the inside cover has the Tolkiens to thank.
If the above tome-porer-overer sounds like you, then you’ll probably get a kick out of this quiz on maps from famous works of fiction put together by The Guardian. Besides fantasy, it covers several other genres, and even some works that predate Tolkien. Think of it as Geography Bowl made somehow even nerdier.
And if you feel the need to bone up even more on your fictional cartography, here’s a collection of even more beautiful fake maps from io9, as well as this gorgeous interactive map of Middle-earth from LotrProject.