The Lions of Al-Rassan, my favorite of his, re-imagines the Spanish conquest of Spain in a way that clearly demonstrates the shape that material reality gave to cultural reality.

I would also suggest that a similar McUrban exists in Urban Fantasy/paranormal romance novels.

Also, there’s a McSpace somewhere in the Anime-factories of Japan…

That’s a reason I’m liking the GRRM stuff lately. He’s not afraid to use the F word. He adheres to a lot of the furniture of the middle ages, such as chivalry, platemail, tourneys, etc. But he does it with apparent research and know-how. In other words, he didn’t just go to a RenFaire and crib his notes from the pickle vendor.

I’m also a fan of Robert E. Howard, whose sword and sorcery was more akin to the Elegies or icelandic sagas than flittering faeries and grandiose castles.

Stace, I didn’t specifically answer your final paragraph because I thought I had done so in the first paragraph of my response. Apparently this wasn’t enough!

I don’t feel I’m particularly qualified to teach a master class in how to put specificity in one’s fiction without being infodumpy. What I do is what I suggested — I went to workshops, I joined a writing group, I read and read and read and took note when I saw an author doing something particularly cool and tried to poke at the seams of how they built a world so well I hardly noticed the building. I hope that my efforts result in being able to build specific worlds without the infodump.

There isn’t just one way to do this. There are lot of different ways. So if you want to learn, you have to work it out yourself or get some excellent writing teachers to help you or get a writing group that can help you. I can’t, in a comment, tell you how to do it because there is no one way. Each story or novel requires its own way.

Ms. Bradford, you said someone who doesn’t know how to do something should learn, and the methods you offer (classes, workshops, analyzing books) are good, but so is asking questions of someone who has more experience. Someone who has just made a claim to know something about the skill you want to learn. But since you ignored that part of my comment in your response, I’m left wondering if you really want to solve the problem, or if you just want to complain?

I think that Bradford got this exactly right when she said “it’s so rarely even a real medieval Europe, but land filled with vague ideas about what that setting and time entails.” Actual fantasy Europe can be fine, but it has to have actual setting, and not just some blurry hand-waving.

The Princess Bride is similar. It combines stuff from fairy tales, children’s stories, anachronistic comments and lots of footnotes to create its world.

Lazy fantatwee writers (thank you Nick M for that excellent word) may claim they’re doing the same thing, but they’re not.

Since the Last Unicorn includes an encounter with a band of people who emulate Robin Hood and has a character named Molly, I would not think it takes place in say, Hungary. So not everywhere in Europe, but in England.