Tough Traveling: Extreme Climates
The Thursday feature “Tough Traveling” is the brainchild of Nathan ofReview Barn, who has come up with the excellent idea of making a new list each week based on the most common tropes in fantasy, as seen in (and inspired by) The Tough Guide to Fantasyland by Diana Wynn Jones. Nathan has invited anyone who is interested to come play along, so be sure to check out the first link for more information.
This week’s tour topic is: Extreme Climates
Perhaps the hansom prince lives in a castle surrounded by green countryside and sunny days. The rest of the land is forced to deal with freezing cold, searing heat, and every other extreme climate mother nature can throw at you.
Tiara’s Picks:
Various Planets (Mass Effect by BioWare)
Hey, I get to use Mass Effect twice in a row! Much of Mass Effect involves exploring new planets. Many of these planets are hazardous because they’re either too cold, too hot, or contain too many biological toxins (such as gasses or pollen that may cause extreme allergic reactions). Also, I am very much in favor of voting these things into being extreme climate conditions because fuck that shit, all of it:
Mithgar (The Eye of the Hunter by Dennis L. McKiernan)
When I originally read this way back when, I didn’t realize it was part of a larger series, but I do remember some elf-hobbits chasing an evil dude across the country while the weather went completely crazy. One minute they were in a desert that should’ve made roast out of them and then the next they were basically in frozen hell. I don’t know man, but I remember thinking it sure was a crazy fun book.
Chariot (The Element of Fire by Martha Wells)
Kade, the half-fay/half-human daughter of the Queen of Air and Darkness, contemplates leaving her home for another of her mother’s enchanted castles called called Chariot. The castle is protected by an enchanted mountain that steadily rises and becomes too rugged for humans to traverse. The land around Chariot itself has extremely long summers and springs, which is probably one of the better extreme climates to have to deal with.
Helliconia (The Helliconia Trilogy by Brian W. Aldiss)
The books are called Helliconia Spring, Helliconia Summer, and Helliconia Winter. I’m still extremely early in this trilogy, so I think I’ll quote Wikipedia here: “The Helliconia Trilogy is a series of science fiction books by British writer Brian W. Aldiss, set on the Earth-like planet Helliconia. It is an epic chronicling the rise and fall of a civilisation over more than a thousand years as the planet progresses through its incredibly long seasons, which last for centuries.”
The Burning Land by Victoria Strauss
One of the really cool things about college was that I had some very interesting teachers who often used unorthodox methods in teaching. This book was used in one of my sociology/ethics type classes because it paralleled the Tibet/China situation in many ways. I’ve included it on this list because the “burning land” parallels the theological themes as well as the environmental themes in this this book.
Westeros (A Song of Ice and Fire by George R.R. Martin)
I know this is probably going to be on about a million lists, but I couldn’t help myself at all. GRRM’s series isn’t stranger to extremely long summers and winters that can be very brutal. At the beginning of this series, the characters are preparing for a long and brutal winter as the kingdom starts to fall apart.
Wendy’s Picks
Moth Saga by Daniel Arenson
Not exactly a different climate, per se, but one half of this world lives in day, while the other lives in night, and each thinks the inhabitants of the other are freaky, deadly demons
Starcraft II: Queen of Blades by Aaron Rosenberg
James Raynor knows Sarah Kerrigan is still alive out there somewhere because his dreams are telling him so. They are also inconveniently telling him that she is on a volcanic planet called Char, where the weather isn’t exactly great for a picnic. Unless you are the Zerg.
Darrow is known as a Helldiver. He mines the fiery depths of Mars, the planet along with his fellow Reds in preparation for the rest of humanity to migrate from Earth. But little do they know that the horrible environment below is nothing like what’s above.
Uncanny X-Men
While Jean and Beast were struggling through the freezing blizzards of Antarctica like this:
A the centre of Antarctica in the crater of a meteor, Storm and the rest of the X-Men be like:
Sure, there are also viscous dinosaurs and a half-man half-human dinosaur that feeds on energy in the Savageland, but if I had to choose, I know which one I want to hang out in.
The BiblioSanctum 
Those are sure some harsh climates, or good ones
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Yeah I’ve been waiting for the Westeros winter to happen ever since I started reading the series… and it’s still not happening.
Ooh, and I think I’d love living in a world with a really long spring, it’s my favourite season.
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I’m with you there. My birthday is in the Spring, and I LOVE Spring. It’s my favorite weather because I live in the South and that’s just when the weather is perfect, especially because I like to do outdoors things like walk and go to the beach, etc.
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Oh it comes, that winter. And it hangs out for like 797501850 pages. Spoiler: it’s cold and there is snow. Lots of boring snow. No one even goes sledding.
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Don’t forget Roshar in Brandon Sanderson’s Stormlight Archive series. They have some seriously nasty “highstorms”
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I’m just now reading my first Sanderson book Warbreaker, so I’m not familiar with Stormlight Archives, but I’ll put it on my TBR.
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Ah good one! Those storms are crazy!
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Cool feature! I’ll add Dune to the list 🙂
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I thought about Dune, but I haven’t read the books… yet… and I only remember watching the movie YEARS ago.
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Jon Snow: “Winter is coming, and we know what’s coming with it.”
OH YAH. It’s going to be a super-nasty winter in Westeros. *cackles, then starts shaking in her boots*
Another book with extreme climates that comes to mind is Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness. The two main characters (one human, one an alien) have to cross a mountainous area during the winter season, and Le Guin talks about how the cold and adverse weather conditions affect their trek.
And now that I think about it, you could probably do a whole Tough Traveling post entirely about the winter season / cold, since it crops up a lot in SFF, especially fantasy.
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I still need to read UKLG’s Left Hand of Darkness. In fact, I just need to have a month dedicated to her books because I love them so. And you are SO right. So many SFF books have crazy weather going on and it usually serves to complement the happenings in the book.
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Left Hand of Darkness is excellent. It’s the only one of UKLG’s science fiction stories I’ve read so far (all the others are my TBR list), and it was haunting. In a very good way.
Btw, I love the idea of an entire month dedicated to Ursula’s books. 😀
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Yes, books about winter. I am canadian. This suits me.
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Banging my head on the desk because I did not include Game of Thrones. It completely slipped my mind until I saw it on here. Now, I’m like “Duh, you idiot. Winter is coming.”
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I expected that one to be the first one to pop up on everyone’s list, but I have so many of those “duh” moments every week too. The most obvious things never occur to me.
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I’m no gamer (way too old to play… LOL) but that video from Mass Effect was so intriguing, and the scenery so realistic, that I’d like to give it a try!
And LOL on the ASOIAF gif 🙂 Just. Perfect. *nods*
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You are never too old to play games! I’m no spring chicken. My mother-in-law and mom are big gamers, too. (There are even YT videos of grandmas playing Call of Duty!) There are so many excellent stories being told and Mass Effect is really just a space opera you play through instead of reading. But it does have books and comics as well, so you don’t just have to play them to learn the lore! 🙂
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Never too old. I’m almost 40 and plan to game until I die. Video games have come a long way. The stories in them now are so good. Mass Effect is a favourite.
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Westeros didn’t even come close to my thoughts despite the whole Winter is Coming thing! I feel silly. And like I should have my fantasy readers card revoked. As usual there are a number of books on here I am unfamiliar with that look pretty interesting – The Moth Saga, The Helliconia Trilogy and the Eye of the hunter. Mount TBR gets ever larger! Yippee!
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Be careful with the Eye of the Hunter. It’s not the first book in he series, but don’t ask me to tell you which one it is. It’s been ages ago I read that book. And I remember it being fun then. I should attempt to read the whole series and see if I still think it’s fun. My mom LOVES The Moth Saga, which is how it ended up on my TBR pile.
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I think I’d like to visit pretty much everywhere in Westerns, but The Wall would be my limit. Anything North of that would be too cold for me, and, you know, White Walkers.
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I’m sure the White Walkers are great people. Give love a chance. 😛
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I knew they had made Warcraft books but had zero idea they ever made Starcraft ones.
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I think there might be a few? I don’t really recommend this one though.
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Many media tie in books have a bad habit of feeling too much like a money grab instead of trying to add some legitimate meat to the lore, even though I will concede that even the bad books give the readers something. However, I’ve noticed lately that there have been better efforts to give readers *good* media tie in books. I’ve haven’t been crazy about the Dragon Age books, but they’ve been decent. I’ve been fairly impressed with Karen Traviss’ run on Gears of War. She knows how to hit all the feelings and makes the books feel accessible to everyone, even non-players, for the most part.
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Off hand, I can’t think of anygaming tie-in I’ve read that is downright awful and adds absolutely nothing. This one, well, it came close , but at least the others I’ve read *try*.
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Too many Star Wars books in my past. No more tie ins for me unless the author is a cant miss type.
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Understandable. I burned out on that EU a long time ago.
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As always a great selection. I also went for Westeros; specifically the North and The Wall. Interesting to see the older cover for the book 🙂
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I lost my shit the first time I got to the Reaper vs Thresher Maw fight in Mass 3. Probably my favourite mission ever.
Around the Shadow Broker Base might be my favourite extreme climate in ME… those storms! I always take a few minutes just staring at them when I start out on the hull.
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Can’t believe I didn’t think of the Wall – kind of disappointed with myself with that one!
Great list – I did struggle with this one.
Lynn 😀
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