Other Signs, Besides Having A Map In The Front, That The Fantasy Novel You've Just Picked Up Will Be Good
A diagram of a family tree (real or fictional equally good)
Description of an invented game with concealed rules
Fictional epigraphs (regular epigraphs fine, but epigraphs from equally-fictional characters the author also invented but is pretending are as real as Churchill or Dante is much better)
The (painted) cover has more than one moon on it
This one’s tricky, because if there are actual called-out recipes within the text, you’ve veered too hard into novelty book territory, and that’s no good. Let’s say a reasonably-detailed menu with one or two paraphrased recipes included therein, and absolutely no more than one invented ingredient. The ingredients can be whimsical (vinegared hare and purslane is fine) but not fanciful (“Try the sugared mekhsmis, the sh’marva harvest was excellent this year” is not fine)
List of prices for basic commodities and invented currencies (“At the time of ____ the cost of a sheaf of wheat was __ ingots” [or drachmas, or what have you])
Keyhole dust jacket (where you can see someone’s face through the keyhole, but then if you remove the dust jacket, you’re presented with an entirely new scene, possibly even one that re-contextualizes the scene on the dust jacket in a darker, more sinister light)
A foreward written by a fictional character whom the author is once again presenting as real as Churchill or Dante
Some sort of math equation, real or fake, solved or unsolvable, doesn’t really matter because I’m not going to grasp the fundamental concept underpinning the equation, just the resultant vibes of immensity or minuteness, or whatever the case may be
Wheel chart!!!
Deckle-edged paper
A really good constructed language – not just one that’s got a lot of apostrophes and th’s in it, where you can tell it’s just a slightly massacred version of Tagalog or Basque, but something you could really sink your teeth into, and maybe even release a prog-rock album in
A fictional Oxbridge college (Boniface, Omnibus, Pembridge, St. Luke’s)
An inexpressible/immeasurable sadness that transcends panic and terror and even despair, leaving the reader in the quiet immensities, with the feeling that they have spent time, and have been permanently tinted, by and with an impersonal larger-than-God force
Deckle-edged paper with fore-edge painting, so when you close the book and look at it sideways, you can see a little scene on the sides of the pages
Internally consistent references to a book (or books) that does not exist (Red Book of Westmarch, The Dynamics of an Asteroid, Orange Catholic Bible) – though this does run the risk of venturing into Pale Fire territory, and while I’m sure Pale Fire is every bit as good as everybody says it is, I have only to see the worlds “Harold Bloom” and “poioumenon” and I go ashen at the knees and have to lie down
table of contents: "look, you're not going to appreciate this book to the extent that the author intends unless you are aware of the three-part or five-part or nine-part societal structure in which its characters are embedded, so deeply that not only would they not need such an explanation, they could not fathom its even needing to be explained."
me: (nodding like the Jack Nicholson gif)
I get so hung up on the currency one and it is so easy for authors to just, for example, mention how many coppers that wholesome tavern meal cost and whether that's more or less than in the small town the character journeyed from.
Also, I would like to be in on conversations where characters traveling together bicker over who pays for supper this time and who is exempt because they paid for the ferry earlier that day and so on.