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Message: <blockquote data-quote="CCamfield" data-source="post: 1402668" data-attributes="member: 8123">I think, well "it depends".  I just finished reading The Fall of the Kings (by Kushner and Sherman), which had no map or list of dramatis personae.  But it didn't really need either.On the other hand, when I read The King's Peace, and The King's Word (both by Jo Walton), I found myself begging for one.  I had trouble keeping track of which character was which, and a map to show the geographical relationship of different kingdoms and locations would have been very handy.I guess what I'm trying to say is that if a story or series is complex, in number of characters or geographical locations, then a list of characters or a map is useful.  You can look at this aspect of such books as good (if you like the complexity) or bad (if you find it cluttered).Quotes can be used in a number of different ways; like most anything else in writing, they can be good or bad.  The quotes in Asprin's Myth series were all funny (and I believe he wrote at one point that coming up with a whole new set of funny ones was becoming more of a challenge).  More conventially, they give the author an opportunity to make a statement about the world (from the POV of a historian, perhaps) or insert a bit of poetry or song which would not otherwise fit into the storyline but which helps to add more background detail to the world in which the story is taking place.  And they can do so in a more concise way that including a whole song a la Tolkien, or a long section on history.</blockquote>

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