Wow, that practically *is* middle earth (after an Anduin flood, perhaps!).

I've picked up the Janny Wurts 'Mistwraith' book recommended by Valarian and have just started it. There appears to be a printing error at the begining of the book where the text (and the map) have been double printed - they're pretty blurry, the map is entirely illegible and the first chapter is visually hard to read. It's an Amazon buy, and I can't be bothered to go through the hassle of returning it. The story itself is OK so far, I can't say that I get on too well with Janny's writing, there's something dischordant about it which I cannot yet put my finger on and I'm not getting pulled into the story as fast as I would like but it's early days yet.

Writing good Fanstasy these days is a really tough task, there are only so many tropes and to write something refreshing (which Erickson and RR Martin have both done) is a herculean achievement.

Have also picked up today, 'The Sum of All Men' by David Farland. Never heard of him before but read the first few pages in the bookshop and it looks more like my sort of read, certainly in terms of style. The map is Campaign Cartographer standard, but at least rather than trying to pack all the information into a single map, there is a world map, a regional map and a city map.