Fantasy novels that imply that European countries would have older or stronger land magic than the Americas make me so mad.
It’s an erasure of centuries of history of the land and the people who lived here. It’s an assumption that white people’s magic is better for some reason.
Look, I’ve hung out a little in the English countryside but I’ve also driven through and over The Appalachian mountains at sunset, and I’ve walked through the Badlands and the Black Forest and let me fucking tell you. America has some places with some pretty damn strong land magic.
The white cliffs of Dover are neat and all, but stand at the edge of the Grand Canyon and talk to me again.
The magic of North America is wild and raw and big. It pools in the valleys and flows in the rivers. It tastes like spiritual cultures I won’t even pretend I know enough about to name. It’s been shaped by native hands and native beliefs. It flowers on the Great Plains and it lives in the ghosts of the great New England forests. It climbs up the redwoods and twines around their roots. It’s been ground down by glaciers and has settled and been worn away in the oldest mountain ranges.
Excuse me while I go write a couple hundred books about this.
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