I grew up in a place I love deeply and miss every day, and I love reading about characters that feel similarly. For example, I’m reading The Adventures of Amina Al-Sirafi currently, and there’s a passage that especially struck me about the landscape of Oman turning lush and verdant as the monsoon season approaches. I also just recently finished Silver in the Wood, where the wood is almost a character that the protag adores, which I loved. Other examples include Earthsea and The Ocean at the End of the Lane.
My preference is for fantasy or sci-fi, but I’ll read any fiction! Bonus points for authors of color!
by galactic-disk
5 Comments
The [Fortress series](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/57017.Fortress_in_the_Eye_of_Time) has a main character who sees the beauty in mundane everyday things that others take for granted, including the land. This is a *very* slow paced series, mostly focused on character relationships.
It’s not a natural landscape, but [Piranesi](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/50202953-piranesi) contains this.
Not a novel, but a short story: [Paradise Regained by Edward M. Lerner](https://escapepod.org/2018/08/09/escape-pod-640-paradise-regained/). Available free at the link. I first listened to this back in 2018 and it has stuck with me ever since.
When I saw your request, my immediate thought was to rec *Silver in the Wood*… 🙂
*The Green Man’s Heir* is the first book of a series by Juliet McKenna and has a lot of that same feel – the main character is a half-dryad, working as a carpenter, in rural England.
I also get a bit of that feeling from *The Unbroken* and *The Faithless* by CL Clark, which are books 1 and 2 of a trilogy.
Charlotte McConaghy’s books Migrations & the wolf one I don’t remember it’s name. Once There Were Wolves? I think.
Haven’t read the latter but Migrations was beautiful, main character was incredibly connected with nature, especially birds and the ocean. One of my favorite books of all time.
If you like mysteries, the Cork O’Connor mystery series by William Kent Krueger starting with Iron Lake are steeped with that character’s love and understanding of an incredibly vividly described Minnesota. I mean, you feel you’re there. The character is part Anishinaabe / Ojibwe and that culture and tradition greatly shape his personality as well. In book 16, Sulphur Springs, he has to leave Minnesota to investigate something in the Arizona desert and his homesickness and sense of being a fish-out-of-water is palpable! You could easily just sample the series by reading book 15 Manitou Canyon and book 16 Sulphur Springs back to back.
The Shepherd’s Life by James Rebanks.