Missing France

[Alfa he/him]

 

 

 

Title explains itself. France is neither part of Interna Bibliothekia nor of the Free Kingdoms - there is only water. For some reason Nalhall looks strangely like france.

[phattemer]

Huh. I think you're right. That couldn't have been a mistake, but I don't remember reading anything about France being special.

[Chaos he/him]

Wow, that is kind of crazy. How could you forget that if it wasn't intentional?

[WeiryWriter he/him]

Well France is missing because there's a running joke in the book that it doesn't exist.  But I never noticed that about the shape of Nalhalla, definitely worth asking about.

[Alfa he/him]

Well...i just searched in my ebook. France is really mentioned to be fictional somewhere in book 1 ("The librarians want everyone to read their books - whether those books are deep and poignant works about dead puppies or nonfiction books about made up topics, like the Pilgrims, penicilin, and France"), but that is the only place where it comes up.
The only other word that has to do with france is "french fries" - mentioned as something Alcatraz likes.
That's a bit less than a running joke.

 

 

Another question: has anybody discovered Melerand, where Leavenworth and Quentin are supposed to be from?

Edited April 1, 2016 by Alfa

[WeiryWriter he/him]

Well...i just searched in my ebook. France is really mentioned to be fictional somewhere in book 1 ("The librarians want everyone to read their books - whether those books are deep and poignant works about dead puppies or nonfiction books about made up topics, like the Pilgrims, penicilin, and France"), but that is the only place where it comes up.

The only other word that has to do with france is "french fries" - mentioned as something Alcatraz likes.

That's a bit less than a running joke.

 

 

Another question: has anybody discovered Melerand, where Leavenworth and Quentin are supposed to be from?

 

That was changed in the re-release, but from the second book on they're from Nalhalla.  Brandon talks the change here:

 

Tyran Amiros

 

Why does Bastille say they're speaking Melerandian in book 1 and Nalhallan from book 2 on?

 

Brandon Sanderson

When I originally wrote Alcatraz Versus The Evil Librarians, I put that in there partially as a throwaway joke. Melerand is one of the main kingdoms in Dragonsteel, and I thought it would be amusing for them to be speaking that language somehow filtered into this world. By the end of the book I decided that Alcatraz could not be anywhere in the same continuity as Dragonsteel and that I was probably wrong for including that. Though there are other jokes in there relating to my other books—it's much like the scene where Quentin speaks in Spook's dialect. Those were just jokes, inside references to my other books.

 

Remember that Alcatraz was written as a writing experiment, not as something that I was intending to publish. As the series grew more serious to me, meaning that I developed what I actually wanted to happen—which with me usually happens as I write book two of a series, when I sit down and build an arc for the entire series—I "realified" Alcatraz's world a little bit, if that makes sense, made it its own substantial thing. So at that point it wasn't appropriate for them to be speaking Melerandian anymore.


 

(source)

[Chaos he/him]

Well France is missing because there's a running joke in the book that it doesn't exist.  But I never noticed that about the shape of Nalhalla, definitely worth asking about.

 

I really ought to reread these. They are so much fun. I totally forgot that. I kind of figured that was what it was, though. In retrospect it is obvious.