Working on the map for my fantasy novel, Blood and Amber

[Naima]

I decided to try drawing the world map for a story I'm writing called Blood and Amber.
Or at least, the Northeast continent where most of the story takes place. I'll probably work on the Southern continent next.
Right now I've only got the coastlines drawn, and even that is just a rough draft without much detail.

I would really appreciate feedback, especially before I start drawing in the national borders and cities and stuff.

Just go ahead and be frank about what you like and don't like about this. Anything that bugs you would probably bug my readers, so now's the time to get this fixed.

Considering the mirrored position of the continents the climate would be different, you wouldn't have a mediterranean basin there but probably a more subtropical climate due to the warm currents that would happen in place of the cold ones of the atlantic .

[Redrobes]

Considering the mirrored position of the continents the climate would be different, you wouldn't have a mediterranean basin there but probably a more subtropical climate due to the warm currents that would happen in place of the cold ones of the atlantic .

I am not sure I follow why that would be the case.

[Marscaleb]

From a purely cultural point of view - I feel like the names and 'feel' of the nations too closely mirror the real world. If Eurasia is flipped, did the Huns and Magyars and Goths etc immigrate west to east? It would seem so, just based purely on the names. Was there a 'Roman' Empire? It seems so - again based on names and general distribution of nations.

Where is Australia? Same place as our world? Where are the Americas? Same place, same orientation as our world? Greenland? Greenland isn't shown on your map, but if it is east of Iceland (and it seems that it must be, just based on the name Iceland), it's far enough north that it might actually be part of the North American landmass, or at least within a short sailing distance of it. How did that effect the course of colonization, and everything that came after? I guess what I'm trying to say is that if it was me, I'd have an easier time believing in this map if there were no cultural allegories at all OR if you had just come up with a completely new world OR if you'd just made it a straight-up alternate history.

This is the kind of feedback I want, but I need to frame this in a proper context. My last post was held for moderation (since I'm new here) and I think your reply was posted before my last post was visible. Should I take your comment as a response to my later version, where I mentioned the context and rules for this map?
That is to say, do your grievances about the mirrored geometry still hold up even for a story explicitly about a character originally from our world?

As a side note about the names, when I had posted this map on a different site, I got a lot of people complaining about the similarities between names on my map to names in the real world. And honestly, I was very surprised about (most) of the ones that people called out.
Some of these names (at least one in particular) involved me going relatively deep into history and shifting a focus on some of the dominant tribes/peoples that settled an area, forming some alt-history origins. Others involved a lighter dive into the etymology and a little bit of wikipedia reading. So I'm well aware there's a bit of a mix in the quality of these names. I would appreciate any thoughts about which ones work and which ones do not.

Considering the mirrored position of the continents the climate would be different, you wouldn't have a mediterranean basin there but probably a more subtropical climate due to the warm currents that would happen in place of the cold ones of the atlantic .

I'm not sure how much water gets in through the strait of Gibraltar; I don't think the Mediterranean would be impacted that severely by a warmer Atlantic.

At any rate, I've actually found some computer models people have made for a retrograde Earth, which functionally is the same thing as a mirrored Earth. I'm not sure I trust them 100%, but they are useful.
But hey, feel free to share your thoughts on what would change. I'm not treating those models as gospel, so I'm fine with hearing what other people think would happen.

[Naima]

This is the kind of feedback I want, but I need to frame this in a proper context. My last post was held for moderation (since I'm new here) and I think your reply was posted before my last post was visible. Should I take your comment as a response to my later version, where I mentioned the context and rules for this map?
That is to say, do your grievances about the mirrored geometry still hold up even for a story explicitly about a character originally from our world?

As a side note about the names, when I had posted this map on a different site, I got a lot of people complaining about the similarities between names on my map to names in the real world. And honestly, I was very surprised about (most) of the ones that people called out.
Some of these names (at least one in particular) involved me going relatively deep into history and shifting a focus on some of the dominant tribes/peoples that settled an area, forming some alt-history origins. Others involved a lighter dive into the etymology and a little bit of wikipedia reading. So I'm well aware there's a bit of a mix in the quality of these names. I would appreciate any thoughts about which ones work and which ones do not.


I'm not sure how much water gets in through the strait of Gibraltar; I don't think the Mediterranean would be impacted that severely by a warmer Atlantic.

At any rate, I've actually found some computer models people have made for a retrograde Earth, which functionally is the same thing as a mirrored Earth. I'm not sure I trust them 100%, but they are useful.
But hey, feel free to share your thoughts on what would change. I'm not treating those models as gospel, so I'm fine with hearing what other people think would happen.

retrograde means it spins opposite side, meaning sun rises to west and sunsets to the east, this would invert currents direction on the horizontal side but if you also mirror the landscape then you would have same situation with mediterranean climate there.

[Diamond]

This is the kind of feedback I want, but I need to frame this in a proper context. My last post was held for moderation (since I'm new here) and I think your reply was posted before my last post was visible. Should I take your comment as a response to my later version, where I mentioned the context and rules for this map?
That is to say, do your grievances about the mirrored geometry still hold up even for a story explicitly about a character originally from our world?

No, it was in response to your after-moderation post. I mean, maybe I'd pick up on it a little sooner than other people because I'm a history buff (especially Roman and pre-Roman civilizations), but what I'm getting at is the migration patterns and settlements of this world are going to be vastly different because of the differing weather and ocean currents and mountain range placement as it effects weather patterns, and... you get what I'm saying.

[Naima]

I am not sure I follow why that would be the case.

because of the currents warmness, on the east to west side currents they same height would be warmer.

[Redrobes]

because of the currents warmness, on the east to west side currents they same height would be warmer.

Does that assume that the planet is spinning in the same direction though. If it were flipped then wouldn't the east west thing swap too ?

[Naima]

If the world is retrograde the effects inverse yes.