The Dragoncharm Travel Guide – Meteor Crater

The Dragoncharm novels might be fantasy, but many of the locations in them are real. Welcome to part 4 of this handy travel guide to a mythical world that bears an uncanny resemblance to our own …

Towards the end of Dragonflame – the final book in the Dragoncharm trilogy – opposing dragon armies clash in the skies above an enormous circular scar in the landscape. The risk of spoilers stops me telling you more about the significance of this iconic place within the wider span of the story. Let’s just say it may well be the one still point about which the whole world turns.

Here’s how I described the site of this climactic encounter:

“It was a depression, a crater. A colossal, circular scoop taken out of the flesh of the world. Its near edge was a mountainous arc of broken rock; its far perimeter was so distant it was almost lost in the low afternoon glare. Long shadows swooped into the curve of its bowl. No eye this but a socket, an expectant cavity waiting to be filled.”

Here’s the place I was thinking about when I wrote it:

I’ve never visited Meteor Crater. That doesn’t stop it being burned into my mind. What young kid obsessed with science fiction wouldn’t grow up captivated by the visible impact site of a 300,000-ton nickel-iron meteorite that struck the Earth 50,000 years ago in the Arizona desert?

Childhood fascination aside, there’s another reason Meteor Crater found its way into the Dragoncharm books: dragons are big. Big characters. Big ambitions. Big wings. And they need big landscapes to fly through. The kind of landscapes that inspire awe.

I reckon it doesn’t get more awesome than the place on Earth where you can still see the footprint of a falling star.

• Dragonflame by Graham Edwards
• Meteor Crater Official Site

In part 5 of this occasional series, I’ll take you hunting in the long grass, to a place where the ghosts of familiar creatures stretch their long necks high above the savanna. Now where in the world could that be …?