I always loved Sir Terry's depictions of Ankh-Morpork.
It was a crazy, deeply dysfunctional city, full of crazy, dysfunctional people, but he obviously loved it, and the reader ends up loving the city, as well.
I think that's a fairly accurate way to look at the world around us.
I believe that Tolkien's depictions of Mordor and the Shire, came from his own personal experiences in the trenches of WWI, so I'd argue that LOTR actually has some fairly significant reflection on the real world.
China Mieville’s “Perdido Street Station” is also worth reading. It’s set in, essentially, a _bad_ Ankh Morpork; like Ankh Morpork it’s a vast chaotic fantasy city (both are probably based on London) but New Crobuzon is _nightmarish_.
(I’ve always been curious to what if any extent one influenced the other; Discworld is older, but Ankh Morpork gets fleshed out a lot later. Given how small a world UK sci-fi/fantasy is they’d almost certainly have been aware of each others’ work.)
It was a crazy, deeply dysfunctional city, full of crazy, dysfunctional people, but he obviously loved it, and the reader ends up loving the city, as well.
I think that's a fairly accurate way to look at the world around us.
I believe that Tolkien's depictions of Mordor and the Shire, came from his own personal experiences in the trenches of WWI, so I'd argue that LOTR actually has some fairly significant reflection on the real world.