Take some elves, dragons, dwarves, hobgoblins, orcs, fairies, gnomes… (ad nauseum; lather, rinse, repeat) and add a protagonist, a wizard, and a magic weapon then voila: you have a fantasy novel. Other races, other peoples–especially those living in other worlds–typify, for many readers anyway, the very heart of fantasy literature. We want maps, cultures, civilizations, religions, and the oh-so-obvious dichotomies of good and evil. It’s comfortable, from a reader’s perspective, to fall into a world that is familiarly different–not uncomfortably so. The best-selling fantasy series of all time most often adhere into this very pattern. While some “classic” fantasy has fallen out of fashion as far as working writers are…