Bruno, J.K. Rowling seems to have actually done a lot of in-depth research, with lots of nudges and winks to medieval grimoires:
www6.aeonflux.net/~io/
But, it’s true that even if it is well-researched, it’s not very systemic. I mean, Gamp’s Third Law? What the… I mean, why, just why? For that, my favorite fantasy author, hands down, is Terry Pratchett. He’s so funny that once I laughed so hard that I couldn’t breathe for almost two minutes, the themes are deep and insightful, and the world-building is solid. The magic system is almost psionic.
The Wee Free Men would be very appealing to lucid dreamers, I should think. (Please, please, please do not let the cutesy title, the phonetic Scottish accents, and the prepubescent witch protagonist put you off.) It’s a fairy tale for the Critical Thinking generation-- all about living, as well as dreaming, lucidly. Seeing what’s there, and not what you want to. Thinking, then thinking again.
Reading it over recently, made me want to read The Science of Discworld sequel. The first Science of Discworld made it clear that it wasn’t going to be like other “Science of Fiction Series” books, because Pratchett knew that would be silly. His Discworld is a total fantasy. So, he wrote a short story set in Discworld about the wizards creating a miniature universe that was completely devoid of magic, and collaborated with science writers to explain how that world-- our world-- worked. It must be a little dated by now, but I thought it was a brilliant twist.
The sequel was more about how society works: memes, tribal mentality, and so on.
Unfortunately, I also recently read Eckhart Tolle’s The Power of Now and I didn’t like it much. For someone who seems to claim to speak from some sort of Socratic irony, I found the tone pretty declamatory. The preface that turned me off follows…
To my understanding, to seek and take under due consideration the arguments of those who disagree with one, are not only a necessity of critical thinking but of an enlightened attitude. I didn’t have a problem reading this at all, until I saw that he responded to the critics as gracelessly as that.
The rest, I saw as self-aggrandization disguised as humble disclaimers, and a very unattractive “ventriloquist” writing style that Tolle takes on with the reader.