High in the eastern Himalayas, Bhutan is one of the last places on earth that feels untouched, where you'll find a Buddhist kingdom that measures Gross National Happiness and only opened to tourism in the 1970s. The headline sight is Paro Taktsang, the Tiger's Nest monastery clinging to a cliff 900 metres above the valley, reached by a half-day hike through pine forest and prayer flags. Beyond it lie fortress-like dzongs, the markets of Thimphu and some of the most dramatic mountain scenery in Asia. It's remote, naturally enchanting and unlike anywhere else you'll travel. Fittingly, the Land of the Thunder Dragon makes an apt pilgrimage for anyone still dreaming about Violet's dragon-riding trials in Fourth Wing.

On Ireland's wild west coast, Galway and Connemara trade postcard-green for something rawer — bog and heather, the quartzite peaks of the Twelve Bens, and a coastline of empty strands battered by the Atlantic. Galway city is the cultural heart, all trad music spilling from pubs, a buzzing food scene and festivals year-round, while the Connemara loop delivers lonely lakes, working sheep farms and the villages of the Gaeltacht. This is the moody, myth-soaked landscape that Celtic folklore is built on and the natural real-world stand-in for the faerie realm of A Court of Thorns and Roses. Castle-style accommodation might have you imagining you're Feyre stepping out into the forest.

The genteel heart of the American South, Charleston is a beautifully preserved port city of cobblestone streets, pastel townhouses and live oaks dripping with Spanish moss. Wander the Battery past antebellum-era mansions, tour Fort Sumter out in the harbour, and dig into a Lowcountry food scene of shrimp and grits and fresh oysters. The excellent International African American Museum, built on the site of a historic wharf, reckons with the city's tragic past. That layering of Southern grandeur and buried history is the atmosphere Tracy Deonn draws on in Legendborn, where a quick witted protagonist discovers a secret society of magic-wielders descended from King Arthur's knights. It leans towards fantasy, though romantasy readers will have plenty to work with in its subplots.

One of the great ancient capitals of China and the eastern terminus of the Silk Road, Xi'an is where more than 3,000 years of history are stacked in one city. The star draw is the Terracotta Army — thousands of life-sized clay soldiers buried to guard China's first emperor — but the city itself is ringed by fully intact 14th-century walls you can cycle in a 14-kilometre loop, plus a Muslim Quarter famous for its street food and a Tang-dynasty Big Wild Goose Pagoda. It's imperial history you can walk through, and a fitting base for readers gripped by Xiran Jay Zhao's reimagining of China's only female emperor in Iron Widow.

China's dazzling showpiece city, Shanghai is where jazz-age glamour meets a skyline from the future. Stroll the Bund's grand riverfront promenade, lined with the art deco banks and hotels of the 1920s, then look across the water to the neon towers of Pudong. In between you'll find the tranquil Yu Garden, the boutiques and plane-tree-lined streets of the former French Concession, and some of the best dumplings on the planet. It's a city where the roaring past and the gleaming present sit face to face with the same 1920s Shanghai where Chloe Gong sets These Violent Delights creates a retelling of Romeo and Juliet you won't want to put down.

A land of fire and ice quite literally forged by volcanoes, Iceland packs an outrageous amount of drama into a small island. Base yourself in easygoing Reykjavík and strike out along the Golden Circle to erupting geysers and the thundering Gullfoss waterfall, soak in the milky-blue Blue Lagoon, walk on a glacier or hunt the Northern Lights across black-sand plains. Everything here feels elemental and slightly otherworldly — the perfect match for the brutal frozen realm Gold Coast author Stacey McEwan conjures in Ledge.

Fly into Munich, the handsome Bavarian capital of beer halls, grand squares and the sprawling Englischer Garten, and you're at the gateway to Germany's fairytale south. An easy day trip delivers Neuschwanstein, the turreted 19th-century castle that inspired Disney's, set against a backdrop of Alpine peaks and mirror-still lakes. The wider region rolls out storybook villages, baroque palaces and the dramatic scenery of the Bavarian Alps. he wider region rolls out storybook villages, baroque palaces and the dark, dense forests where the Brothers Grimm set their tales. That world of haunted woods, cursed castles and midnight magic is exactly where Marissa Meyer roots her Rumpelstiltskin retelling Gilded.

Perhaps the most painted landscape in all of China, Guilin is a surreal world of karst mountains rising straight out of the plains like something from a classical scroll. The signature experience is a slow cruise down the Li River to Yangshuo, drifting past sheer limestone peaks, bamboo groves and water buffalo in the shallows. Add cormorant fishermen, terraced rice fields and misty river mornings and it's pure, dreamlike scenery. Little wonder it echoes the celestial, mist-wrapped realms of Sue Lynn Tan's Daughter of the Moon Goddess, inspired by the Chinese moon goddess, Chang'e.

For scenery that stops you cold, fly to Bergen — a colourful old Hanseatic port with a UNESCO-listed wharf — and set off into Norway's fjord country. Sheer cliffs plunge into deep, dark water, waterfalls tumble from impossible heights, and cruises and scenic railways thread through some of Europe's most spectacular landscapes. In winter, it's one of the best places anywhere to chase the Northern Lights. That cold, glittering grandeur suits the icy realm of Callie Hart's Quicksilver perfectly.