Apocalyptic fiction often forces a re-exploration of a known world. 'Station Eleven' shows characters traveling through a post-pandemic Great Lakes region. They visit deserted airports turned into settlements, perform Shakespeare in crumbling towns, and follow trails marked on maps.
The exploration is bittersweet, seeing the ghosts of the old world within the new. You feel the characters’ yearning for what was lost, even as they map out their new reality. It’s travel through a museum of your own civilization.
Tahereh Mafi’s 'Shatter Me' series might fit a YA angle. The journey is across a dystopian landscape, but the magical realism is in the protagonist’s supernatural power (her touch is lethal) and the surreal, poetic way her mind works. The travel is about fleeing and fighting, but the internal journey, rendered in her distinctive, fractured narrative style, feels uniquely magical. The world is bleak, but the protagonist’s perception of it is intense, sensory, and strangely beautiful.