Fantasy story with a sense of “place” or “history?”

My friend group used to do essentially a book club, but stopped when we realized we have pretty different tastes in books. It's easier to ask someone to watch a movie they aren't very interested in than a book they aren't interested in, right?

So I'm wanting to bring this back, and knowing the group, I think the right choice is a secondary world fantasy novel.

From previous book clubs, I've read a number of fantasy novels, and I always feel like they're fine. Just fine. I've never had much desire to reread them or talk about them or read the sequels. And after talking to my best friend recently about the anime Delicious in Dungeon aka Dungeon Meshi, I think I figured out why: I often don't have a sense of place.

In Dungeon Meshi, slimes aren't just blobs of goo, they're creatures like slugs and have internal organs and a solid body. You cannot just wipe out the blade fish, that'll cause consequences for the mermaids who hunt them, and could have all kinds of downstream consequences for the ecology. Living treasure isn't magic, they're camouflaged bugs that use adventurers to spread themselves. And there's the thing with the golems.

I have a similar feeling with Full Metal Alchemist, where we see enough about how different people live to imagine how the society overall functions. And in Hero Aca, where "the fragile peace" is about as all pervasive in the world building, characters, and events as Christianity in the history of Byzantium.

I think this comes down to differences in interest. Most readers and writers of heroic/high fantasy are interested in the conflict, I'm interested the characters feeling like they're from a place.

So I'm looking for a rec for a heroic or high fantasy (or other secondary world) where I will get a sense of place or of history