Redwall’s Seasons, each named, is great too. The Summer of the Late Rose is a significant period of time for animals with shorter-than-human lifespans. The units are familiar, but are experienced in an unusual way.

What they do is constantly reinforce the theme of a non-human person who is looking at the Imperium of Man and finds it strange, ugly, and spiritually disgusting.

Those differences are only explained once, in a passing joke (the alien protagonist is given a time in hours and has to ask what that means in real numbers) and are otherwise treated as background noise, as if you were just as familiar as the POV character. It’s enough to know they’re different.

Amusingly, Simon Spurrier’s “Fire Warrior” (the novelization of a tie-in warhammer 40k computer game) uses fake equivalent terms well. You don’t need to know that a “rotaa” is actually 15 hours to tell that it’s a day equivalent, or exactly how many seconds a “rai’kan” is off from a minute.

In that second type, it is more useful to just tell me what January is like in Karameikos: the weather, celebrations, etc.

“The might of Elrond is in wisdom, not in weapons, it is said” and they say so because he can cast Remove Curse and Cure Serious Wounds but not Fireball

When Tolkien wrote that few even in Rivendell have the power to ride openly against the Nine, he was of course talking about the difficulties of rolling to turn undead against 36 HD of wraiths.

There’s a custom elf spell list and a guidance for what to do if a character loses their sword hand and tries learning to fight with their left in here

The translation notes are a charming framing device, I’m having a great time reading The History of Middle Earth, but the character’s real name is Bilbo Baggins and he is called that because Tolkien thought it sounded funny.

Deploying poetry in multiple constructed languages is an incredible flex, there’s no denying it

If I was browsing through the used book store and saw this my first thought would be “wonder what’s up with that baby,” so that’s a cover that has done its job

Interstellar pulling this and then undercutting it with “ok bye dad, I’d like to be with my family now” is very funny.

AMA about illustrating for Dolmenwood if you like

I started out talking about Dolmenwood like I was still a spry young lad rather than 34, but I started illustrating for these books while I was working at a grocery store hot-bar and now 7 or 8 years, two new pets, two jobs, and one old house later, it's out!

Trucks do not need to be that large. It is frankly stupid that we have to put up with these things on the road.

What did you find it useful for? I couldn’t figure out how I’d use it in my work if I was inclined to, which was frustrating: it could theoretically take jobs from me but couldn't help me.

“But Fire & Blood II has spoilers for Winds of Wi-” George, stop pitching! I’m already sold!

The thing here is that Elon isn't thinking about the most efficient robot for a task. He's thinking about how to make the TV real.

There’s a lot of Dianna Wynne Jones in there. She’s basically Howl + Dirk from Dark Lord of Derkholm, with maybe a little bit of Nausicaa’s mushroom garden