I read a book following a modern day project manager working on a data center, a WW II commando doing spy stuff, and his cryptographer friend working on specialized radios and early computers, and it was awesome because it went into detail about how a lot of the stuff works. So now I’m looking for a fantasy or sci fi version of that. The Hunt for the Red October was also great.
An ideal example of what I want could be a story following an alchemist that describes how he makes everything. If he makes a new hand for a knight, the story explains that the alchemist bought and grew some ever-shifting flesh from a friend after his visit to the realm of madness, boiled it with opium poppies and radium fulminate in whisky until the alchohol evaporated, and then mixed it with live troll brains. He then surgically attached it to the knight’s stump, and will have to prune it every once in a while to make it hand shaped. I don’t want one that says “he made an unfathomably complex mechanical handout of gold and enchanted it so it works”
by SurgicalWeedwacker