A realistic mystery novel for adults involving the murder of one member of a company's internal policies board. A witness claims to have seen someone dressed as a certain employee and sharing her fur color standing over the body. The main investigation dives into seeking out other people who might dress similarly and who have similar fur colors, as well as the exact internal policies of the company and whether or not the employees would have a reason to protest against them, and whether or not anyone would have a personal grudge against the particular victim. In the end, the case is cracked when the witness is revealed to have an undiagnosed form of colorblindness that widens the suspect pool, allowing them to find the actual killer. The killer is revealed to have been attempting to have a civil discussion about a certain company policy, but constant insulting needling from the victim led to them snapping and escalating to murder. Their sentence is partly decided on with input from the deceased's family, and in the end a short jail sentence and therapy for those violent urges are the final conclusion. Interestingly enough, at no point is someone deliberately framing the first suspect suggested as a hypothesis.

There is also a version of the above novel that's intended for younger readers. Several of the suspects are removed from the plot to shorten the book, although the main forensics and investigation methods are still described in detail. The main plot difference lies in the ending, where the murder is framed more as a fight gone wrong, and much more detail is given on the need to control those impulses, as well as methods for doing so.

A nonrealistic fantasy culture-clash novel for all ages about two species, both somewhat distinct from grayliens, where one group is obligate carnivores and the other herbivores. The book focuses on a herbivore ambassador to the carnivore city, and alternates between surreal illustrations that the herbivore is telepathically transmitting back home, narrative from the perspective of the ambassador's host as they try to be a good host, and various records of the minutes of the council meetings on each side. The herbivores are generally presented as overly paranoid and hypervigilant, with the ambassador constantly distorting the actual events as something horrifying, although there are also some hints that the carnivore host is being overly positive about some things themself, and the two slowly get to understand each other better and better. The climax involves the herbivores nearly declaring war on the carnivore city when they believe their ambassador has been murdered, and the carnivores preparing for war due to an unintentional insult, but by now the host and ambassador have become fast friends/romantic interests (it's not entirely clear and could go either way) and manage to stop the war from erupting. The last scene is the herbivore ambassador carefully trying a meat dish, a callback to a previous discussion about the two species having an omnivorous common ancestor.

A semirealistic trilogy of novels for all ages taking place in a prehistoric setting, with the first one being about a pair of protagonists fleeing their original pride (an archaic word that has connotations of both "harem" and "housemates"*) where they are both considered low-status, and finally finding a place to settle down and create a New Pride with just the two of them. The second describes how the protagonists have to deal with having their first litter, and the needs of their children for both privacy and safety. Several comments are made about how the original pride structure had its uses. Eventually, they reconnect with several of the friends they made in the previous book, who join the protagonists in their childcare duties. The maned protagonist worried that he** might become a tyrant like the original pride leader, but he is reassured that the division of power here is already different, and furthermore that he himself is not that type of person. The book ends with the characters declaring themselves to have formed a New Pride. The third book is about the New Pride's interactions with other nearby prides and individuals, as well as the slow development of various romances within the pride and a few more children being born, and eventually ends with the first use of the modern word "housemates." Various appendices describe the inaccuracies in the novels, such as how research has shown that most prides were not as tyrannical as the first, as well as the fact that the change from prides to the current standard of living probably took much longer than a single generation, as well as the linguistic drift which means the final book's ending is unlikely to be how the term was actually coined.

*This term shows up quite often in graylien novels, and it seems that generally their family setups are assumed to have multiple adults living together to split various duties. It can have connotations of polyamorous relationships in some usages, though it can also refer to a found family.
**This pronoun does not quite map to the typical Earthling concept of gender, but has a closer match to a certain social role. Previously in the first book, a different pronoun was used for both protagonists while they were still living in their original pride.

Grayliens

A realistic mystery novel for adults involving the murder of one member of a company's internal policies board. A witness claims to have seen someone dressed as a certain employee and sharing her fur color standing over the body. The main investigation dives into seeking out other people who might dress similarly and who have similar fur colors, as well as the exact internal policies of the company and whether or not the employees would have a reason to protest against them, and whether or not anyone would have a personal grudge against the particular victim. In the end, the case is cracked when the witness is revealed to have an undiagnosed form of colorblindness that widens the suspect pool, allowing them to find the actual killer. The killer is revealed to have been attempting to have a civil discussion about a certain company policy, but constant insulting needling from the victim led to them snapping and escalating to murder. Their sentence is partly decided on with input from the deceased's family, and in the end a short jail sentence and therapy for those violent urges are the final conclusion. Interestingly enough, at no point is someone deliberately framing the first suspect suggested as a hypothesis.

There is also a version of the above novel that's intended for younger readers. Several of the suspects are removed from the plot to shorten the book, although the main forensics and investigation methods are still described in detail. The main plot difference lies in the ending, where the murder is framed more as a fight gone wrong, and much more detail is given on the need to control those impulses, as well as methods for doing so.

The plot is nothing unusual compared to local murder mysteries, though the undiagnosed colorblindness is much more surprising than probably intended - both in that colorblindness is rarer and it is harder to miss getting identified on Therrune. That they are Aliens in an Alien City is likely to make the novel a big hit, and the conclusion is considered satisfactory and reasonable by local standards.  It gets tagged with a warning for minor character death and slotted into the matching local genre, and the children's version even gets recommended as a potential addition to the Suggested For Study reading list if the violent impulse control methods turn out to work for therrune children.

A nonrealistic fantasy culture-clash novel for all ages about two species, both somewhat distinct from grayliens, where one group is obligate carnivores and the other herbivores. The book focuses on a herbivore ambassador to the carnivore city, and alternates between surreal illustrations that the herbivore is telepathically transmitting back home, narrative from the perspective of the ambassador's host as they try to be a good host, and various records of the minutes of the council meetings on each side. The herbivores are generally presented as overly paranoid and hypervigilant, with the ambassador constantly distorting the actual events as something horrifying, although there are also some hints that the carnivore host is being overly positive about some things themself, and the two slowly get to understand each other better and better. The climax involves the herbivores nearly declaring war on the carnivore city when they believe their ambassador has been murdered, and the carnivores preparing for war due to an unintentional insult, but by now the host and ambassador have become fast friends/romantic interests (it's not entirely clear and could go either way) and manage to stop the war from erupting. The last scene is the herbivore ambassador carefully trying a meat dish, a callback to a previous discussion about the two species having an omnivorous common ancestor.

Another story that is highly rated.  Stories that successfully manage multiple viewpoints of a single event twisted multiple ways are always popular.  The host and ambassador's relationship gets widely viewed as friendship as locals aren't predisposed to considering romance. 

A semirealistic trilogy of novels for all ages taking place in a prehistoric setting, with the first one being about a pair of protagonists fleeing their original pride (an archaic word that has connotations of both "harem" and "housemates"*) where they are both considered low-status, and finally finding a place to settle down and create a New Pride with just the two of them. The second describes how the protagonists have to deal with having their first litter, and the needs of their children for both privacy and safety. Several comments are made about how the original pride structure had its uses. Eventually, they reconnect with several of the friends they made in the previous book, who join the protagonists in their childcare duties. The maned protagonist worried that he** might become a tyrant like the original pride leader, but he is reassured that the division of power here is already different, and furthermore that he himself is not that type of person. The book ends with the characters declaring themselves to have formed a New Pride. The third book is about the New Pride's interactions with other nearby prides and individuals, as well as the slow development of various romances within the pride and a few more children being born, and eventually ends with the first use of the modern word "housemates." Various appendices describe the inaccuracies in the novels, such as how research has shown that most prides were not as tyrannical as the first, as well as the fact that the change from prides to the current standard of living probably took much longer than a single generation, as well as the linguistic drift which means the final book's ending is unlikely to be how the term was actually coined.

Fictional aliens are one thing, but it is most exciting of all to learn about their new multiverse neighbors.  This is particularly fascinating as it gives hints of just how different their household and child-rearing practices are.  There are more than a few comments bemoaning the fact that Therrunians don't have litters, which would have been a convenient trait.  It winds up with the most major warnings so far (children, pregnancy) which limits the potential audience.

Most Therrunian languages only have a single set of pronouns for people, so the changes in pronouns are entirely lost.  The few languages which have a separate a pronoun set for children/animals from adults hesitantly choose to translate them as having the child pronouns when they were with their original pride.

Watchmaker's Heart is considered the genre-ending book in the "creative angst" category.

It is about a young Sky* woman named Amethyst and her craft watchmaking business, which is barely profitable in the modern age despite the level of fine dexterity and mechanical knowledge involved. Watchmaking is Amethyst's lifepath, her passion; however, it doesn't help to support her polycule. Instead the majority of its income is maintained by her Earth, Violet, who works a boring but necessary clerical job in the civil service. Amethyst is sorrowful that she cannot ease Violet's burden of responsibility despite all her skills, and contemplates abandoning watchmaking for a more practical pursuit; however, Violet's other Sky, Oak, who is an archaeologist, encourages Amethyst to continue in her work to honor the past and keep the traditions of watchmaking alive. There is a flint-knapping scene where Amethyst tries and fails to make a stone tool out of chert; this is treated as both a spiritual challenge and a practical one. Most of the events of the book are colored heavily by Amethyst's sense of what is "proper" and "correct", which blurs the line between neurodiversity and spirituality; Amethyst speaks both to a secular therapist and a spiritual leader, and the accounts she gives of her reasoning and motivations differ significantly between the two professionals, neither one able to give a full accounting of the why or what of her condition. Ultimately, Amethyst comes to agree with Oak that the task of preserving the past must fall to someone, and talks to Violet about her worries and her feeling that she's failing her; Violet reassures Amethyst that as an Earth, she loves to come back from work each day to see a smile on Amethyst's face and a disassembled watch on her desk. Amethyst springs back into work, in a sudden creative frenzy that overlays a spiritual montage of significant moments from earlier in the work, and makes a pair of custom watches specifically for her and her Earth. She mounts them on long necklaces, and bashfully presents one to Violet, and asks to be her Kept.** Violet accepts; they kiss, and the novel fades to black. There is an official erotica patch which intersperses several key sex scenes into the novel (between all three members of the polycule, separately and together) and includes the implied sex scene after Violet and Amethyst exchange necklaces. All the erotica is realistic, detailed, and built into the spiritual and emotional journey of the protagonists, though relatively vanilla as this is not primarily a kink work.

*Skies, on Heart, are the majority; they are those who work on passion projects, cannot deal with boring mundane work easily, and are generally supported by their polycule's Earth until their passions mature.

**Heart's population are generally polyamorous, but particularly deep relationships, especially ones with a high degree of commitment and trust, are sometimes recognized as a Keeper and Kept by the exchanging of necklaces. This is generally an unequal but reciprocal relationship, with the Keeper pledging to look after and protect the Kept, who pledges loyalty and service. Most polycules center on a central Keeper/Kept pair.

A working group has been put together to curate a collection of some the Union's most significant or impressive works. These are some of the selections they've made for fiction. (The form of the submission is a box containing paper books, naturally.) Excepting the book of lies, all are certified for accuracy*.

A fantasy novel in which people have physical 'souls' which record their memories, instincts, and parts of their personalities. Moreover, it is possible to 'eat' the soul of a dead person and gain some of their memories and instincts. Since this is transitive, and most souls are eaten after death, some small part of most people lives on for hundreds or thousands of years after their death, although transmission is lossy. The story who follows a young monk and his life in a monastery (which is equal parts academic and spiritual). One day, returning from an errand, he discovers that the entire monastery has been slaughtered by an errant monster. Alarmed, he hastily eats as many of the souls of the dead that he can before they expire, almost one hundred in total. This is many more than most people ever consume, and for the rest of the story he is afflicted by mysterious visions and impulses. In the aftermath of the massacre, he travels to the nearest military outpost to report the attack, only to discover that they too have been overrun. Soon learning that a large group of monsters have penetrated civilization's defensive lines and are now heading inwards, towards populated areas, he sets off for the nearby large city to warn them. Along the way, the intuition borne of the souls he consumed helps him narrowly avert disaster several times, and he comes to trust it. After reaching the city, he helps organize its defense, and distinguishes himself. After the crisis is resolved, he is recognized as an exceptionally wise and resourceful leader, and accepts a position on the city's ruling council.

A memoir written by a woman who grew up as a member of one of the last isolated primitive tribes of the great river forest. When she is a young woman, a group of Hadarite missionaries arrive, bearing gifts. Once they learn the language, they tell stories of faraway lands, vast cities, great wealth, and an incredible amount of knowledge about the natural world. Most of her tribe is skeptical, but she, ever curious, listens to them with rapt attention. After a year, they depart. She chooses to accompany them to the city, leaving her old life and family behind. Over the next several years, she attends a school, and learns a great number of things---the knowledge of more than a thousand years of civilization—very, very fast. The book describes in detail her thoughts and inner experience, and what it was like for her life and view of the world change so much so quickly. She seems to have found it both overwhelming and exhilarating. During her time in the city, she also comes to grips with an entirely foreign culture, and the book recounts various stories of misunderstandings or confusions on her part or on the part of others, not used to people with her background. These events are not only humorous, but also offer a deep look into both cultures, and the unstated assumptions and beliefs that underlie them. (This book is popular in the Union for its rare perspective on Hadarite culture, and the curators expect that, for similar reasons, it will be useful to help other worlds understand that culture.) The increased comfort and security available to her in her new life is also a significant change, although she seems to find this less important than what she's learning. After studying for several years, she returns home to visit. After so long, and dressed in foreign clothing, they do not recognize her at first. When they do, they welcome her back, and ask her about her travels. She struggles to recount the most magnificent things she's seen or learned, but finds it difficult to communicate why they mean so much to her when her audience lacks the background knowledge to understand. In her time away, she has grown accustomed to Hadarite culture, and must make an effort to remember what it was like to be so different, to know so little. Realizing that she cannot go back to the life she once had, she departs for good. It is a bittersweet farewell. She returns to the city, begins a career as a biologist, and (as described by the afterword) eventually makes several significant discoveries and is acclaimed as one of the greatest minds of her era.

This book isn't fiction, precisely, but it's definitely not nonfiction either. The most common religion on Olam, called Hadar, is centrally about truth. A fringe sect (allegedly) believes that the best way to learn truth is to be exposed to lies—the trickier the better—examine them, and learn from them how to overcome illusions. This book, written by a member of that sect, is one of the most acclaimed examples of what are known as 'books of lies'. Not everything is a lie, of course, or else you would be able to reverse them and consistently discover what the author really thinks. Instead, the book is a careful mixture of truths and falsehoods, some more obvious than others. It combines various arguments about philosophy, psychology, sociology, and history into a strangely persuasive theory of everything. This book is clearly labeled as not-reliably-true, and the included advice recommends reading this carefully, treating it as a challenge to discern which parts of it are true and which are false, and avoiding drawing any strong conclusions from the text, even if you're pretty sure you've got it right. The curators have included an 'answer sheet', containing the priesthood's best judgments about which parts are true and where the deceptions lie (although it is strongly cautioned that they could have missed something). It is strongly recommended not to distribute these answers, except to a small group of sanity-checkers who will be in a position to notice if your extra-dimensional civilization has a special vulnerability to any of the deceptions contained herein. If used in accordance with the provided instructions, the curators expect this book to be much more valuable as a learning exercise than it is dangerous.

(There are other books of lies, designed to be deceptive taking into account that you expect to be deceived, those are much more dangerous and the curators thought it best not to send any to other worlds just yet.)

A book of post-post-apocalyptic speculative fiction (set on Olam) in which, in the aftermath of an improbably dangerous plague that killed most of the population, the survivors rebuild civilization. It follows seven characters from all around the world, of various ages, genders, and social roles, over a period of several decades. In this period, substantial recovery and reconstruction takes place, and isolated lands come back into contact with one another. Many decades of separation—and varying consequences of and reactions to the plague and its aftermath—cause the already distinct cultures of these various lands to diverge further. When characters from these separate populations meet, they are struck by the differences between them, and seek to understand each other and draw together despite those differences. The book focuses most on its examination of the cultural and economic consequences of the plague, and contains several appendixes detailing the timeline of events, how the economic and cultural conditions changed over time, and why they changed in those ways. The plot, in comparison, is rather straightforward and unsurprising.

*'Accuracy' in this context, seems to be related to how safe it is to draw conclusions about the world from a work. In the case of fiction, it mainly has to do if the work's implicit or explicit models of psychology, sociology, economics, biology, etc. are accurate.

The collected best-of-[mythos/extended universe/fandom] from a setting where men have emotion-powered magic and women have ritual magic and hermaphrodites can combine the power of both and therefore rule with an iron fist. The protagonists variously foment revolution, fall in love with their hermaphrodite masters, die in heroic sacrifices, have eight children, learn to control their magical powers, work through trauma, and struggle with the implications of unethical orders. Also all of this is going on IN SPACE! The collection features works by lots of different authors, some anonymous. It includes an eight-season TV show, two separate novel series (one of which forks into three more series halfway through), a few dozen short stories, a book of recipes using fantastical ingredients and cooking methods, a handful of porn films depicting canon-compliant sex scenes among the protagonists, and a reified version of a board game that appears briefly in one scene of the TV show.

An ancient epic poem describing the awesome deeds of a female folk hero. She is born with a full head of braided hair, never cries, suckles from a large predator after it eats her parents, is adopted by peasants, and speaks in full sentences before her first birthday. Some middle parts of the poem are lost, but it picks back up with the heroine weaving impossibly complex patterns, cleverly deceiving an invading army into harvesting her family's crops and then leaving peacefully, marrying a prince, having an intimate and ambiguously sexual friendship with the prince's female cousin who lives with them, inventing the mirror, detecting and exiling a thief, smothering her deformed newborn, negotiating a treaty with a neighboring tribe, and dispensing miscellaneous wisdom in her old age.

A series of essays between two policy-makers, arguing back and forth about whether suicide by being fed to large predators is (a) awesome, exciting, and a great way to ethically allow zoo animals the occasional hunt, or (b) selfish, because someone who's willing to choose a scary and painful suicide method should instead volunteer for risky disaster relief missions until one kills them. The victory ends up going to (b), and the book concludes with the text of a law denying government funding to zoos which enable suicide-by-large-animal.

A tale for young workers about a new mushroom farmer who is very unhappy with her* job and desperately wants to change it and become an explorer, but feels like she must stay in her current job for the good of her hive! The story details her becoming less happy and satisfied, until she eventually makes new friends in her fiction-reading group who encourage her to tell the hive-manager that she’s unhappy and wants to switch jobs. She does this, and becomes much happier, and finds a new valuable type of fungus for the colony, that is eventually used to make a new kind of antibacterial. It is clearly written with a moral lesson to tell people about your problems and not just tough them out.

A very complicated political novel with around 600,000 words, featuring nine diplomats from three different hives navigating a tension-filled debate about the morality of executions, while also trying to make the most advantageous trade deals, with several backroom discussions between every combination of hives at different points, embarrassing interpersonal drama, and a tremendous amount of dramatic irony.

A rules and lore book for a tabletop RPG, featuring several books of additional content based on other series, and a wide variety of different powersets. Nearly three hundred different personality traits are listed in the original alone, all with various mechanical benefits and downsides. 

An collection including seven novels, three books of short stories, four series about the most popular alternate universes, a collection of poetry, half a dozen epistolary books, and an annotated book of music scores. An additional eight powersets, 412 character traits, and new faction-loyalty and relationship mechanics for the RPG above are included, all inspired by this series. The base series is about a worker, named Halru, who is taken as a war-prisoner by a rival hive as slave labor and is forced to care for their grubs. Two of her limbs are cut off, and she generally has a terrible time doing awful labor under threat of death. Her best friend, Terilu, sets off on an extremely dangerous and ill-advised quest to rescue her, which at various points includes having a riddling contest with a dragon to gain fire breathing, bargaining with a Fairy Queen to gain wings, fighting a variety of creatures, secretly training under five separate rival hives to become a master of all five styles of spearfighting, and generally becoming a really powerful and dangerous warrior. She then rescues her best friend, and they return home, only to find themselves dealing with complex social dynamics now that Halru is maimed, which means that she is lower status in Semi-Generic!Fantasy!Past world. They cuddle a lot, talk about their feelings, play around with various power dynamics, and become lifepartners.

An included note says that while slavery and treating maimed people worse is something that happened in the past, they definitely don’t do it in the modern era, because that’s horrendously unethical.

A treatise that appears to be passionately arguing that people who don’t like arguing don’t have a mental illness. The fact that some people might think that is considered extremely obvious. It’s noted to have been very controversial, and one of the first modern anti-discriminatory arguments, written around four hundred years ago.

A collection of official treaties and documents detailing an agreement between 264 hives, agreeing for favorable trading treaties, shared-science knowledge, and common ethical laws. The reason for the censorship is the included law against all slavery as an “ethical abomination, and all who are complicit should feel the strongest self-betrayal.”

A slightly complicated political novel, classified as “short,” with only 70,000 words and three subplots. In this one, one of the hives is secretly preparing to wage war on both hives and framing it on the other, and is thwarted when one of the ambassadors has a crisis of faith, which is detailed in full. She defects, tells the others about the evil plans, and gets lots of cuddles with her new friends.

Heart

Watchmaker's Heart is considered the genre-ending book in the "creative angst" category.

It is about a young Sky* woman named Amethyst and her craft watchmaking business...

Readers of this book are fascinated with the system of dividing people into Sky and Earth, but are also apprehensive over how such systems might cause problems for those who aren't quite either or have aspects of both.  The Keeper and Kept categories provoke similar concerns.  Perhaps aliens are more likely to neatly fall into categories?

Amethyst and Oak's desire to honor the past and old traditions is viewed as unsympathetic as such values are not shared by readers, though a character having strong values or opinions of any kind and allowing the readers to be pulled along with them is always seen as good.  The genre of "creative angst" and pull between being useful or being fulfilled is deeply felt by all readers; works in this genre are likely to become very popular indeed.

The precise relationship of the polycule is slow to be recognized, as they don't have prior assumptions to fall back on.  Individually, most of the aspects are understandable enough.  People often live with close friends (the closest word the language has to 'romantic partner').  Financially supporting friends who can't handle more lucrative careers is a thing, especially if its so they can continue living in the same place.  Those few who enjoy sex tend to cluster into long-term clubs for it much the same as any social activity that not everyone shares, like role playing games or sports.  So the readers at least think they are parsing it correctly by the end.

A few people go on to read the erotica patch.  Most do so by reading the entire novel plain, adding the erotica patch afterwards, then going back and reading just the erotica bits at the end, as that is closer to how such things are commonly published on Therrune.

Olam

A fantasy novel in which people have physical 'souls' which record their memories, instincts, and parts of their personalities. Moreover, it is possible to 'eat' the soul of a dead person...

This is well received and people excitedly talk about the world building.  Many bemoan that they don't live in such a world, as happens with many fantasy settings where souls exist in some fashion. 

A memoir written by a woman who grew up as a member of one of the last isolated primitive tribes of the great river forest...

The themes resonate strongly with many older readers who have done smaller-scale moves.  That the author found a place where they prefer to be is considered overall a triumph and victory despite the bitter-sweetness.  Culture clashes have always been popular to read about, given that they are a form of conflict and confusion where everyone is trying their best.

This book isn't fiction, precisely, but it's definitely not nonfiction either. The most common religion on Olam, called Hadar, is centrally about truth. A fringe sect (allegedly) believes that the best way to learn truth is to be exposed to lies...

The first-pass tag-wrangler/translation-checker/digitizer skimming over the works coming in hesitates over the answer sheet.  Therrune strongly dislikes hiding information from those who might seek it.  Their first impulse is to just put the answer sheet as an appendix to the book of lies.  Still, in the spirit of following directions given in good faith, the translation checker sends both the book and the answer sheet to a psychiatrist board to get their opinion, as that's the closest they can think of to being "a small group of sanity-checkers."

The psychiatrists read through both parts of the submission.  Going through and determining which parts they believe are fact or fiction, and which they believe that the writer believed were fact or fiction, is very fun!  They don't especially agree with either the book or the answer sheet.  Where there is debate they propose experiments, because obviously the way to reach truth is by testing hypotheses and observing the results.

The book of lies, the answer sheet, the local rebuttals, and the experiments and their results all wind up becoming public.

A book of post-post-apocalyptic speculative fiction (set on Olam) in which, in the aftermath of an improbably dangerous plague that killed most of the population, the survivors rebuild civilization...

The way that the cultures change over time is interesting, though economics is far less so.  The main takeaway that Therrune gets from this is Wow, Plagues are Terrible!  Therrune has a hard enough time keeping the population steady as is.

Further selections from the working group (likewise certified for accuracy) include the following.

A romance/coming-of-age novel. This is an extremely common genre in the Union, but a very important one; the curators felt they had to include one acclaimed example. This book is more than a hundred years old, set in the Union of that time. It alternates perspective between the two main characters, a boy and girl who meet as children, become friends, slowly fall in love as they grow older, get married as young adults, and build a life together. Romance, as depicted in this story, is primarily composed of friendship, trust, and some understated lust, which culminates in joyous, certain-as-the-sun-rises love. This is not to say that they don't have disagreements, but all are resolved amicably. There is some explicit sexual content, almost entirely after they get married, but it's considered to be moreso pornography-that-makes-you-cry than pornography-that-makes-you-aroused. Their comings-of-age include of course increasing knowledge and sexual awakening, but the story also places great emphasis on seizing one's agency and the way the couple grows into each other, simultaneously adapting to their relationship and the world around them to together form an integrated whole.

A fantasy epic set in a very high-magic world with a long power ladder (and ensuing chaotic, complex power dynamics). The magic system works in such a way that it is possible (albeit difficult) for even the lowliest mortal beings to ascend to great power (and for even the greatest to be usurped). The story follows a woman of great ambition and deadly cleverness. After the spillover of a battle between two mid-level entities destroys most of her hometown, she becomes determined to gain the power necessary to control her fate in a chaotic world. The first act tells the story of her quest, the trials she undergoes, the stratagems she employs, the people she meets, the fantastical locations she visits, the entities she slays. Most of her victories are the result of her intelligence and strategic acumen (or, perhaps, her lack of mistakes). Notably, she does not at any point use deception to get ahead, although there are plenty of situations where it seems advantageous to do so, and several occasions on which she would gain from dishonoring agreements she has made. The second act begins as she nears the peak of power. At this point, she becomes more contemplative, stepping back from her schemes to gain power that she might think about how to use the power she has gained. She comes to realize that, despite the unending struggle and change, the nature of that struggle is constant. ("What did you expect? That you would climb to the top, seize power, and find waiting for you a switch to flip and fix the world? This world runs in cycles of cycles, and if it were easy to break them it would have happened already. When everything changes, nothing changes.") So she seeks a way to undermine those patterns, to make way for a world which is less chaotic and truly different. But—she decides—despite the constraints of the ecology they all participate in, everyone makes their own choices, and there is no reason it is impossible for them to make different ones. In the third act, she brings her vision into reality, persuading and bargaining for people to change their behavior, to work together to build something better. The costs of her honor are repaid many times over, as she alone has the credibility to make this plan succeed. What makes the difference is helping others to see the truth, to recognize the fundamental stupidity of collectively choosing to create a world rent by conflict. Over many thousands of years, the forces of coordination creep forward, and eventually overcome those of conflict. Peace at last.

A slice-of-life/comedy with tactical elements, which follows a group of six teenage boys, who have long been friends, as they decide to form a kravmabid* team and play together. At first, they aren't very good: unskilled, uncoordinated, and prone to blunders. As the book goes on, they learn from their mistakes, get better, and eventually become one of the better teams in the region. The story focuses most on the camaraderie and friendship between them, as well as the humor they share together and find in their situation—despite numerous losses, they do not become dispirited, instead joking about their ineptitude. The incompetence only enhances its effectiveness as an ode to boyhood friendship. Almost as an afterthought, the story offers detailed insight into the tactical dynamics and competitive landscape of kravmabid—the narrator often describes the characteristics of skilled play as an ironic contrast to what the boys are actually doing—as well as what it feels like from the inside to slowly get better at something by experimenting and learning from your mistakes.

*This is a sport on Olam, combining hiking, navigation, tracking, archery, and martial arts into a sort of multiday wilderness wargame. It was originally developed for training soldiers, and has since evolved into a more fun recreational activity. Play is dominated by maneuver, team coordination, stealth, and tracking.

An inside-view novel (set on contemporary Olam) from the perspective of a man who is a narcissist. He is often inconsiderate, and treats the people close to him poorly, but is exceptionally good at justifying his actions to himself. Since the entire book is from his—often warped—perspective, readers may initially believe that he is in the right, and underestimate the depth of his shortcomings. Eventually, he upsets someone in a way, and to a degree, that he cannot explain away, and for practically the first time is actually confused about why they feel as they do. He carries this confusion with him for several weeks, ruminating over it until he is eventually forced to conclude that he is responsible, and has very deeply fucked up. This triggers a long process of introspection, and attempts to change. Slowly, haltingly, with great difficulty, he is able to see through some of the illusions that have afflicted him, and comes to understand himself and others better. He repairs some of his relationships, and at the books end, makes a heartfelt apology to the person he has wronged the most (their reaction is not shown).

Antsfolk

A tale for young workers about a new mushroom farmer who is very unhappy with her* job and desperately wants to change it and become an explorer...

A story which resonates strongly with readers.  Quite a few Therrune people would be happier in one another's jobs.

A very complicated political novel with around 600,000 words, featuring nine diplomats from three different hives...

Complicated political novels are not a common preference on Therrune.  Those who stick with the story mostly due so for the interpersonal drama and dramatic irony.

A rules and lore book for a tabletop RPG, featuring several books of additional content based on other series, and a wide variety of different powersets...

A few give it a try.  Locally, games with so many different choices often result in either the choices being effectively meaningless or with the benefits and downsides compounding such that its hard to keep the game balanced.  Hopefully aliens have found a solution to that.

The associated media is exactly the kind of adventure world that Therrune people love to get drawn into.  It is inevitably going to make its way into popular culture and spawn a number of additional fan series and fan works of every type. 

A treatise that appears to be passionately arguing that people who don’t like arguing don’t have a mental illness. The fact that some people might think that is considered extremely obvious. It’s noted to have been very controversial, and one of the first modern anti-discriminatory arguments, written around four hundred years ago.

It is very confusing that people who don't like arguing could be seen as having a mental illness.  Or that any opinion of that type would be seen as one.  But most particularly, if either side had been declared a mental illness, why would it be the ones that don't argue?  Arguing does not help determine who is right.  Obviously the correct solution to a dispute is to design a test that would distinguish between the two hypotheses and agree to believe the evidence?

Good for the writer for being more anti-discriminatory than their peers.

A collection of official treaties and documents detailing an agreement between 264 hives, agreeing for favorable trading treaties, shared-science knowledge, and common ethical laws. The reason for the censorship is the included law against all slavery as an “ethical abomination, and all who are complicit should feel the strongest self-betrayal.”

This isn't going to interest the average person, but those in political jobs look it over.  It's unlikely that much is going to be directly applicable to Therrune, given the wildly different sorts of populations and politics between the worlds, but the goals of the treaties are admirable. 

A slightly complicated political novel, classified as “short,” with only 70,000 words and three subplots. In this one, one of the hives is secretly preparing to wage war on both hives and framing it on the other, and is thwarted when one of the ambassadors has a crisis of faith, which is detailed in full. She defects, tells the others about the evil plans, and gets lots of cuddles with her new friends.

70,000 words is considered a reasonable length for a novel on Therrune, particularly when one is not certain how much they're going to like the genre.  Stories based around politics continue to be a hard sell, though the main character's personal journey is decent enough.

Olam

A romance/coming-of-age novel. This is an extremely common genre in the Union, but a very important one...

Therrune is now a bit closer to having a working understanding of what 'romance' is, at least for Olam, and are appreciative!  They are also quite certain that Therrune people don't have the underlying instinct for it.  Even without it, people draw parallels with common stories of inseparable clutchmates who twine their lives around each other and always choose homes with one another. 

A few older people profess concerns that the younger are going to begin adopting the term 'romance' to apply to such close life-long relationships and either a) inadvertently insult the aliens by appropriating parts of their culture, or b) be generally inaccurate/annoying in the way that someone who uses the word "starving" when they haven't eaten in 8 hours is.  This isn't going to stop anyone, as language shifts as language always has, and of course any method of censoring or trying to limit this would be amoral. 

A fantasy epic set in a very high-magic world with a long power ladder (and ensuing chaotic, complex power dynamics)...

Like many complex fantasy worlds, this gets a lot of fans.  Everyone really likes the main character, and their realization near the start of the second act.  The final act does leave many readers feeling unsatisfied.  It's not that her conclusions are wrong - coordination and stating the truth and so on are very important!  Perhaps it is that the greatest problems of Therrune have never been about the sorts of conflict that are solved that way?

A slice-of-life/comedy with tactical elements, which follows a group of six teenage boys...

This becomes popular among the more active children.  Some wish to add aspects of the game to the ever-changing and freestyle rules of the games played in the child forests and wood parks, and the story spreads between them. 

An inside-view novel (set on contemporary Olam) from the perspective of a man who is a narcissist...

The book is divisive.  Some love the main character and his tragedy and growth.  Others find the book stressful, as it brushes against the common social anxiety that one is somehow being rude without knowing it and now half of the people who read are remembering distant embarrassing memories such as once tripping in the grocery store and spilling something and having to call someone to clean it up.

Each relationship is different, and 'romance' encompasses enough of them that using the word to describe many types of close life-long relationships is probably not inaccurate, at least with regard to what it's like from the inside, if not from the outside. The curators are unsure what 'appropriating parts of their culture' means.