One of my favorite parts of The Stormlight Archive, especially The Way of Kings, is how Sanderson introduces this deeply alien landscape to us. He does so mostly by not introducing things specifically, only narrating as if the viewpoint character were looking at normal stuff that everyone sees all the timeāwhich, to them, they are! Sanderson also often uses one-off names for things, like I think he uses the word "chull" before he actually describes one, and leaves you, the reader, to make your assumptions on what those words could mean. Often you assume you're in "rabbits are called 'glips'" territory, where normal things are called by a fantastical name just for flavor.
The reason why I like this is that you get some moments that are... the closest feeling I can compare it to is "dawning horror," when you realize your assumptions are wrong. Like I heard about "songlings," and I assumed, "Ah, yes, birds!" And then I heard about axehounds and I assumed, "Ah, dogs :)"
And then you actually encounter songlings in the text and. Oh. They're cricket-crab things. Uh.
And then Sanderson actually shows you an axehound and it's even worse, it's a crab-dog!
After that you're left sweating. What else is actually crab? Are the horses secretly crabs? They keep mentioning hogs, but we never see a hog described, are they actually crabs??
But the answer is no. They're just pigs. Brilliant.
