![](/static/253f0d9b/assets/icons/icon-96x96.png)
![](https://beehaw.org/pictrs/image/23b10d50-5c1f-45da-be43-07f234fc229b.png)
Your last one is a good question. I don’t have an answer but I was leaning towards some sort of conservation law (e.g. normal stars have magnetic fields, when they get squeezed down to a neutron star those fields must go somewhere and it will be very much “concentrated”). Apparently this is a bit too easy (didn’t expect to be nothing different). Wikipedia provides a reference to a not too recent (2003) survey, namely this one: https://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0307133 . I don’t know if it’s the state of the art but it surely is interesting.
The Malazan book of the Fallen by Steven Erikson would be my recommendation. Start from Gardens of the Moon and go ahead… It keeps getting better and better!