It’s been another pretty nice week, not as good as last week, but a decent one. The weather has been a bit unstable, with some rain, but that’s good, we really needed that after a very warm and pretty dry summer. There seem to be some more rain this week, but we’ll see, I usually don’t trust the weather forcast more than 2 days in the future.

Books

I’ve been going on reading the Mandrake Company books, and they keep on being good, I’ve also slotted in Eclipse the Moon as the first book to read after these, as it’s nice to read about someone that is kind of like you are loved and accepted. I just remember really enjoying the book the two last times that I read it, and it’s about 2 years since the last time, so I think that will be enjoyable.

For the books that I did read first of them was The Assassin’s Salvation by Ruby Lionsdrake, as all of the others will be as well, as I was on quite a binge of reading this series, there is something about it that is just what I need around now, so I’ve been kind of resigned to not follow my usual pattern of not reading the same author twice in a row, and just read through all of them. The book is fun, the story is quite interesting with some a bit darker backstory to it. I will say I really quite enjoyed the story and the couple, mostly, just that the whole focus of how virgin and naïve the female lead was did kind of give me a bit of the ick. But well, apart from that little thing, the book was a fun one.

Next up is The Ruins of Karzelek which was starting out quite different, and not having that many of the characters we’re usually having, also the setting being on a planet, and kind of a big dumb object of some alien ruins gave this a different flavour than many of the other books in the series. I also really quite enjoyed the relationship in this one, for some reason the characters felt more mature than in some of the other books, and it was nice. All in all I really quite enjoyed this book.

And then Mercenary Courage Which was a space station drama, for this one I enjoyed the story more than the relationship drama, probably because it was a couple that we were following before, and they already had a set relationship. The story was fun though, and there were some fun caper moments that I quite enjoyed. You see that the author is experienced with books outside of the genre, because she does the other parts that aren’t just the relationship focused ones quite well, and this book kind of felt more like that branch of her writing. Still a fun story though.

And just at the end I did finish the last book, so the first one for this week is The Pirate Captain’s daughter for which I only read the first chapter or so, this is a shorter in-between book, of only 160 pages, so it’ll probably go a bit faster than the other ones, I’m not quite sure from reading the summary, if I will like it or not, but I will trust the author, she did the other books well, so this one probably will be a good one as well.

Games

In the beginning of the week I was getting quite into Hollow Knight: Silksong again, there is something about the movement in this game that just feels really nice. I have done a couple of bosses, and got up the vents of the lower area, I’m still of the same opinion as before, the moving around, and the boss fights just feels great, they are readable and relieable, which is a lot of fun, the gang up rooms though, are still not something I enjoy much, they just are not much fun for me.

Still plugging away at Picross S+ and it’s still really fun, got over to the 15x15 puzzles now, and I’m kind of happy that those are as high as the puzzles get, it’s a sweet zone for interesting puzzles that don’t take too long, and it doesn’t end up being so small on the screen that I have to focus a lot.

I have been playing some games on the PC again as well, I was having some fun starting out with Soulstone Survivors it’s a vampire survivors-like game, and it’s quite a lot of fun, this is one where the dashing is quite a lot of fun, and the clear damage zones on the ground makes it feel quite different than a lot of the ones that just tries to be vampire survivors, there are quite a lot of unlocks and stuff, so if I don’t lose interest in it, it seems like a game that I can play for a longer time.

Playing a survivors game again made me play a bit of Vampire Survivors on the switch again, and I also saw that they have a new DLC that I don’t have, which I haven’t got yet, but probably will, it’s still a fun game, but after the frantic dodging around in soulstone it kind of felt a bit too much like a known quantity in a way. I still have 90 unlocks to do though, so there is a lot of game still there, I just have to find a more clear goal to do I think, I have quite enjoyed the Adventures though, so there is that. I think I will have to read up a bit, I’m still kind of stuck in the mindset of when I started the game, and it has become quite a bit larger than it used to be, I’m having fun with it, but it kind of feels like it’s missing something, not quite sure what it is though.

And for the last one, I redownloaded probably my favourite cozy game Euro Truck Simulator 2 it’s a couple of years since I last played the game, and getting back into it, this is just as good as it used to be, it’s just something special about slowly making my way across Europe, feeling the wind in my hair as I’m slowly building up my truck empire. Not that I really have much of an empire on this one yet, not even having a truck yet, but I had a great time driving from Oslo through St. Petersburg, down the balkans and ending up in Istanbul, my account slowly building up enough money to buy my first truck. This game is just so nice and there is this really meditative feeling of no stress driving my truck around on the highways, lugging around oranges, rocks, or wall panels. There is a reason why this game is one of the highest rated ones on steam of all time, and it just keeps on getting better.

Misc

I’m slowly getting back down to a reasonable podcast queue again, after vacation and then into the aether dropping a 7 hour really fun episode about the play station, I’m still down to 40 unlistened to podcasts, which is better, still need to shave it down a bit more before I can start downloading some extra podcasts again, but it’s getting there.

I had some great walks over the weekend, which was quite nice, there is still nothing that says weekend to me than to put in my earphones, and just walk for as long as I want to, listening to podcasts, it’s just something to really look forward to, as I’m sitting around most of the day at work. Now that it’s autumn as well, the weather is at a point where it’s a lot more comfortable, and I don’t overheat, so I can go out on a 25 km walk and still be comfortable, which is extremely nice.