My last 5 books: three flavours of fantasy and a bit of non-fiction on the side

1. The View from the Cheap Seats, by Neil Gaiman. I just got done reading 500 bittersweet pages. Sweet because they reminded me how much I used to love Gaiman's writings, bitter because everything is tainted now. I once wanted to collect everything he had ever written and I used to be so proud of how large my collection was getting. Now I'm considering to just throw it all away. I'm usually very good at separating the art from the artist, but I'm finding it exceedingly difficult this time.  Anyway, I rarely read non-fiction, which is why this book has been hanging around unread in my book shelf for around a decade. The beginning of this book is very sweet and as someone born in the 90s it reads a bit like a history lesson or a wise elder telling me stories of how things used to be. The middle rambles a bit. Especially the music section was a drag. The ending picks up and I almost shed a tear from the last three texts. I still love the way he writes, the way he tells a story, whether it's fiction or not. With the current state of things I want to rage at this, tear it apart piece by piece, scrutinise every detail, but dammit it's a good book. I really liked it. Begrudgingly. 

2. The Devils, by Joe Abercrombie. I can never say no to a new Abercrombie book, and why would I? They're always brilliant. And historical fantasy always tickles me, like "this happened, but what if..." and then this whole mess of magic and brilliance pours forth. I love Jakob and Rikard, unsurprisingly. We have a set of useful excommunicated supernatural misfits tasked with bringing a long lost princess to her home for coronation while her cousins who are all vying for the throne take turns to come at them with all manner of disastrous (and sometimes absolutely disgusting) magic. The frequent use of slaughterhouse and fish market as descriptors are not only telling but provides a 4D experience in reading that I wasn't anticipating. I could smell that sea battle. I'm very glad I lack a reference for a smell for the battle atop the mass grave. Arcadius deserved better, actually he deserved to be more than a footnote. There were three romantic (ish?) situations unfurling between the characters. One I adored and would've liked to see evolved, one was a lot of fun and it ended in absolute despair, and one where I simply didn't feel the chemistry - I would've been fine with them simply remaining fierce friends and not lovers. As usual with Abercrombie the plot is built upon lies upon lies upon lies and I'm very content with the fact that I for once had figured out who was behind it all before it was revealed. I am not okay with that ending, Vigga and Baptiste both deserve better. I hope the next one will still feature both Alex and Diaz and that they won't end up forgotten characters settled in their new offices. I'm all for more Jakob and Rikard, though!

3. Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil, by V.E. Schwab. This was the first book in my new attempt to read audiobooks. It's an exercise in maintaining focus without visual stimuli, which automatically means I suck at it. It's also my first ever V.E. Schwab book and I chose this specifically because I had so much good about her writing from booktube. I had no idea this was a vampire book going in, but when Alice finds blood spots without seemingly a source my vampire obsessed mind starts wondering and I go looking for reviews. And sure enough, it's a vampire book. Soon after that discovery I'm predictably completely hooked. This book is beautiful I love the prose, how it's poetic at times, almost lyrical, but never fails to be modern. All the evocation of fruits and flowers throughout creates a powerful image of something beautiful but easily spoiled, and that's the whole idea I think. Maria was egotistical from the start, which then became borderline narcissistic. Charlotte just wants to be loved. All she really wants is to be happy and free. And I guess the same could be said for Maria, but they have entirely different approaches to it. Alice gets caught in the middle, collateral damage of a centuries old toxic relationship. More than anything this is a story about women chafing against society's expectations of their role in it. Wanting to be more than vessels for future generations, wanting to be more than somebody's wife, wanting the ability to live their lives as they choose and not just within a set template, wanting to see the road that is their life curve and bend rather than just continue in a straight line towards the end. All I really wish there was more of in this book is Matteo. I want to know what eventually became of him. 

4. Powerless, by Lauren Roberts. As soon as I started this book I was just sat there like "So this is like Red Queen meets Hunger Games? Okay, I'm game." And it really is. And I had so much fun with this. Especially the banter, and oh I love Kai. He's just the right amount of broken. Paedyn is equally broken to match. It becomes painfully obvious that nothing will happen between them in this book pretty early on. Paedyn will do everything in her power to keep them from crossing that line for as long as Kai doesn't know the truth about her. But I'm fully expecting that they'll cross that line eventually, in the next one or the one after that. For all her observational skills Paedyn is a little bit stupid, though. Like of course the Resistance wouldn't tell her every detail of the plan with how close she is to the princes, and of course the king would never get his own hands dirty by killing her father himself, and of course the Resistance's actual plan involves doing harm to the princes since it's the only thing the king actually cares about (barring his queen). With the way things ended in this book I'm very excited for the next one :3

5. Paperbacks from Hell, by Grady Hendrix. This book is insane. What the hell were people on in the 70s and 80s? *glance at modern fanfiction* nvm it's not that different. This book describes the height of pulp horror fiction and it's glorious. Just a few pages in I've already been exposed to nazi leprechauns that are actually malformed babies taken from their mothers' uteruses in concentration camps and they're telepathic. The further we go the weirder it gets. Superpowers, body horror, the devil in every shape and form you can imagine, rabid animals, and so so so much sex, and the author describes it all with a combination of mirth and despair that's both tongue-in-cheek and scathing at the same time and I eat it all up, chuckling to myself as I turn the pages. I understand this guy's sense of humour, the sometimes complaints are testaments to how much he loves this genre, not a way to belittle it. I love the craziness, the tackiness, the camp, how preposterous every described storyline is and as I read my TBR steadily grows longer. Favourite line in the entire book? "Rice gave vampires a voice. And then they wouldn't shut up." Perfection.

The Sims 2: Remaking my family

Many years ago I had a huge Sims family spanning up to five generations in The Sims 2. After Win 10 I could no longer make the old game work on my modern PC (and I no longer had a disc drive) and it wasn't available anywhere at all for digital purchase. I kept my save file until 2019 ish when I finally resigned myself to the fact that I'd never get to play The Sims 2 again. And then last year Legacy edition dropped on Steam. I'm now berating myself for not keeping my save file.

The last weekend of March I got a huge urge to play The Sims 2 again so I loaded it up on Steam and immediately started recreating my family. Here are my current sims:

Bradley and Sayumi are my original progenitors as they were in the olden days. Just like last time I wanted Bradley to be a lot older than Sayumi. So via cheats I aged Bradley to the verge of Elder and then used the Elixir of Life (an aspiration reward) to de-age him until he was about halfway through the adult stage. And then I went about making babies. Last time I got a pretty even spread of boys and girls, but this time around I got five boys and one single girl T_T Six kids (and a dog), but once all the kids had flown the coop to go to college, Sayumi started adopting new children to reach her goal of having 10 kids. She was an Elder at this point and Bradley was end stage of his life. They adopted two girls and two boys. They also adopted one cat and one kitten just as the dog died from old age. Bradley passed from old age the same day their last daughter was adopted. The cat ran away from home because of it. Benjamin came home just to slap and yell at his mother. 

Benjamin, the oldest, was always more interested in robotics, mechanics and tinkering than other Sims from a very young age. His first day at college he made a Servo mech which the rules forbade him from activating on college grounds. Once he graduated college he moved into an apartment and activated the Servo, which he named Tristan. They immediately hit it off and fell in love. However, that same night Benjamin was abducted by aliens and returned pregnant. They adopted a kitten and got married while Benjamin was pregnant. Benjamin later gave birth to twin girls, Akiko and Furuka. After the arrival of the girls, Benjamin and Tristan decided the apartment was too small and they moved into a brand new house right next to Benjamin's childhood home and there they adopted a boy, Nathaniel. Benjamin passed away from old age just after Nathaniel left for college. Rather than live alone Tristan took the cats and moved in with Benjamin's sister Reina and her family. 

Samuel and Ai, our first set of twins, just want to have fun. Samuel is a heartbreaker and Ai is a rulebreaker. They went to college together and in her freshman year Ai got knocked up by a fellow freshman and spent her college time mothering a toddler while keeping up with her classes. While Samuel tried to get it on with every female on campus. After college they moved into a house together and continued having fun. Ai became a vampire and her son Sebastian became and evil warlock as a teenager. Samuel got struck by lightning and killed and Sebastian resurrected him as a zombie. 

Jonathan is a family man. He went to college and afterwards moved back home to help care for his elderly mother and his new adopted siblings. He later got married to Ivy and they had three kids together: Gabriel, Hotaru and Robert. 

Robyn and Kim, our second set of twins, are very different. Robyn is a very feminine gay man with the lifetime aspiration of becoming a military General. Kim is just looking to be famous and make a fortune. They both became best-selling authors while still in college. After they moved out Kim married Marisa and had two daughters: Sakura and Maki. Robyn got married to Sterling and they adopted two children: Risako and Nicholas. Robyn became a plantsim.

Reina, our oldest adopted daughter, moved out into an apartment and went on vacation where she befriended Bigfoot. He moved in with her and (through cheats) and a son with Reina: Felix. Tristan the Servo later moved in with her family. 

Alan, our oldest adopted son, went to college and then moved into a house of his own where he married Orlando. Alan was turned into a werewolf and they adopted a son, James, together.

Roger, our second adopted son, moved into a house and then became a good warlock. He married Yvette and she became a good witch. Together they had two daughters: Ayano and Hikari.

Yuuna, our youngest adopted daughter, got pregnant as a teenager and gave birth to Adam while still living at Sayumi and Bradley's house with Jonathan. When she moved out she kept up her lifestyle similar to her older siblings Ai and Samuel, but she kept getting pregnant. Every one of her kids have different fathers. 

Akiko and Furuka, Benjamin's alien daughters, joined Sebastian, Ai's son, at college. Akiko likes old men and immediately hit it off with the cafeteria man. She got pregnant, but miscarried. 

And that's pretty much how far I got this time :) I'm back to playing RPGs now, but I'll definitely continue Sims 2 later on. Whenever the urge hits. 

Replays of Jan, Feb & March 2026: Avowed, E33 and Tainted Grail

I started up Avowed again for a third playthrough after they dropped the anniversary update with a bunch of new features, including a NG+ and a photo mode. When I first started this I figured I'd try to go for the last few achievements I have left, but all it took was one look at Garrick to realise I can't be mean. It makes me sad to be mean to the pixels. So here we go another good playthrough. 

I usually make a Godlike with very subtle growths, but this time I decided to go all in and when I did I discovered that most of the hairstyles didn't make sense with all that stuff growing out of her head, so in the end she got a huge mass of untamed curls. But she looks very cute :3 I'm very happy she'll be the one I do NG+ with whenever I decide to return to the Living Lands once again somewhere down the line.

One update or other since I last played added the ability for the soul pods to dispel enchantments so I didn't have to drag Yatzli along for literally everything, which made it so I could experiment a bit more with my companions. Kai has taken the same role as Aloth in Pillars of Eternity - he never leaves my squad. But I found myself using Giatta a lot more than previous playthroughs when the second slot wasn't automatically assigned to Yatzli to deal with any enchantments while exploring in Scattersharp and onwards. 

I found the photo mode lacking (or I'm just blind) because I couldn't find any way to change the pose or expression of my character or companions. I couldn't stage photos. So in the end I only ever used the photo mode to remove the UI when taking landscape pictures. 

Next up I returned to Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. I continued on with my old save on NG+ with the intention of getting the last three achievements and finally defeat Simon. Since I already had the swimsuits there was no reason for me to redo the Gestral Beaches which suited me just fine because those were the things I struggled with the most the first time around. 

I still can't believe how insanely pretty this game is in every way. Graphics, music, gameplay, mechanics, characters... it's all so beautiful. 

Getting to level 99 for that achievement was easy enough. I continued on with doing all the side content aiming to do Simon absolutely last before I headed back to Lumière. The last two achievements are tied because the last journal is right next to Simon, so I need to defeat Simon to get to it. 

I've seen talk online about Verso romancing Lune so I aimed to make that happen this playthrough and so turned Sciel down when she propositioned Verso, but she's damn persistent and Lune is making no advances. Maybe after I've completed her side quest... 

I got to the Reachers for Maelle's side quest before I felt a bit bored with the JRPG fighting style (which tends to happen) and paused my playthrough to turn towards my third replay of the year so far: Tainted Grail.

It isn't that long since I played Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon for the first time, but I had an absolute blast so when I started that NG+ save before shutting the game down the last time it was with the intention to come back to it. I didn't expect it to be this soon. 

Still rocking my dual-wield DoT status effect build I began a new save with the goal to get the achievements I was missing, which required a bunch of different choices to be made so I was all for it. I also started working on a new build focusing on magic, but since my original build was still the strongest one I stuck with that for the first two zones. Even with the increased difficulty of NG+ the Wyrdknight remained a non-issue with that build. 

I chose to romance Alisa this time around even though I absolutely can't stand her, just to be able to see the continuation of her quest line and to unlock her house as my house. It broke my heart when I couldn't tell Beor that I loved him because of it because he's so sweet T_T 

There were two free updates with new content while I played, but I didn't get far enough into the game to get to them before my attention was stolen by... The Sims 2. I had only just entered Castle Sagremor too...

E33 and Tainted Grail are to be continued once I get over my reignited Sims obsession.