STG's

A Mighty Fortress, by David Weber, is the 4th book in the SafeHold series. The SafeHold series is about humanity's last world, which was kept in a primitive state with a custom made religion so that aliens could not find their signals. In a way that really resembles the Honor Harrington, the nice nation (the Charisian Empire) is getting attacked unfairly by the bad guys (the Church), who now declared Holy War. Also, research is the only thing keeping the good guys alive as the stakes keep increasing. And there are very careful description of the battles. Just on the sea. Even if it is much like the Honor Harrington series (except that instead of being in space, there are sea battles), it is quite enjoyable. As most Weber books, there is quite a bit of dialog between the battles, which builds the book well even if it really slows down the action. Overall, recommended to fans of the series.

Deception Well, by Linda Nagata is an SF novel that takes place in the same universe as the excellent Bohr Maker. I actually read this way back, in the 90s, before the Bohr Maker. That made a bit of difference in the re-read, but not that much. However, I don't if it is the difference in scope, or in the action, but this one felt way less enjoyable than the Bohr maker, which I really liked. Overall, this one was OK. Some of the ideas were interesting, but the execution wasn't great.

Middle Earth: Shadow of War is a nice update on Shadow of Mordor, and is a third-person view RPG. (yes, I am phoning it in today). It plays mostly the same as that one, with a number of added complications. Since it's been a while, I don't quite recall with any certainty what is new and what is not... Certainly there is a lot of stuff, and it gets a bit more complicated than I'd like (for example, the UI can be a bit confusing sometimes, specially with the many maps now and the bunch of things to do). However, so far I really like it - 6 hours into the game, and certainly there is a lot to do. It is also nice that apparently there was a store component that was removed. One problem I get sometimes is getting trapped at a corner, and being unable to jump. Pretty annoying when you are being chased by a bunch of orcs. Overall, looks pretty good so far, although at times the movement feels a little weird.