Ofc there's the high seas, but I'd quite like to support the authors and I can afford ~£10 for a book now and then. But are there any stores as good/convenient as the Amazon one?

I immediately rebooked the same hotel, but when we got back there the receptionist had left so you had to check in over the phone instead. Except WhatsApp wasn't working. Then mobile data went down. And before long we were walking through the old town going hostel to hostel looking for a place to sleep, as everything got darker and darker (due to the lack of powered street lighting). The old town in almost pitch black was pretty scary!

We ended up breaking back into the hotel, borrowing a bunch of towels from a laundry cart in the hallway and sleeping in this lockable room we found in the basement.

Besides that somewhat stressful part, it was a really strange but fun experience to see the city without power: no traffic lights, darkened shops with lots of phone lights, cafés still operating just with only outdoor seating and limited menus, the occasional loud generator, and most of all the people seemingly having a great time in spite of it.

I would've loved to have stayed out all night exploring the city, but finding somewhere to sleep that night was a bit more pressing!

I understand why people feel like they need more transparency around these things. Reading for me is intentional, and I feel cheated when I put in the effort to read something for which the author put in little. I would like to think the author put in a lot of effort for this story despite AI assistance, and so it was worth me putting effort in. But whether that's true or not I still felt like I got something out of it (hard not to as a software engineer wondering about their place in the world), and that's something.