The speed was the main thing for me with Nord. Very slow a lot of the time. And I didn’t like the weird/scammy feeling renewal prices. I found Mulvad much smoother in general. Nord might be better now, though. That was my experience from about 7 years ago

Any suggestions for a similarly priced, similar quality alternative for windows and Android? I tried Nord before I switched to Mulvad and it was worse, don’t want to go back to that

yes

Lots of good suggestions here. I’ve just ordered Anne Leckie’s ‘ancillary’ trilogy.

I’ll recommend Gene Wolfe’s Book of the New Sun (The Shadow of the Torturer, The Claw of the Conciliator, The Sword of the Lictor and The Citadel of the Autarch) - Lots of weird, cool imagery and ideas.

I need to get around to The Urth of the New Sun at some point.