Lord Samper's Library

  Page Count: 352 Pages Hi :o) Apologies for the brief period of silence… I’ll be honest, I got to the end of last Thursday and just needed to stop, for a few days, sit quietly in the new comfy chair and read without rushing to put it into a post. So… that’s exactly what I did and it was great. I managed to finish off a couple of books that I’d stalled on (hint: this week is going to be ‘40K Heavy’) and completed a reading challenge set by my youngest daughter. Definitely time well spent and I’m a little more up for posting this week. Anyway… When I saw the blurb for ‘Auxilia’ I thought, ‘hang on, I’m pretty sure that I’ve come across Orysian Roane before…’ And I had, in one of my favourite stories from the ‘Death and Duty’ anthology . I would have read ‘Auxilia’ anyway (I love stories of the Imperial Guard) but was definitely up for finding out what happens next to a character who can be inspiring and infuriating all at the same time. And that’s just what I did, eventually… Never ...

Yesterday was basically a morning of admin followed by an afternoon of ‘Interview Disappointment’ (didn’t get invited back for the next round of interviews) and an evening with my youngest daughter who has laid down a reading challenge that I am honour-bound to take up. My TBR Pile is giving me a hurt look right now, like it has no idea what it did wrong. It’s not you ‘TBR Pile’, it’s all on me. Anyway… This week’s blog has been ‘comic book heavy’ but that’s what happens sometimes, maybe you’ll see a book review tomorrow? In the meantime… I’ve been avoiding posting about the ‘Hellraiser’ mini-series, from Boom! Comics; partly because I read them out of order (easily done when they’re all ‘#1’) and I’ve been trying to get my head round the series, mostly because I lost the comics under a pile of paperwork… We’re here now though :o) This post gathers all five issues from the series then, links to the ones that I’ve already mentioned and quick thoughts on the rest… ‘Hellraiser Resurrectio...

I actually managed a fairly productive day, yesterday, but the downside was that I had no time for reading; just staring at the TBR pile on the rocking chair. Oh well… Maybe today will turn out better, we’ll see. In the meantime, lets take a look at some of the movies that I’ve watched over the last few days. Not a bad selection this time (not great though…) but there is one movie that stands out above the rest... ‘Apocalypse Z: New World’ (2026) In the aftermath of the virus, safe havens exist but supplies are running low and must be replenished. An expedition strikes out, from the Canary Islands, to establish a supply base in Madrid but… The infected hold the city and some of the living have their own ulterior motives for making the trip… I watched ‘Apocalypse Z: The Beginning of the End’ a couple of years ago and really enjoyed it, although I apparently never got round to writing about it here. Oh well… :o) Watching ‘New World’ was a bit of a no-brainer then but unfortunately, it w...

I actually picked these comics up last week with a view to reading them over the weekend but… You know what this blog is like… I make a vague promise about how I’ll definitely pick a book soon and at the same time I’m making it, I’m adding at least a week to the ‘wait time’, I’m nothing if not consistent ;o) Anyway… I’ve been making a weekly trip to Forbidden Planet to pick up a comic or two; just to give myself a little routine/something to look forward to while I’m out of work. This time round I came home with a couple of ‘Conan’ comics; ‘Tides of the Tyrant King’ was a no-brainer and while I don’t normally pick up ‘The Savage Sword of Conan – Reforged’, ‘Tides’ looked a little lonely by itself so I thought, why not? All of which leads me to this post, just a quick one today for a couple of short(ish) reads. Let me tell you all about them… ‘Conan: Tides of the Tyrant King #2’ – Zub, Merino (Titan Comics, Heroic Signatures) CONAN OF CIMMERIA believed that THULSA DOOM’s evil had been b...

  Page Count: 127 Pages Saturday was a busy one (a lot of fun but, busy…), with my youngest daughter, and so yesterday was a day where I dragged myself out of bed and went straight to the comfy chair, there to stay until I realised I’d forgotten to pick some stuff up from the shop :o) I got a couple more movies under my belt but that’s a post for another day. In what seems to be becoming a habit at the moment, we’re all about old ‘Doctor Who’ novelisations, today, and it’s the turn of ‘The Sontaran Experiment’. Here’s a story that I only watched, for the first time, back in 2021 ; but I’d never read the book until yesterday… Landing on Earth, now a barren, desolate planet, Sarah, Harry and the Doctor are unaware of the large watching robot. The robot is the work of Styre, a Sontaran warrior, who uses all humans landing here for his experimental programmes. What has happened to the other space explorers who have come here? Why is the Sontaran scout so interested in Earth and in brut...

  You can find these stories in Kings ‘Night Shift’ collection and they also have a habit of turning up in various editions of ‘Salem’s Lot’. I love ‘Night Shift’ (I always make sure that I have a copy on my shelves) and that’s where I read them this time. I was watching ‘Salem’s Lot’, last night; the more recent one and… Well, by ‘watching’, I should say that I dozed for chunks of it; only during the bits that weren’t worth keeping my eyes open for though ;o) No great loss, I’d always rank the book over both film adaptations. Sorry, where was I? Oh yeah :o) While I was watching ‘Salem’s Lot’, it got me thinking of a couple of King’s short stories that book-end the main event, these two. I thought that reading these stories would be a decent way to round off October and so, one quick search through the shelves later, here we are. Let me tell you about ‘Jerusalem’s Lot’ and ‘One for the Road’. ‘Jerusalem’s Lot’ Page Count: 35 Pages In which Charles Boone takes up residence in the Bo...