Lord Samper's Library

  Page Count: 207 Pages. When I’m struggling to maintain focus at work, I find that the best way to pick my next read is to just go with my gut feeling. Whether it’s the cover or the blurb (or both), I stand a better chance of finishing a read if I don’t feel obligated to read/finish. Hence my starting off with a little Warhammer 40K on Sunday and then a brief sojourn in horror territory over the last couple of days. And today? Well, today, it’s time for a little ‘Doctor Who’; technically a re-read (although it has been a number of years since I last picked it up) and at the same time, a chance to have a little nibble at the ‘Doctor Who TBR Pile’ that I’ve built up. I didn’t realise this, until just now, but ‘Doctor Who And The Zarbi’ is actually the second ‘Doctor Who’ novelization published, back in 1965 (based on the TV serial ‘The Web Planet’), don’t ask me what the first one is… ;o) Thanks ‘Doctor Who Wiki’ ! It hasn’t been that long since I read it, just long enough that i...

  Page Count: 37 Pages You can read ‘Agate Way’ over at Reactor if you fancy it; I visit very irregularly so completely missed this tale when it appeared last year, story of my life really… ;o) No free read for me, not this time. I felt like following ‘Acquired Taste’ with a much shorter read and came across ‘Agate Way’ whilst in the middle of finding out that Nathan Ballingrud is actually a real writer (and not just a literary creation of Clay McLeod Chapman). I’m not afraid to own up to my mistakes, just don’t laugh at me too much (I’m feeling fragile)? Anyway, lets take a little trip down ‘Agate Way’; just a little one though, you wouldn’t want to end up lost. Not here… A pair of sisters are hired to find--and if necessary, dispose of--whatever is killing neighborhood pets in a dying town. No-one told them that people have been going missing as well, now Casey and Tara are about to find out that ‘nature never tires, she never rests…’ Sometimes, you read a story and by the time...

  I’m doing my absolute best not to be ‘book tempted’ (especially since my run of overtime came to an end just before Christmas…) but every now and then, I can’t help myself, especially when a certain Womble is doing the tempting ;o) Like I said before , I really enjoyed ‘Wake Up And Open Your Eyes’ , and I’m always partial to a collection of horror short stories, so it didn’t take too much persuading for me to grab myself an ‘Acquired Taste’. I’ve been dipping in and out of the book and polished it off over a lazy Sunday afternoon in the comfy chair. Let me tell you about it… They're feeding on you too. A father returns from serving in Vietnam with a strange and terrifying addiction; a man removes something horrifying from his fireplace, and becomes desperate to return it; and a right-wing news channel has its hooks in people in more ways than one. From department store Santas to ghost boyfriends and salamander-worshipping nuns; from the claustrophobia of the Covid-19 pandemi...

  Page Count: 37 Pages Just a quick one today as I’ve got the day to myself and three books (I think) that are a good way along the road to being fully read. I want to see if I can finish at least one of them, lets see how it goes… In the meantime, here’s a tale that found its way onto my Kindle, back in 2024, and then proceeded to languish unread for the next couple of years. Nothing against ‘Faith In Iron’, if you’ve seen my place, you’ll know that it’s very easy for a book to get lost in the crowd; especially if it’s hidden away on my Kindle ;o) Anyway… I was watching a lore video that mentioned ‘Faith In Iron’ the other day; I put two and two together and realised that I needed to get my moneys worth out of the read. And that’s exactly what I did... The tech-priests of the Adeptus Mechanicus eschew the weakness of flesh, preferring to show their faith in the Omnissiah by replacing their organics with machine parts. As well as religious, this is practical – disease can't affect ...

  Page Count: 140 Pages I’ve said it before so I’m just going to be honest (despite what happens to Professor Everard for his honesty)… I’ve got a lot of time and respect for the mythos that Lovecraft gave us, there aren’t many literary settings that have endured in quite the same way. It’s just that from where I’m sat, a number of other authors did (and still do) ‘Cosmic Horror’ with more ‘flair to the telling’ than Lovecraft’s dry prose. That’s just me though, your mileage will vary. So when I came across ‘Strange Stones’ then, I knew that I had to give it a read; it’s cosmic horror with a little something to say about the man who started it all. Turns out that ‘Strange Stones’ had a few more things to say at the same time... Professor Everard, weird fiction scholar and proclaimed critic of H.P Lovecraft's works, is no stranger to making people mad. Giving convention presentations on the triteness and melodrama of Lovecraft's work pays the bills, though. Sometimes he even ge...

And we’re back for the last three ‘Raiders of the Realms’ stories. You can read my thoughts on ‘Conn Crowhand’s Last Oath’ and ‘Vipers of the Marsh’ over Here or you can just scroll down a bit, either is fine by me ;o) I was going to do this as ‘two stories per post, across three posts’, over the week, until I remembered that the ‘Raiders of the Realms’ collection only has five tales in total. Now, my math is comically bad (seriously, I’ve had interview feedback that said I shouldn’t be allowed to work with numbers…) but even I know that two into five will always leave one left over. So, here we are :o) The following three tales didn’t hit the mark quite as hard, as the previous two, but there was still fun to be had here and overall, I’m glad I forked out for the set. Some quick thoughts follow… ‘Slinktalon’ – Robbie MacNiven (Black Library) Page Count: 35 Pages A trio of rival assassins from the Clans Eshin join forces to take out a high profile Skaven. Pooling their prodigious skil...