Lord Samper's Library

I told you wouldn’t leave it too long before taking on the next volume of ‘Hillbilly’… 😉 I’m slowly getting back into the routine of the early morning commute so have been looking for books that won’t ask a lot of me when I’m on a bus at half six in the morning. Nothing against those slightly lighter reads but, you know what I mean don’t you? I’m after something that won’t tax my tired brain too much but also something that will help me to forget that I’m on a bus at some daft hour of the morning. A book like ‘Red Eyed Witchery From Beyond’ for example. As I’ve read through the ‘Hillbilly’ books (you can read my reviews for volume 1 , volume 2 and volume 3 ) I’ve found myself getting into Rondel’s world more and more. Not just the story (although that is great, don’t get me wrong) but those forbidding woods, dark streams and isolated villages that make up the background. That was just I needed to distract me, from an early morning trip down the Old Kent Road, so this morning, I got...

Apart from the zombie episode (of course), I try not to spoil myself about what next week’s episode will be. The surprise makes it a nice way to start a Wednesday 😊 So seeing ‘What If… Ultron Won?’ pop up on the screen was  a nice little surprise but at the same time, I was a little underwhelmed if I’m being honest. After all… Don’t we all know what would happen if Ultron won? There would be nothing left as Ultron would have destroyed it all. Everything would be ‘scorched earth’ but on the up side, I guess it would be peaceful… On the whole though ‘What If…?’ hasn’t let me down yet (well, apart from the ‘Killmonger Episode’ but you can’t win them all) so of course I was always going to give ‘What If… Ultron Won?’ a shot and see how it went. As it happened, I’m going to have to wait until next week to give you the full picture as we got the cliffhanger treatment here (I thought we were looking at a season in eight instalments, shows what I know) I can tell you what I thought of t...

The evil in the hills has put aside it’s differences and has united to form an army the likes of which hasn’t been seen since time out of mind. It marches on the villages now and will not stop until all is dead and desecrated. Even Rondel and his friends aren’t enough to stop this threat; they need the villages to unite but the villagers cannot see beyond their own farms and refuse to believe there’s a problem. It’s all coming down to one final fight but will anyone, from the side of good, be left to fight it? Rondel cannot fight this one on his own… So… Three volumes in and a series that I’ve had a lot of fun with (here are my reviews for Volumes One and Two ). Now it’s time for a climax/finale of sorts. I thought it was going to stretch out a little longer, to be honest, but I’ve learnt never to grumble when a storyline comes to an end (says the guy waiting for a certain story to continue, you know the one…) so here we are. Lets get going, shall we? Volume 3 of ‘Hillbilly’ is ve...

Excuse my moaning but I'm not quite over having that tooth out the other day... Fair play to the dentist though, if this is what it feels like now, I can only imagine what the local anaesthetic was covering when the tooth came out. And to be fair, I'm the only one to blame for my tooth being in that state in the first place! But anyway, a couple more days and hopefully that will be that :o) It feels like I say this every week but you didn't come here to hear me moan about dental work, did you? You did...? Well, the opening paragraph will have to do because it's all about the books from here on in... I've been in a happy little fog of it's my birthday/I've just been paid/I got my bonus for the past week so that time has been spent filling in a few holes in my shelves. Replacing books that I had to get rid of, that kind of thing. Not a bad week all in all then, lets take a look at what I bought... The 'Conan' book (which is suspiciously slender for an ...

We've known each other for a little while now so you know only too well that if there's zombies in a TV show, or movie, then I'm watching it. I don't even care if it's a bad show, sometimes that's the main reason you'll find me watching it ;o) I love a bit of zombie gore and I also love seeing how regular humans react to zombies in their neighbourhood (something that 'The Walking Dead' used to be very good at). It's all good. So when I saw 'Soldiers or Zombies' (hereafter known as 'SoZ') being advertised on Prime... Well, I had a couple of other things that I wanted to watch first but it was right up there in the queue. This first season is only eight episodes long, and each episode is between 25-30 minutes long (ish), so I ended up watching it all last night. Let me tell you all about it... Drug Lord Alonso Marroquin escapes from a Mexican prison and goes into hiding. A secret military experiment goes wrong and the SWAT team cha...

I know I've said this before but I'm indebted to the 'library bus', that used to park up the hill from ours, for keeping me going with 'Doctor Who' books and introducing me to stories that I would never have experienced otherwise. 'The Android Invasion' was one of those books and to be fair, I may well have seen it back in the day but I was around three months old, at the time, so can't really remember... ;o) That's what the DVDs are for though (and maybe, one day, a Britbox subscription) so today has been all about seeing what 'The Android Invasion' was all about and whether it was any good... When the TARDIS lands in the sleepy village of Devesham, Sarah thinks the Doctor has finally got her home, but all is not as it seems... The village is unusually deserted and deadly white suited spacemen patrol the surrounding countryside . When the dead begin to come back to life, the Doctor knows that something is horribly wrong... Who is Senio...

I don’t know how I got to this point but here I am… Youtube is now my official TV ‘Viewing Planner’. I have no idea what’s on any more but Youtube adverts will invariably pop up and let me know what I should be watching. Thanks Youtube, you’re pretty much the only reason why I’m getting any kind of value for money out of my ‘Shudder’ subscription 😉 Whatever video it was that I was watching earlier on this evening, an advert popped up and reminded me that Season 3 of ‘Creepshow’ is officially a thing now. The last couple of seasons have been a mixed bag (click here and you’ll see what I mean) but there was enough in those episodes to get me all intrigued by a new season. And it’s a horror anthology show, I have a real weakness for horror anthologies no matter what they’re like… Episode 1 then is why today is a ‘two post day’ instead of the normal ‘one post’ 😊 Was it any good though? Well, from where I was sat it wasn’t a bad opener, not a perfect one though… ‘Mums’   Jack...

It’s been a while since I’ve read anything set in the world of Judge Dredd (mostly because some of it is starting to look a little too plausible and I want my reading to cheer me up dammit!) but it’s been a shitty week and ‘What Measure Ye Mete’ kept popping up in my recommendations so I thought what the hell, lets follow the algorithm and see where it takes me. And where did it take me…? United States of America, 2053 A.D. There’s not a lot left for the last few cops of what was once New York City to do, these days. Officer Cera Cortez once dreamed of chasing down killers, but now she mostly just puts a friendly face on the implacable justice of the Judges. Until a tiny robot falls onto her face screaming murder, giving her one last chance to do her job—and signs point to the killer being a Judge...   ‘What Measure Ye Mete’ is one of those ‘quick Kindle reads’ (a very slender 89 pages long) that are just what I need when I really fancy a read but also know that I don’t h...

I haven’t had the best of days today, turns out that your mouth can hurt just as much after the offending tooth has been extracted as it did beforehand… Oh well, nothing that repeated doses of paracetamol won’t eventually fix 😊 In the meantime though, I haven’t really been up to much as far as reading goes but luckily, I had a couple of comics on hand for a situation just like this… ‘The White Wolf’ did take an unexpected turn at the end (that had me wondering if I’d strayed into ‘What If…?’ territory) but there was still enough there that when I saw that ‘The Dreaming City’ was going to be a thing, I knew I had to pick up the first couple of issues. And me being me (and never getting round to picking individual issues up on time…), I was able to pick up the first couple of issues when I was in Forbidden Planet the other day. I love fantasy comics (there really need to be more though) and Moorcock adaptations tend to be a lot of fun more often than not so I was keen to see where th...

The great thing about this series (well, one of many great things…) is that even if you have a dud episode, you get to start all over again the following week with a clean slate. No worrying about where the story is going to go next because they’re all stand-alone 😊 Last week’s ‘Killmonger’ episode was a dud, for me anyway , but no worries, this week I got to find out what happened if Thor had been an only child… Wait, what? It’s not exactly the most inspiring, or intriguing, title ever, is it? Give it a chance though, this could very well be the best ‘What If…?’ episode yet… Obligatory spoiler warning time. The big clue, as ever, is in the title so I’m not going to be too fussy about avoiding spoilers here. If you want to go and watch ‘What If…?’ first, that’s fine. In fact, you should watch it first because, well… Odin has begun the ‘Odinsleep’ and Frigga is spending some time with friends, that leaves Thor to rule Asgard all by himself until his Mum gets back. What is a Nor...

I used to be a lot more patient with books back in the day. If I picked one up then I'd do my best to finish it, even if it was awful. What heady, carefree days they were... Did I really have nothing better to do with my time than not enjoy what I was reading? Apparently so. These days though... Life is really too short to spend on a book that I'm not enjoying, so I don't :o) I mean, why would you? And it's not like there aren't plenty of other books, in my flat, that I could be reading instead. So yep, today is a 'Did Not Finish' post. Step forward, Jeffrey N. Wallmann's 'Death Trek'. I found my copy of 'Death Trek' almost exactly a year ago in Deptford Market. I was in the mood for something a little 'old school' and it doesn't get much more 'old school' than that cover, does it? It took me a while to get round to it (I wasn't in the mood for 'old school' for very long and then I had to wait for it to c...

In this world of working from home (which is starting to come to an end for me but that's another story...) it is so easy to loose track of time. For me, it was feeling like I read 'The Deceit of a Cro-Magnon Dandy' only yesterday and then checking, only to realise that it was right at the back end of last year... Oh well, apparently time flies whether you're having fun or not, which is strangely comforting to know but anyway... When I realised it had been that long, the arrival of 'Fishy Men, Witchy Women and Bitter Beer' (hereafter just to be known as 'Fishy Men', I'm done being all insecure over my word count) made a lot more sense. I was intrigued though to see absolutely no mention of Eric Powell on the cover at all. For this particular collection of issues, Powell takes up cover art duties and that's it. What did this mean for the plot and it's accompanying art (something that had been done so well by Powell up until now)? Well, let...

Well, that's another irreversible step towards 50... ;o) Impending mortality to one side though, I had a pretty good birthday thanks :o) I had the day off so after breakfast, I took myself into town and spent a thick old wedge of cash on a bunch of stuff, including cornering three of the staff at the Lego Store and making them look for particular mini-figures in the blind bags... What? It was my birthday and I really wanted a Captain Carter and Zombie Captain America (and a Loki, wasn't too bothered about Vision but I felt like I owed them one...) It was really good to get into town and for things to be pretty much back to normal as far as all the life happening around me went. Hopefully people can continue to behave themselves and things will keep going down the right path. We'll see... Enough of that though; I spent ages in Forbidden Planet, lets take a look at what I came home with... I've read a few of the 'Vlad Taltos' books but never picked up the earliest...

A lot of my Doctor Who watching pretty much depends on what's on sale in Lewisham CEX, at any given time (I'm not ready to take out a subscription to Britbox just yet, I just know I'd end up watching 'El Dorado'...), so this week you're getting Sontarans and that's all there is to it ;o) The Sontarans are one of those races in Doctor Who where I've seen them more in books, than on the telly, so when I saw this DVD, I knew I had to pick it up. It's a nice short story as well, only two episodes, which was just what I was after last night.And yes, I'm watching it 'out of order', this story sits in the middle of 'The Ark In Space' and 'Genesis of the Daleks' and I've already watched 'Genesis' . I'm not going to lie, it makes me feel like a time-traveller going backwards in time... ;o) Anyway, enough of that. Let's have a little chat about 'The Sontaran Experiment'. Transmitting down from Nerva Be...

Shudder and Youtube seem to have this agreement between them whereby Youtube bombards me with adverts, for stuff on Shudder, until I just give up and say, 'You know what? I'll just watch the damn show...' To be fair, it usually works out pretty well so I shouldn't complain. The last few weeks, I haven't been able to turn round on Youtube without tripping over an advert for 'Slasher: Flesh and Blood' and in the end, I thought I may as well give it a go, just to see who won the competition the old man kept going on about... And it was brilliant, to the point where I've just spent the last week waiting for the final episodes so I could see if all my theories were correct. Let me tell you all about it. The Galloway family have returned to their island home where Spencer Galloway is about to revive the old tradition of a particularly brutal family competition. The stakes are higher than ever this time though; this time round, the family are playing for nothin...

 Yep, it's time for this picture again... :o) I had a great birthday thanks although I'm now old enough to say 'I'm too old for this shit...' and mean it ;o) Book shopping (amongst other things) still makes for a very happy Graeme and I've got plenty to keep me going for a week or two, at least when I finally get round to finishing 'The Revenge of the Rose'... For now though, time for me to watch 'Slasher: Flesh and Blood' and see if I'm right about who the killer is. See you all tomorrow ;o)

It wasn't how I'd seen today going but sometimes that's just the way it happens and you just have to go along with it... Sometimes you just get a day where you start off by watching 'What If...' and finish by watching 'Shang Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings', and it's the best ;o) Quick thoughts only, on both, I'm afraid. I'm still buzzing after leaving the cinema and I want to make some sense here, instead of just babbling loads. Lets see if that works out... 'What If... Killmonger Rescued Tony Stark?' It had to happen sometime... An episode of 'What If...?' came along that was just a little bit disappointing. The episode does everything it needs to and it does it all pretty well, no complaints there. Nope, what got me here was that it all boiled down to Killmonger doing more or less what he did in 'Black Panther' only with a slight detour to take in some Tony Stark. So really, they should have called it 'What I...

I’m doing ok with my current reads (I’m actually going to finish ‘Revenge of the Rose’ which is a big deal for me as I’ve never managed it yet) but fancied a little break from the fantasy, last night, in favour of a little horror instead. The only rule was that it had to be a quick read, one that I could polish off in an evening, as I didn’t want to spend too long away from Messrs Moorcock and Erikson. Well, a new TBR pile is in the process of growing on my ‘loft ladder’ and that’s where I found my ‘quick horror read’, it was a Guy N. Smith book of course 😉 I found a couple of his books in ‘Faction Books’, not so long ago, and had been meaning to pick them up for a read; last night saw me give ‘Carnivore’ a go and it was just the book I needed. The first victim to die on the Corby estate is a starving poacher, condemned to a terrible end by both man and beast. He is not the last. The mad Earl of Corby’s ancient law has been repealed and blood sports are to be allowed once more on th...

There's still loads of 'What If...?' to go but Marvel don't like to hang around and that means more trailers for us to get excited over :o) This time, have some 'Hawkeye'... It looks like 'Hawkeye' will have everything that I'm after; I just need to hear any member of the Tracksuit Mafia say 'bro', just once will do... ;o) 'Hawkeye' will be landing, on Disney+, on the 24th of November.

I knew I’d have a little time to myself, yesterday, so my reading plan was to really get stuck into ‘The Revenge of the Rose’; I’m further along with that book than I’ve ever got so really wanted to keep the momentum going. It’s me though so I got halfway down the street and checked my bag, only to find that ‘Revenge of the Rose’ had been left at home and I’d come out with a copy of ‘The Warhound and the World’s Pain’ instead. It was a little bit annoying but not the worst thing in the world; ‘The Warhound and the World’s Pain’ is one of those Moorcock books that I keep meaning to read, but somehow never do, so I figured this was the best time to do something about that. Even though I’d forgotten to bring my reading glasses as well… The Forest flourished, a lush and spreading refuge from the Wars, cooly green and welcoming. Beyond its borders the land burned flame red, blood red, ghastly black. Men and women, hacked to death, choked the paths and streams as the Armies of Religion c...