Lord Samper's Library

I knew I should have probably stayed out CEX yesterday but I didn't and now I'm two 'Doctor Who' DVDs the better off for it. My wallet may not agree but it's not like anyone asked it so... ;o) One abortive attempt at painting 'Age of Sigmar' miniatures (which I'm really hoping will look better in daylight...), last night, and I thought I'd give 'Timelash' a go. Now here's a story that I remember very little about, other than that I wasn't all that impressed back in 1985. One viewing later and... I remember why now, I remember everything. The TARDIS gets caught in the Timelash, a powerful time corridor that brings the Doctor and Peri to the troubled planet of Karfel. The planet is on the brink of war and ruled by an insane and much feared dictator who punishes Karfelions by throwing them into the Timelash. But why is their leader never seen in person? And what links Karfel to 19 th century Scotland? The Doctor arrives just in time...

Every month, I forget that I have a Shudder subscription until the money goes out of my account and then I suddenly remember. A creature of habit, that's what I am ;o) Once I remember, I frantically start looking for something to watch, just so I can convince myself that I haven't wasted five quid again. And last night? After I'd seen the money leave my account, I saw 'Virus: 32' and figured I'd give it a go. And I'm glad I did, it might even jog my memory about watching more stuff that's on Shudder (no, that would be going too far...) A rapidly spreading virus transforms people into intelligent, ultra-violent, extra-fast psychopaths who want to kill anything that's not like them. After each wave of attack, these monsters are left incapacitated for 32 seconds while they recover their strength. What can you do in 32 seconds if you want to survive? Security guard Iris and her daughter are about to find out. Can they make it through the night...? I wa...

In the twisted remains of the Eightpoints, Archaon has raised the Varanspire as an indomitable bastion against the puppet forces of Order. From its halls, the call of the Everchosen resounds across the Mortal Realms, summoning the worthy to his side. This is a deadly odyssey, for the Exalted Grand Marshall has no use for the weak. Rival warbands of every stripe battle across the wastes of the Bloodwind Spoil, a land filled with unspeakable horrors, to earn Archaon’s favour. Some, such as the Iron Golems, use brute force and unwavering discipline to achieve their ends. Others, like the Corvus Cabal, strike from the shadows, cutting throats and taking trophies of their hunt. All seek to claim their rightful place at the Everchosen’s side, but few will survive even their first nights in this tormented domain. I’m in the middle of a couple of longer books at the moment (‘Shadow of the Gods’ and ‘Empire of Grass’, thanks for asking 😉 ) and I’ll be honest, there are no signs of me finishi...

Apologies for the silence over the weekend... I was in Ipswich for a birthday party and I had my daughters with me as well so... No time for reading at all, let alone blogging! ;o) It was all good fun though, just could have done with a bit more sleep really (serves me right for being cheap and not booking a better hotel room, I'll know better next time). I'll be catching up on that in just a bit but before I do... Lets talk about books, more specifically the books that followed me home over the last week. There were more than a few this time and a good mixture of eBay finds, charity shop finds and just being plain old lucky ;o) And I'll tell you now, some of these looked so good that I've already posted them on Twitter so feel free to scroll past them... The rule is that it's not a 'Book Haul' post without some Guy N. Smith so have some 'The Unseen', courtesy of eBay. Don't expect a post soon though, I've got several other Guy N. Smith books...

This post is a little bit late in the day (even more so considering the Season Finale aired yesterday) but if you'd seen the last couple of days... They weren't too bad actually, just an awful lot of work to fit into not very much day; just like most days actually ;o) I got there in the end though, just one more day until the weekend, so I thought I'd treat myself to a little time away from my monitor and watch the last episode of 'Kenobi'... On my laptop... (you know what I mean though!) There have been bits of 'Kenobi' that kept me coming back, week after week, but not many moments that had me hurrying back. That was the other reason this post is late, I had to stir myself to watch Episode Six. Watch it I did though and, damn... For the last time, for this series anyway, I'll warn you that I'm very like to head deep into spoiler territory. I'll also point you at theTor Post for a plot recap. Beware though, that's pretty damn spoilery as...

A quick post for today as I’ve got so much to do for work… Two things leave me absolutely cold when I'm reading; well... two things as far as this post goes anyway. Poetry and bloody Tom Bombadil... Poetry and I have never got on, possibly because it was something that I had to study at school, rather than discover for myself, and so maybe I haven't discovered the poetry for me? I don't know... Whatever the reason, I generally find poetry to be self indulgent wall paper that delights in showing off, how clever it is, instead of painting a scene or telling a story. I don't have time for that these days, give me something a bit more straightforward instead. And Tom Bombadil... I've never seen the point of Tom Bombadil, an unnecessary interlude in our Hobbit's journey. He is so disconnected from Middle Earth, and it's struggles, that I always end up wondering why he's there, I just want to get on with the good stuff. I'm not going to lie, it's...

Thanks to everyone who voted on my ‘What Do I Watch?’ Tweet last night 😉 You came this close to getting a ‘Blake’s 7’ post (not a bad thing, maybe another time…) but a last minute flurry of votes ended up with a clear winner in ‘The Robots of Death’; hence this post 😊 ‘The Robots of Death’ is one of those stories that I picked up from the library, back in the day, but had never actually seen until last night. I was glad the vote swung in that direction then, especially as ‘The Robots of Death’ is one of those stories that has a reputation as a ‘fan favourite’. If I see a story with that label, it’s pretty much inevitable that I end up watching it just see what the fuss is all about. And so I did… On a distant, barren planet, Storm Mine 4 trawls across bleak deserts and through fierce dust storms in search of rare and valuable metals. Onboard the sand miner is a small skeleton crew, who alternate between indulgent relaxation and skilled mining work. The mundane, day-to-day duties ...

Apologies for the brief period of silence yesterday, it was Father's Day (but you knew that already...) and I was being completely and utterly spoiled by my kids (you didn't know that but it was safe bet wasn't it?) One trip to the Lego store (we love making mini-figures), Waterstones (it's not just me who likes buying books...) and a whole load of pizza later... That was it, all done for another year. I loved it though :o)  And so it's back to the blog and trying to get a little caught up while I also try and get caught up with work on another busy Monday ;o) While I do that, why don't you take a look at the books that found their way back to mine over the course of the week... I need to see if I can go for at least a week without one of these posts, I'm running out of room in my flat... A little 'Father's Day Treat' to myself... ;o) I've had my eye on these books for a while and when I saw them in Waterstones, it was like fate was telling m...

There really should a rule that stops me spending money on rubbish the second I get paid... On the other hand, I got to watch 'Moonfall' last night and... It was pretty much what I'd heard it was. Sometimes that's all you can say but that would make for a dull (and short post) so let me elaborate... A mysterious force knocks the Moon from its orbit around Earth and sends it hurtling on a collision course with life as we know it. With mere weeks before impact and the world on the brink of annihilation, NASA executive and former astronaut Jo Fowler is convinced she has the key to saving us all – but only one astronaut from her past, Brian Harper, and a conspiracy theorist, KC Houseman, believe her. The unlikely heroes will mount an impossible last-ditch mission into space, only to find that our Moon is not what we think it is... Sometimes, after a week of trying to stop everything else falling apart, all I want to do is round the week off by watching this poor planet ge...

Well, it ended up being a little later than I planned but I got there in the end (eventually). It was too hot, last night, to do anything but curl up (next to the open fridge), eat a Mars ice cream and read one of the many comic books that lurk, unread, in my tiny flat. Last night's read was Volume Three of Gail Simone and Walter Geovani's run on 'Red Sonja', a run that I've had a lot of fun with and am so glad that I took a chance on. 'The Forgiving of Monsters' was no exception, of course it wasn't, let me tell you about it. While the Hyrkanian warrior aids a small village against the ravages of a rampant parasite, she picks up the trail of the man she hates and distrusts most in the world: the last survivor of the marauders who murdered her family. In the grip of a vengeful obsession that is all-consuming, the heroine barely recognizes herself. Can even the unconquerable Red Sonja return from a darkness so complete? Having finished Volume Three, I...

One more episode to go… It feels like this story has flown by and my opinion of it has changed pretty much every week; sometimes I love it and sometimes… not so much. Am I just getting all middle aged and cranky or is ‘Star Wars’ just becoming less ‘my thing’? Or is work just a bit too much, at the moment, and I’m too tired to really enjoy any TV at all? I suspect the answer lies somewhere in the middle but anyway… Here we are with the penultimate episode of ‘Obi-Wan Kenobi’, lets do it. Before we do though, here’s the regular paragraph where I warn you about spoilers (there may well be spoilers here) and point you in the direction of the Tor Review for the episode recap (because I’m not doing one here). If you’re still with me, lets talk some Episode Five shall we…? The more I think about it now, the ‘Star Wars’ shows on Disney have really sparked off a conflict in me between the kid who loved (still loves) cool space battles and the older me who is like, ‘that’s cool but what abo...

And so my quest to read all of Guy N. Smith's horror fiction, that doesn't have crabs in it (I've read all those already), continues with no end in sight. Which is no hardship, lets make that clear, but on nights like these I can't help but think, damn how many books did that man write? And, will I ever catch up...? ;o) Maybe, maybe not, but either way, I seem to have accumulated a small pile of Guy N. Smith books (spending far too much time on eBay but anyway...) to work my way through in the meantime. And first from that particular pile... Nineteen eighty seven's 'Demons', sequel to 'Deathbell' (reviewed Here ). As a macabre joke, three youths rehang the satanic Deathbell, which brought terror and destruction to the village a decade before... Once again, the Deathbell rings, enslaving all who hear it, turning its victims into deaf-mute maniacs. Even when the village is flooded to make a reservoir, a drought eerily resurrects the buildings – and t...

By the time last week came to an end, I was ready for some really light reading and I sorted that out with a quick visit to the Brockley Bookshop. I won't go into that too much as I've already spoken about it Here. The 'Aliens' book was just what I was after, the 'Sock Monkey' book was more of a 'that looks like it could be interesting' speculative read. I had no idea what it was about but it was only a fiver so home it came :o) The next couple of days are going to be busy so I thought I'd read this last night, more to say that I'd actually finished a book this week than anything else. Little did I know that I was about to fall in love with this book... A mischievous sock monkey named Uncle Gabby and a bumbling crow named Mr Crow are the heroes of this funny, unsettling, and oddly endearing collection, written and drawn by Tony Millionaire, best known as the creator of the successful alternative comic strip, Maakies. Follow Sock Monkey and Frien...

If you were about the week before last, you would have seen me being very enthusiastic about Michael Reyes’ ‘The Black Veldt’. If you weren’t then no worries, have a click Here for the review 😉 All caught up? Brilliant 😊 Nothing against any other books, that I’ve read recently, but it felt like an absolute age since I’ve been so caught up in a book so when I heard tell of ‘The Last Rubble King’, I didn’t hang around in grabbing myself a copy. I didn’t hang around waiting to read it either, I polished it off last night and… it’s just as good as ‘The Black Veldt’. Let me tell you about it. The Rock Ready Crew: A lean, tight, and deadly outfit of rogue misfits and mutts. Masters of their terrain, the sickest clan of Rubble Kings in the Bronx. They fear nothing. Until this night. The Leader has heard that soft voice calling him from the heart of hell…and he yearns for her touch. The Leader has made a great promise to his queen. He has every intention of keeping it. Devil take th...

Being on call is great, at least as long the phone doesn’t ring… 😉 I’ve been on call this weekend and so far, the phone hasn’t rung once! This means I’ve had the best excuse not to leave the house which in turn means that I’ve had the ideal excuse to catch up on some reading and TV, ‘Doctor Who’ in particular. I’ve got a few ‘Doctor Who’ DVDs that I need to watch and today seemed like a good time to watch ‘Time and the Rani’, where one Doctor bows out and another one takes up the mantle…  Violently wrenched out of time, the TARDIS is brought crashing down onto the planet Lakertya by the villainous Rani. Caught within the maelstrom, the Doctor is forced to regenerate. Imprisoning the Doctor in her stronghold, the Rani seizes upon his vulnerable state. By impersonating his friend Mel, the Rani deceives the unwitting Doctor into helping her achieve her audacious plan. Just what is she up to? Why has she enslaved Albert Einstein and a host of geniuses? And as an asteroid compo...

There are a number of IT Releases going in today, at my work, and I'm the lucky person who's on call in the event of a major incident... So I'm sat here, staring at my phone and hoping that it doesn't ring! ;o) In the meantime then, lets take a look at the books that have found their way to my front door this week. Yes, I know I said I wasn't going to buy any more but, well... No, no excuses, lets just look at the books, It has been ages since I paid the Brockley Bookshop a visit and last week was crazy so I thought I'd treat myself. I used to have a copy of 'The Savage Stars', when I was a kid, so thought I'd try it out again and see if it was the book that I remembered. I've also got a bit of a hankering for 'Predator' and/or 'Alien' books so 'Earth Hive' seemed like a safe bet. Both of these will be read as and when I get a chance, 'Shadow of the Gods' is taking up all my time at the moment... As per usual, it i...

It’s been another one of those weeks (not really bad, just… intense) and my current read, ‘Shadow of the Gods’ seeing as you asked, is nowhere near being finished so I thought I’d grab a book off the ‘Insurance Pile’ and round off the week in a slightly more relaxed manner 😉 I’ve been slowly working my way through the David Gemmell books on my shelf and a few weeks ago, it was the turn of ‘The King Beyond The Gate’, a book that I hadn’t read for a few years; certainly long enough that I’d forgotten large chunks of what happened. The best kind of read then, a guilty pleasure that you can’t quite remember but you know you’ll enjoy 😉 Let me tell you about it… A century has passed since the heroic defence of Dros Delnoch. But the people of the Drenai face a new terror: a mad emperor kept in power by two forces of unsurpassed evil. The Joinings are werebeasts of awesome power. The Dark Templars are warrior-priests whose fighting skills are without equal. Against them, the Drenai face ce...