Lord Samper's Library

Page Count: 38 Pages While I’m trying to finish off longer books (‘Son of the Forest’ and ‘The God is not Willing’, both excellent reads so far), this week is very much about the shorter reads but also, short reads that I know I’ll enjoy. Life isn’t bad right now, just a lot of stuff happening and you know what that means… I don’t want to be faffing around with books that I’m not sure about, life is too short for that right now. I’m after reads that I know I’ll enjoy and having thoroughly enjoyed ‘The Carbis Incident’ and ‘Blood Sands’ ; I knew I’d enjoy ‘Nightsider Imperialis’ too. The long and short of it is that I really did enjoy ‘Nightsider Imperialis’, let me tell you about it… When the t’au bring down an Imperial Navy Lightning Strike Fighter, Major Wulf Khan must venture deep behind enemy lines to rescue the pilot before they – and the secrets they carry – fall into xenos hands. Well damn, what a read 😊 I thought waiting on the phone, while IT support tried to fix my laptop, w

Sorry for the radio silence over the weekend. I'll be honest, I wasn't even thinking of the blog as I was really busy with a whole load of other stuff; you wouldn't find it interesting at all but it was all stuff that I had to deal with so that's exactly what I did. That and nip into my local for drinks at the end of the day. Oh yeah, and buy a few more books that I really don't need but somehow ended up coming home with me anyway. And to make matters worse, I already had two of them... It turns out that middle age has left me a sucker for earlier editions and different cover art ;o) Come on, lets take a look... After reading 'Closure Limited' the other day, I was left wondering whether it was time for a long overdue re-read of 'World War Z'. Seeing that very book, on the shelves of Brockley Books, answered that question for me and it's now on a pile somewhere, waiting to be read. As is 'Morningstar' and yes, I do already have a copy of

Page Count: 32 Pages I never really got the hang of RSS readers, and all that, so the other day, I just did what I normally do, grabbed a whole load of posts from the blogroll of ‘We Learn By Writing’ (a favourite blog of mine) and read through them over breakfast. I really wish that I could remember which of those blogs featured a post on ‘The Horror from the Mound’ now… I’m trying to read more of Howard’s short stories, that aren’t Conan, and figured that I’d give ‘The Horror from the Mound’ a go. One Kindle purchase later...  I really enjoyed it but have no idea who to thank for the recommendation… Oh well, I’m here now so why don’t I tell you about it anyway ;o) Quick thoughts are once again the order of the day, ‘The Horror from the Mound’ is only thirty two pages long and as ever, I’ve got a stack of work to catch up with in the morning… ‘Steve Brill did not believe in ghosts or demons, Juan Lopez did. But neither the caution of of the one nor the sturdy skepticism of the other

Page Count: 33 Pages Yes I’m in the office today, how did you guess…? 😉 The page count goes down and it’s a Black Library read (more often than not) so, here we are. I ended up really enjoying ‘Longshot’ , and ‘Transplants’ too, so when I realised that there was a another prequel to be read, I went straight out and bought it in anticipation of an early morning commute that went exactly how I thought it would. At only 33 pages long, there isn’t enough of ‘Memories of Broken Glass’ for an in-depth post so we’re all about quick thoughts and first impressions here today. Hope you don’t mind… 😉 Darya and Ullaeus lie in ambush on the glass deserts of Kizmir, waiting for their high-value target to pass along a scouted route in order to spring their trap. As they look for ways to distract themselves from the seemingly endless hours beneath the baking sun, Darya tells the story of her last mission for the Cochlerati Janissaries and how she was dragged from their ranks and given to the Cadian

Page Count: 124 Pages. I will never say no to a zombie book so when I saw this one the other day, in the Greenwich Oxfam, well, you know ;o) It’s been a years since I last read ‘World War Z’ but it has stayed with me (and I actually liked the film, it wasn’t that bad…) so the prospect of reading more stories from that setting was definitely an appealing one. And maybe that was my first mistake, don’t make assumptions before you’ve read the book Graeme… I’ll explain in a minute. Now, this would be the paragraph where I normally copy and paste some blurb but ‘Closure, Limited’ is so short and to the point that it is literally very much the title on the cover; a collection of zombie tales, a couple from the ‘World War Z’ setting and another couple that aren’t but are included here anyway. And that’s what you need to know before reading this book, if you’re a fan of ‘World War Z’ (the book) then only half of this book is really for you. That’s not to say that this book is a dud, far from i

The other day, I remembered that I've got Audible on my phone so thought I'd revisit a book or two while I worked. It only turned out to be the one book, in the end, but it was 'Throne of Lies' so that was ok ;o) It's actually been years since I last listened to 'Throne of Lies' , long enough ago that it was on a CD, but my opinions of it are pretty much the same so I thought I'd do myself a favour and post the review that I posted back in 2010. As ever, time is at a bit of a premium, you know how it is. I've tweaked this review a little, mostly because I'm not listening to a CD now but other little reasons as well, so if you want to, you can read the original review over Here . If that's not your thing, no worries, just keep reading... ;o) The traitorous Night Lords Space Marines chapter strikes from the shadows, feeding on the decaying remnants of the Imperium of Mankind. They are not sworn to any one of the Chaos powers but their quest rem

The plan is that you won't see too many of these posts this year as I really want to concentrate on reading the books that I already own instead of buying too many new ones. It will hopefully save me a bit of money and I'll be able to rediscover some old favourites at the same time (as well as reading all those books that I've bought over the last five years and then left on the shelves). We'll see how that pans out... ;o) Having said all of that then, of course I went out and bought books this weekend. I had some time to myself and wanted to get out of the house; I mean... I could have done that without buying more books but it never seems to work out like that does it? Oh well, I guess a few more books on the TBR Pile won't hurt. Let me introduce you to them... I saw these two books in Greenwich Oxfam and had to grab them. A little voice, at the back of my mind, was trying to point out that I already had a copy of 'The Lays of Beleriand' but by that point,

Page Count: 23 Pages Prior to my move, back in November, a flurried burst of packing led me to the realization that I had somehow managed to buy three copies of ‘Conan the Swordsman’. All different covers but yep… That’s what happens when you see a copy of ‘Conan the Swordsman’, in the wild, and have to make a quick decision ;o) Anyway, seeing these books got me thinking that I really should read at least one of them and that’s why we’re here today. Reading time is at a premium so in terms of posts, I’m going to take this book either one story at a time or maybe two or three at once, we’ll see how I feel. With that said then… Lets jump into a very early chapter in Conan’s life and see what he makes of zombies… As a young man, Conan finds himself adventuring with Njal of the Aesir and his warband, raiding Vanir and Hyperborean outposts. Now they are on a mission that is far more urgent… Njal’s daughter has been taken by Hyperborean slavers and must be rescued. Even if she can be rescued

My reading time vanished yesterday (it happens) so I was kind of left at a loose end for blog posts today... Until I saw this trailer for 'Abigail', courtesy of Black Gate . Before I show you, fair warning... This trailer doesn't so much hint at the contents of the movie as much as it flat out tells you so... spoiler alert. If you're still here, here goes... April is a little way off but I think this is one that I'll definitely check out at the cinema rather than wait for it on Prime etc. Looks like it could be fun :o)

Page Count: 351 Pages. Well… This wasn’t the post that I had planned on writing, a couple of days ago, when I was all ‘oh no, I can’t get into anything especially ‘Longshot’ but somehow, here we are ;o) It turns out that a little bit of Clark Ashton Smith was all that was needed in terms of a reset, ‘Longshot’ came to work with me, yesterday, and I polished off the final pages last night. Job done? Not quite… I still need to tell you about it ;o) Here goes… Transplant. Cadian. Sniper. Legend. Sergeant Darya Nevic is all of these and more… but behind the stories stands a soldier haunted by the unwelcome fame her successes have brought. During the Cadian 217th’s assault on the manufactorum world of Attruso, Darya finds herself out of her depth, in a war that is fought with words as much as with weapons. As a fearsome winter closes in and her men begin to die around her, she will be forced to confront her doubts and make an impossible choice – to become the figurehead her soldiers ne

Page Count: 395 pages. The ‘Reading Loft’ was cool but I’m enjoying having all of my books in plain view 😊 Makes it a lot easier for me to track down the ones that I’ve read but never quite got round to posting about here. Books like ‘Leviathan’ for instance. Now here’s an example of what happens when I go Christmas shopping by myself; I end up coming home with a copy of ‘Leviathan’ and doing my Christmas shopping online the next day… But anyway. I can never get my head round the ‘Warhammer 40K’ rules, and my painting leaves a hell of a lot to be desired, but the release of Tenth Edition caught my eye as it came with ‘Leviathan’, the book of the game 😉 I love Hinks’ fantasy work but I’d never read any of his 40K work so ‘Leviathan’ looked like the best place to jump in and see what was what. It took a little while for me to get hold of the paperback edition but I did and here we are 😊 Let me tell you about it. Nothing too in-depth, work was intense yesterday and looks like being sim

Seriously, that's what they wrote, 'Last Final Trailer' :o) I have questions but they can pretty much all be boiled down to... What are they going to call the next trailer...? I hope we never have to find out ;o) Oh well, here's another trailer, still looking good etc etc...

Page Count: Eight Pages. It feels like a little while since I last visited any of the worlds of Clark Ashton Smith and with the way my reading has been going just recently, I figured that maybe another short trip would do me some good. And it did, but I’ll tell you about that in a minute. In the meantime… In the triumvirate of Lovecraft, Howard and Smith, someone was always going to be left holding up the rear but it always feels a little unfair that Smith was the unlucky recipient of the third place ‘trophy’. Lovecraft may have come up with the concept of Cosmic Horror but Smith is the better storyteller, in this setting (and funnily enough, ‘The Treader of the Dust’ is a Mythos tale), and I feel like he deserves a little more credit for that. Anyway… My attention span is shot at the moment so when I saw that ‘The Treader of the Dust’ was only a few pages long (all of eight pages), I knew it was the read for me. I found ‘The Treader of the Dust’ in the ‘Lost Worlds’ collection but you

January and I never get on well. I'm not going to go into the reasons, lets just say that they all combine to make January a pretty bleak ol' month and I'm always glad to see the back of it. I can usually escape into a book but this particular January is doing its level best to stop that... My 'Reading Update' is that I can't seem to get into anything at the moment. The best I've managed is a hundred and thirty four pages of Rob Young's 'Longshot' and then I came to a grinding halt; nothing to do with the book at all (I'd recommend it in fact), more about my state of mind. I've put 'Longshot' to one side, for now, and will give it another go in a month or so. So, what's a Graeme to do in the meantime? I'm not going to stop reading but what I am going to do is put everything (that I'm stuck on) to one side and revisit some old favourites. I'm also going to see if I can find any of the books that I read during last y

Page Count: 174 Pages Another day, another ‘Doctor Who’ post 😉 Things have been a little rough recently so comfort reading has led me to perhaps the most comfortable of my comfort reading choices. ‘Doctor Who’ is the kind of read where I know how things will ultimately pan out but the stakes are still high enough that I have to keep reading in the meantime. Not only that, the Doctor is always a good choice of character to hang a story off. All of that (and maybe a little bit more) led me back to ‘Doctor Who’ and this time it was the turn of ‘The Eaters of Light’; a story that I’d seen on TV years ago but long enough ago that I was hoping the book would be the fresher for it. If I can settle on another book that I actually finish, you’ll hear about it here. In the meantime, lets talk a little about ‘The Eaters of Light’. I’m doing this on my lunch break, and the book is fairly slim, so we’re talking quick thoughts more than anything, You knew that already though 😉 "To protect a m

Page Count – 37 Pages I’m doing my commute reading the other way round this week. I actually bought ‘The Slithering Shadow’ last week, for the commute read home, but that didn’t happen and so ‘The Slithering Shadow’ became this week’s read for the trip into the office. And it wasn’t a bad read either 😊 I’m still not big on ‘Reading Resolutions’ but one thing I would like to do this year is read more stuff by Robert E. Howard. I’m steadily working my way through Clark Ashton Smith and Lovecraft gets his turn as well; it doesn’t seem fair to leave Howard out so here we are. There’s plenty to choose from but it’s inevitable that there will be Conan tales amongst that reading and so again, here we are 😉 ‘The Slithering Shadow’ was originally published in the September 1933 issue of ‘Weird Tales’ but can also be found under the guise of ‘Xuthal of the Dusk’ in other publications. Project Gutenberg has a free copy Here but I found my copy on Amazon. Lets talk about it a little… Conan and

Another Doctor Who post for you today ;o) The move turned up a whole load of unread Doctor Who books and they’ve been the ideal comfort reading for a ‘last few weeks’ that have been intense for one reason or another. I’ll try and mix these up with some other reads, that I have on the go, but in the meantime, lets talk a little bit about ‘Remembrance of the Daleks’. I had a few things to say about the TV serial, back in 2021 , so it was probably inevitable that I’d pay the book a visit at some point and see how that held up against its small screen counterpart. As it happened, damn… That was not the story I was expecting, but in a good way... With unfinished business to attend to, the Seventh Doctor returns to where it all began: Coal Hill School in London in 1963. Last time he was here, the Doctor left something behind – a powerful Time Lord artefact that could unlock the secrets of time travel. Can the Doctor retrieve it before two rival factions of Daleks track it down? And even if

Here’s another book that I’ve always meant to read, finally manage to track down a copy and then promptly left it unread in my old loft for far too long. 2024 seems to be about catching up with all these unread books so now my collection is a little more accessible, here we are 😊 Just a quick one today because ‘Mouse Guard’ has been around for a while now and I suspect that everything that needs to be said has been. Also, well… There’s not an awful lot to this book, let me tell you more. Mice struggle to live safely and prosper amongst harsh conditions and a host of predators. Thus the Mouse Guard was formed: more than just soldiers that fight off intruders, they are guides for common mice looking to journey without confrontation from one hidden village to another. The Guard patrol borders, find safe ways and paths through dangerous territories and treacherous terrain, watch weather patterns, and keep the mouse territories free of predatory infestation. They do so with fearless dedica

Page Count: 46 Pages You can tell when I’ve had a day in the office… A short story post will inevitably appear the next day ;o) No matter what the original reading plan was, I’ve developed a happy knack for finding something short and sweet to read on my phone instead. Last night was no different, until suddenly… it was. An Amazon spam email led to a ‘List of Titles I might like’ which ultimately led me to ‘Overdue’ and I thought, ‘You know what Graeme, lets do this.’ And so I did. I’m rubbish at reading/finishing Lawrence’s longer works (that’s on me, not his books) but I’ll happily pick up any of his short stories that I come across. And that is what made the bus ride home last night a joy (you won’t normally hear me say that). I was expecting another good read but I never expected ‘Overdue’ to be so… beautiful. The accompanying blurb, on Amazon, was pretty short and to the point - Yute and Wentworth investigate a strange connection between several bookshops. And before I get onto th

Page Count: 249 Pages I’ve always had a little bit of a soft spot for the ‘Warrior’s Gate’ novelisation (one of the first ‘Doctor Who’ books that I picked up way back in the eighties) so when I heard that an expanded novelisation was in the works, I settled down and commenced waiting patiently. I mean, I already had the original book but I’m a sucker for anything that’s ‘expanded’ and there were also a couple of extra short stories that piqued my interest 😉 I finally grabbed myself a copy, back in August last year, but me being me, I didn’t get round to reading it until yesterday. I would say that it’s funny how often that happens but…You knew that already 😉 Anyway… If you want to read my thoughts on the televised serial then you’ll want to be clicking right Here . If you don’t, or you have and just got back, keep reading/scrolling ever downwards and I’ll tell you about the book… There are a few demands on my day (and that’s not including tidying up after the girl’s pet rabbit when I

I always have these vague ‘reading resolutions’, for the New Year and without fail, they all come to absolutely nothing. I still read loads, just none of the books that I meant to… This year is panning out slightly differently and I think I’m going to enjoy it. All the books that were originally ‘out of sight, out of mind’, in the loft at my old place, are now all over my new place and wherever I look, I’m constantly discovering books that I totally forgot I had but now quite fancy reading. Books like ‘Cursed City’ for example… I’m not going to tell you how long ‘Cursed City’ was sat in my loft, lets just say it was long enough for me to totally forget it was there and buy myself another copy… Oh well. I found it on the shelf the other day (only the one copy now) and figured it was way overdue a read, let me tell you about it… Ulfenkarn is a city of nightmares. Its vampiric rulers have indulged their bloodlust in every shadow-clad alley, turning the once-proud metropolis into a charnel

Well, this was going to be a (slightly belated) New Year’s Post but then I realised that the prospect of a whole New Year is bringing no small amount of dread and panic to this Graeme and you don’t want a whole post of me trying to keep it together so… Lets take a look at a couple of Warhammer Short Reads that have seen me through the journey to work (back in the office today) and through most of my lunch hour too. You’ve probably noticed that it has been a while since I last posted a review (Christmas and all that…) and I’m trying to get my head back in it so quick thoughts are once again the order of the day, at least for today 😉 With that said, lets head back (or forward, depends where you’re coming from) to the 31 st Millennium and a couple of major turning points in the Horus Heresy…   ‘The Nine’ – Justin D. Hill With the loyalist blockade of Mars broken and the Emperor’s hierarchies shattered, Sota-Nul – a potent Adept of the Dark Mechanicum – makes her play for power as

A proper New Year's post will arrive shortly but I saw this trailer, just now, and had to post as it looks absolutely gorgeous. Check it out and tell me that you don't agree... ;o) It's a few days old now but I've spent the last week either with my daughters or in the pub so you'll understand why I didn't see it sooner, Christmas and all that... 'Dune: Part Two' will be along in March and I'm getting pretty excited to see it. How about you?