Lord Samper's Library

I was going to say that original posting will resume tomorrow but the way things are right now, probably safer not to promise anything ;o) In the meantime... I found this old review last night (originally posted Here ) and it feels like it fits in with what this blog is all about right now so, I thought I'd give it another shot here. I’m pretty sure this wouldn’t be the case today but when I was a child at primary school, the shelves were covered with books that I’m sure a teacher today wouldn’t let an eight or nine year old anywhere near. Maybe it was just my school, I don’t know, but I’m not complaining though; I had a lot of fun trawling my way through some great reads. This time round, I’m talking specifically about the ‘Pan’ and ‘Fontana’ horror series; books with the most lurid covers and stories to match inside. I only had myself to blame but at least three quarters of the nightmares that I had as a child came from reading these books and staring at covers festooned with rot...

Well, this is awkward... My plan for today was to talk about my favourite stories from Stephen King's 'Night Shift' collection and I had a great time reading them yesterday. And then, well... I thought I'd double check the blog and it turns out that all my favourite stories from 'Night Shift' have already featured on the blog. Seriously... 'Graveyard Shift' and 'The Mangler'. 'Grey Matter' 'The Lawnmower Man'. Honestly, I don't know what's going on with me at the moment... Anyway. This wouldn't normally be a huge issue (flat full of books and all that) but I'm house/pet-sitting, at the moment, and I've got nothing with me that I've actually finished. So... Unless I magically come up with something else today (possible but unlikely...). 'Past Me' is stepping in again to help me out. A quick post to kick Halloween off then. Have some thoughts on H.P. Lovecraft's (very) short story 'Nyarlathote...

Page Count: 413 Pages. Thanks are due to Alex, of the excellent ‘Spells & Spaceships’ blog, if it hadn’t been for his glowing review of ‘The Daughters War’ , I probably wouldn’t have taken a chance on ‘The Blacktongue Thief’ (it doesn’t matter which way round you read them and ‘The Blacktongue Thief’ was right in front of me so...) As it turns out, I did and I’m so much the better for it. I probably shouldn’t give away too much so early but… It’s a sneaky contender for my ‘Favourite Read of the Year’. There, I said it. Kinch Na Shannack owes the Takers Guild a small fortune for his education as a thief, which includes (but is not limited to) lock-picking, knife-fighting, wall-scaling, fall-breaking, lie-weaving, trap-making, plus a few small magics. His debt has driven him to lie in wait by the old forest road, planning to rob the next traveler that crosses his path. But today, Kinch Na Shannack has picked the wrong mark. Galva is a knight, a survivor of the brutal goblin wars...

I did it, I finally did it... I made it through a hellish 'one more day of work' and now I've got four days of leave to do pretty much whatever I want with. Which will be mostly reading but also a little 'making sure the cat doesn't loose it and kill the rabbit'. Yep, I'm pet sitting and I'll be counting it as a win if I can get through the week without calling out the emergency vet again. I'm really looking forward to just lying on the sofa and reading though; the plan is to finish off a couple of books (that I really should have finished off by now...) and fill in the gaps with some short stories and comic books. In the meantime, work had a couple of surprises for me yesterday so all I was good for last night was re-watching a couple of movies. One that's still worth a watch, the other... Maybe not as much. 'Deathgasm' (2015) Two teenage heavy metal fans seek to escape mundanity through music but get a lot more than they bargained for w...

Sorry to chuck another 'recycled post' at you but yesterday ended up being a work day, It shouldn't have been but it was and that meant no reading for me (and I really needed it as well) If that wasn't bad enough, today looks like it could be fairly brutal so I'm parking the blog, for today, and giving myself back a little energy to tackle everything else. Normal(ish) service should resume tomorrow as I have the rest of the week off and I will be doing nothing but reading ;o) In the meantime, the last few Mondays have ended up being 'Doctor Who' days so I thought I'd continue that a little longer with 'Illegal Alien'; a book where the enthusiasm of 'past me' was so great that my present self is half tempted to seek out another copy for a re-read. Maybe, we'll see. The review was first posted on an older blog of mine ( Here ) but it's worth dusting down and giving it another airing so... Here goes :o)  The Blitz is at its height. A...

  This is officially my all time favourite cover art for a Lovecraft collection and it just so happens to be the collection where I first came across 'The Colour Out Of Space'. I'm 95% sure that I still have this book lying around somewhere, I'm going to have to go on a hunt now. But this post has only just begun and I'm already digressing... ;o) I'm trying not to recycle too many posts, from older blogs, at the moment but I've got a lot of work to catch up with today and I didn't want another 'post-less day' so, here we are. I find myself preferring Clark Ashton Smith's tales these days but 'The Colour Out Of Space' is still a favourite Lovecraft tale of mine so I thought I'd recycle a post of mine (from March 2012, if you want to read the original post) and let it have its time here. Regular posting should resume tomorrow (fingers crossed); for now though, lets revisit 'The Colour Out Of Space'... The narrator has been s...

Runtime: 1 hour, 34 minutes. All the purchasable horror movies on Prime Video seem to be on special offer, no idea why... ;o) Yesterday was another long old day so when I finally made it home, I thought I'd take advantage of the sale prices and have myself a little horror with my dinner. I'd seen the 'Carnage Counts' video for 'In A Violent Nature' and was intrigued enough to make that my choice for the evening. Sometimes the decision making process is as simple as that ;o) There's not a lot to tell, for reasons that will soon become obvious, but here's what I've got. When a locket is removed from a collapsed fire tower in the woods. the rotting corpse of Johnny, a vengeful spirit spurred on by a horrific 60-year old crime, is resurrected and becomes hellbent on retrieving it. Johnny has lost his locket and woe betide anybody that gets in the way of his search. 'In A Violent Nature' is your standard 'slasher in the woods offing teenagers...

I didn't have time for a lot of reading yesterday, my youngest daughter's school Harvest Festival only took an hour out of my day but it somehow left me scrabbling to get everything else done on either side... Having said that though, I wouldn't have missed it. It was her last Harvest Festival before she goes to high school next year so definitely a little bittersweet for both of us. But I'm going off on a tangent aren't I...? You're not that bothered and that's ok ;o) You're here for the book talk so let me oblige.  Once I'd got everything, more or less, done for the day, I didn't have a lot of time left so I settled down with a couple of comic books and had a read. One a new read, the other as unsettling as ever, let me tell you about them. 'Abe Sapien: The Drowning' - Mike Mignola & Jason Shawn Alexander (Dark Horse Books) A century ago, paranormal investigator Edward Grey fought and destroyed a powerful warlock off the coast of th...

Just a quick one today as I have a hell of a lot to get done, over the course of the day, so really should consider trying to get ahead of myself with a little sleep first… I’m awake right now though so lets have a little chat about ‘Azrael’, the trailer definitely piqued my interest and the movie itself was only a fiver, on Prime Video, so I couldn’t really lose… Could I…? As it happens, no I didn’t :o) ‘Azrael’ raises more questions than it answers and that’s not a bad thing here, I’d say it’s well worth a look if you have a Shudder subscription or five quid to spare. Now this is the paragraph where I would normally drop a little ‘cut and pasted’ summary of what the movie is all about… But not this time. All we know is that the Rapture happened and that a group of the people left behind renounced the sin of speech by removing their vocal cords. That’s it, that’s all the back story you get. No sooner has that been laid out then we’re onto Azrael and her lover being captured, by this ...

Page Count: 124 Pages After finally finishing ‘Terrifier 2’ I was after a complete change of scenery. I mean, you would be wouldn’t you? ;o) The great thing about ‘Terrifier’ is that literally anything else is a complete change of scenery and this time round, my eyes fell on the small pile of ‘Doctor Who’ books that I bought the other week. I ended up going with ‘The Keeper of Traken’, mostly because of that page count (I wasn’t after another long read…) but also because I watched it a few years ago and wanted to see how the book held up to the TV serial. Here’s the link if you fancy a read ;o) Anyway, lets talk about ‘The Keeper of Traken’… Under the watchful control of generations of guardians known as Keepers, the harmonious power of the bioelectric Source has enabled the planet of Traken to exist in peace for millennia. The current Keeper’s millennium is about to end but before his powers wan completely, he senses the approach of an all-pervading force of evil about to inhabit the...

I’ve been enjoying the ‘Terrifier’ franchise (which sounds slightly weird if you’ve seen the first ‘Terrifier’ movie but hopefully you know what I mean!) so when I saw that there was a novelization for ‘Terrifier 2’, well… There was no way that I wasn’t going to pick it up. As you already know, I have a soft spot for movie novelizations (it’s a childhood nostalgia thing) and you’ve got to support stuff if you want to see more of it so… That was that. Now, I’m not as quick a reader as I used to be but I can still zip through books fairly quickly. This one though, not so much… Twelve days after picking it up, I finally finished it yesterday afternoon. And now I’ve got my head round it a little bit, let me tell you about it... It has been one year since the sleepy town of Miles County survived the murderous spree of demented killer Art the Clown, but little do they know the nightmare is about to begin anew. Resurrected by a sinister entity, Art is back with an appetite for murder and ma...

So, all that talk about 'no more books' last week? I sounded like I meant it didn't I...? Well, I did but then yesterday happened and it turns out that last week was a bit of a false start. Turns out that I can't do a little early Christmas shopping without getting myself a little something. And it also turns out that I shouldn't go into charity shops while I'm waiting for my kids' bubble teas... Who'd have thought it? Erm yep, I need to start again :o) In the meantime, lets take a quick look at what I picked up, we might as well... ;o) I've had a copy of 'Promise of Blood' sat on the shelf, for a long time, but never got round to picking it up, just because I wanted to find the other two books first (and just read the whole lot in one fell swoop). Well, the universe gave me a little nudge by placing 'The Crimson Campaign' and 'The Autumn Republic' at eye level when I went into the British Heart Foundation shop. I'd better...

I had the day off yesterday and somehow managed to spend just over half of it asleep. Which was briliant by the way, I thoroughly recommend you give it a go ;o) A large chunk of the rest of it was spent at the hospital (nothing serious, just something that I really needed to get checked out) and by the time I got back, I wasn't in the mood for any reading at all. So down I sat with a pizza and a couple of movies, let me tell you about them... 'Hellraiser: Bloodline' (1996) In the 22nd century, a scientist attempts to right the wrongs of his ancestor and finally close the portal to hell. Pinhead would much rather that portal remain open though and so the final battle begins. Well, I say 'final battle'... There have been a few 'Hellraiser' movies since 'Bloodline'. My head canon has this film as the final one though with everything else fitting in just after 'Hell on Earth'. I always enjoy watching 'Bloodline' but never without a little...

Page Count: Four pages and about four lines. I found ‘Sadastor’ in the collection ‘Out of Space & Time: Volume 2’ but if you can’t find a copy, you can always read it over at ‘Eldritch Dark’ ( Link ). It takes barely any time at all to read but is definitely worth the time you put into it. Quick thoughts follow (you’re really not going to get much more than that from a story that’s only a few pages long…) ‘Sadastor’ is ‘the tale that was told to a fair lamia by the demon Charnadis as they sat together on the top of Mophi, above the sources of the Nile, in those years when the sphinx was young’. It’s a lot more than that though, of course it is. We’ve got a beautifully told travelogue through the outer realms of Clark Ashton Smith’s universe and it’s a universe of wonders that you feel privileged to have been shown. The journey may only be a few paragraphs long but Ashton Smith literally fits an entire universe into those few paragraphs, seemingly without any effort at all. And the...

Every time Halloween comes round, I promise myself that I’ll watch more horror films and read more horror fiction; we’re halfway through the month and you can see how that’s going so far… There’s still plenty of October left though so lets see how I do from now until the end of the month ;o) First up is ‘Hellraiser 3’ which I watched last night, mostly because I love it (you can tell how this post is going to go, sorry…) but also because it was cheap on Prime and I’m still just on the wrong side of payday. Here goes… TV reporter Joey Summerskill’s life is changed forever when she witnesses the horrific death of a teenager, torn apart by bloody chains. Joey’s search for a story leads her to the Lament Configuration Box but it has already been opened, waking an old evil from its slumber… Now Pinhead walks the earth once more, creating a new army of Cenobites from the transmuted flesh of his victims; his one desire to reclaim the Box. Even with help from an unexpected source, Joey Summers...

I saw this not so long ago, on sale (four pounds) in the British Heart Foundation shop, and thought to myself, ‘you can’t go too far wrong for four quid, especially when you’ve just been paid and you’ve definitely got four quid spare.’ And that was that settled. ‘Mr. Higgins Comes Home’ came home with me but it took me a little while longer to finally get round to reading it. ‘Mr Higgins Comes Home’ is a very slender graphic novel, there are no page numbers but you can tell just by looking at it; that and the fact that it all it took was a bus ride to the pharmacy, and back, to finish it off. There’s still stuff to be said about it though and we are here, so… Lets do that, shall we…? Preparations begin at Castle Golga for the annual festival of the undead, as a pair of fearless vampire killers question a man hidden away in a monastery on the Baltic Sea. The mysterious Mr. Higgins wants nothing more than to avoid the scene of his wife's death, and the truth about what happened to hi...

This never works normally, but there's a little part of me that's still an optimist so... here goes :o) Books are coming into the flat a lot faster than they're leaving (you can always tell how depressed I am by the number of new books that I order...) and I'm already way behind on my reading plans. To be fair, I've been way behind on my reading plans for a few years now but I'm feeling it today :o) With that in mind then, I'm going to try and read just the books I already own between now and Christmas. Yeah, I know but I've got to give it a go ;o) With all that said then... Lets take a look at the books that came home with me (or turned up on the doorstep) over the last week ;o) It hasn't been the worst week but it wasn't the best either so, here we are! Apologies in advance if the photo is a little out of focus; I suspect that I need new glasses ;o)  Not as a bad haul really, looks like there's something here to cater for all tastes (well, ...

Because damn that was an assault on the senses and I'm still trying to process it... In a good way though :o) You're probably after a little more than that though. I know I said 'quick thoughts' but don't worry, not that quick! It's not often that you'll see me go to the cinema these days, I'll happily wait for most stuff to make its way onto Prime now, but there are definitely exceptions to the rule (and Catford Mews cinema is nice and cheap). 'Terrifier 3' is one them. I've been looking forward to this movie, ever since the end of 'Terrifier 2' , so bear that in mind as you read on... Five years after Art the Clown's Halloween massacre, Sienna and her brother struggle to rebuild their shattered lives. As the holiday season approaches, they try to embrace the Christmas spirit and leave the horrors of the past behind. That's easier said than done though, Art the Clown has returned to Miles County and he has brought a friend wi...

Both tales are taken from the collection ‘The Lure of Atlantis’, edited by Michael Wheatley. But you knew that already, the cover art was probably a bit of a giveaway ;o) Anyway… Before I get onto the short stories, have a little blurb about the collection as a whole, All about us on the stairs was some of the most exquisite statuary I have ever seen... save for a few pieces carved in the form of some hideous beast, the like of which I have never seen on earth...' The sunken continent of Atlantis has dwelt in the collective imagination of writers and artists for centuries; a bejewelled paradox bubbling with themes of irrecoverable loss and quixotic faith in its rediscovery. This new anthology collects stories from the vast, yet seldom recognised, vault of Atlantean fiction from the Golden Age of Weird Tales magazine, presented in four core sections, perfect for diving into: - Atlantis Rediscovered – in which the ruins of ancient Atlantis are found again. - Atlantis Revisited –...

Page Count: 127 Pages I wouldn’t normally go for two ‘Doctor Who’ book posts in a week but, yep… it’s still a week for quick reads and they don’t come a lot quicker than a book that’s only a hundred and twenty seven pages long ;o) It wasn’t just that though, I’ve never seen ‘The Sun Makers’ so until I finally get round to finding the DVD, the book was the best way to finally experience the story. And that’s just what I’ve done over the last couple of days. Like I said, there isn’t a lot of book to talk about but I’ve still got a few things to say about it :o) Everyone knows that Pluto is a barren airless rock. So naturally the Doctor is surprised when he discovers that artificial suns, an ultra-modern industrial city and a group of colonists being worked – and taxed – to death in this inhospitable and supposedly underdeveloped part of the universe… With the help of his companion Leela and the faithful K9, the Doctor takes on the mysterious and powerful Company, ruthless exploiter of pl...