Lord Samper's Library

Like the title says, this will probably be the last post for a while. Tomorrow, I'm off to hospital for a spot of surgery; nothing serious (it just really, really needs to be done) but it's going to take a couple of weeks off work to get over and I'll don't think I'll be in any mood to blog during that time. I'm sure I'll pop my head round the door on Bluesky, I'll just be reading books rather than writing about them ;o) And I've got loads to keep me going, including the following ones that I've picked up over the last week... I read the original Frank Herbert books, years ago, and never felt the urge to go back, let alone read the ones written by his son and Kevin J. Anderson (are they any good?), even though I still have a couple lurking on my shelves. That was until I saw this copy of 'Dune Messiah' on the shelf in Greenwich Oxfam and the cover not only really caught my eye but also gave me no option but to buy it. I should read 'D...

I've got a busy weekend ahead of me, what with one thing and another, so I thought I'd take a little of the load off by pinching another post from the dim annals of an old blog of mine. You wouldn't believe it but I really try not to do this too often but like I said, busy weekend and Monday is going to be brutal as I try and clear as much work as possible before going into hospital on Tuesday (nothing serious, just something that really needs to be done). Which kind of leaves me here, with another old 'Doctor Who' post for your reading pleasure ;o) The full review can be found Here but you won't be missing much by not reading it (not unless you really want to hear me wax lyrical about cheese on toast, I love cheese on toast...) And it's also worth mentioning that since this review originally went up, I have finally watched 'The Ark in Space' and you read about that Here if you like ;o) 'Doctor Who' was an absolutely massive part of my chil...

'Alien: Romulus' deserved to have a post all to itself but I have been watching other movies over the last few days. This is a quick post where I can get them all in one place and say a little bit about them all. You know, like all the other movie posts here ;o) Here goes... 'Final Days' (2020) As the world crumbles outside, Aidan barricades himself inside his flat. With the infected at his door, Aidan finds that it's the loneliness that is the greatest threat to his sanity. Until one day, he looks out of his window to see a fellow survivor in the flat opposite... 'Final Days' has been sat in my queue for far too long so the other day, I took the plunge and gave it a watch. It's not a bad movie, a little lightweight and straightforward but tense in all the right places and an interesting study in loneliness. What I really got the most out of though was taking the time to listen to what the infected were screaming as they did their thing, it added an int...

I somehow never got round to watching ‘Alien: Romulus’ at my local cinema (and there’s a big question over whether anyone will watch anything there ever again but that’s another story) but after a few weeks of waiting for the price, on Prime Video, to come down, ‘Romulus’ suddenly became affordable and that was my cue to grab a copy, order a pizza in and give it a watch. I’ll be honest, I’m more of a ‘Predator’ fan myself but I’ll never pass up the chance of watching an ‘Alien’ movie and the prospect of an ‘Alien’ movie directed by the same guy who directed the ‘Evil Dead’ remake was an intriguing one to me. So, slice of pizza in hand, I started watching and… While scavenging a derelict space station, a group of young colonists looking for a better life find the most terrifying life form in the universe instead. And there may well be something even more terrifying on board… As I’ve got older, I’ve found that my natural ‘movie run-time tolerance’ peters out at about an hour and half. An...

Last night was a bit hectic so I never made it round to writing a blog post for today. Lets just say for now that 'Alien: Romulus' was as good as I'd hoped it would be; not brilliant but good, solid 'Xenomorph Fun'. Maybe I'll even go into a little more detail about that soon, we'll see. All of which led me to looking for an old post (from an older blog) that I could purloin. I found this quote instead, I think it's one that we can all do with remembering every now and then. 'This is the reader's book. All proper names are therefore to be pronounced in any way he chooses, except in conversation with another reader, in which case the two must settle their differences as best they can, for there is no rule.' From the 'Author's Note', 'The Well of the Unicorn' (Fletcher Pratt) Because if life is too short to be reading books that you don't enjoy, it's certainly too short for you to be tying yourself in knots over whet...

It took me a little while to get round to reading ‘The Last Shield’ but I got there in the end and I’m really glad that I did. I know, I’d normally say something along those lines at the end of the post but sometimes, a book is just so much fun that you have to open the proceedings by saying exactly how you feel. And ‘The Last Shield’ is a hell of a lot of fun, mostly because I’m a bit of a fan of ‘Die Hard’ but there’s a lot more to it than that. Let me try and explain a little better... The ancient forest realm of Sunweald is bordered on two sides by far mightier nations – a precarious situation. At its centre, the Sunweald Palace is home to the Lord Regent and the heir to the throne, together with numerous precious and powerful artefacts. The Palace is protected by the realm's elite Shields, dedicated to guarding the royal line against all foes. A group of vicious brigands called the Wildwood Reivers have been stealing arcane artefacts and smuggling them across the borders, o...

Page Count: 141 Pages I actually managed to get a couple of books read over the weekend, go me :o) I’m going to leave ‘The Last Shield’ a little longer, just to let it percolate in my head, but a ‘Doctor Who’ novelization is always little more straightforward so, here we are. The further back I go with the Doctor’s stories, the less experience I have of them; go right back to the first Doctor and I’ve seen/read ‘The Dalek Invasion of Earth’ and read ‘Doctor Who and the Zarbi’ & ‘Doctor Who and the Tenth Planet’. Not a lot then, considering just how many stories there are. When I saw ‘The Time Meddler’ in the shop then, I had to buy it so I could fill in that gap, just a little bit more. When the TARDIS materialises on an apparently deserted Northumbrian beach, Steven disputes the Doctor’s claim that they have travelled back to the eleventh century. The discovery of a modern wristwatch in a nearby forest merely reinforces his opinion. But it is 1066, the most important date in Engli...

I did get a little reading in yesterday, not loads but the 'Easiest TBR Pile' just got a little easier to complete ;o) I'm saving that post for sometime this coming though; for now, lets just say that 'The Last Shield' was an excellent read and you could do a lot worse than give it read. Especially if you like 'Die Hard'. What does that mean for today though (especially as my youngest daughter is coming over later and no reading will happen at all)? Well, I'm taking the opportunity to 'rescue' an old post from an old blog and let it have its time here. There is a lot more to Glen Cook's output than just 'The Black Company' or 'Garret P.I', as I found out back in 2008 (and damn I feel old just writing that)... The full review is Here but all the important stuff is below ;o) The city of Qushmarrah once shivered in terror under the despotic rule of the evil wizard Nakar, now it grumbles uneasily under the rule of its Herodian co...

Yesterday was 'one of those days' (I seem to be having too many of those at the moment but, anyway) and I'm still sixty eight pages off finishing 'The Last Shield', which is a hell of a lot of fun in case you were wondering. You'll probably see a review for that next week but for now, 'past me' very kindly pointed me in the direction of an old review of the Target novelisation of 'Doctor Who and the Loch Ness Monster' that I could use, just to get me to the weekend. That was kind of him ;o) The full review is Here , if you want it, but all the important stuff is below so you won't be missing out if you don't click... Doctor Who novelizations are almost pointless these days given that you can have a quick poke around online and just, you know, watch them on iPlayer or Disney+ (I think). If you're me, you just buy the DVDs. Having said that though, for people like me, they will always be a reminder of the days when these books were the ...

I should have done this earlier in the week but then everything else took over and now, here we are ;o) Which reminds me, I really need to stop making rash promises about catching up with my reading over any given weekend. I want it to happen but it never does; these days, I'm not any good for much more than a Saturday afternoon in front of the telly. And I wouldn't mind so much if the films I watched were any good... Actually, it wasn't too bad last weekend, nothing amazing but nothing truly horrendous either. I'm counting that as a win ;o) Let me tell you about what I watched... 'Wishmaster' (1997) An ancient hidden opal is found by Alexandra, a gemologist. Unknowingly, she releases an evil Djinn from within, who wishes to take over the world but is restricted until his owner makes three wishes. Is 'gemologist' a real word? It doesn't feel like it should be but that's what I got when I googled 'Wishmaster' so I'm sticking with it :o...

You don't often see a 'Did Not Finish' around these parts (there has only been one other this year ) because, well... I generally feature books that I've bought myself and given the way things are these days, I'm not going to buy a book unless I'm very certain that I'll finish it ;o) It does happen though, not often but sometimes, and this time round, it was a book that I really wasn't expecting to put down as early as I did. Go on, have some blurb... The mighty fleets of the Indomitus Crusade face terrors and dangers beyond imagining. As Guilliman's crusade marches forth, bringing the Emperor's light to thousands of worlds, Fleet Secundus is headed for the darkest dark – the Eye of Terror itself. Along with warriors of the Adepta Sororitas and the Adeptus Astartes, the Imperial Navy battle cruiser Judgement of the Void pushes deeper into contested space. But as their journey unfolds, the forces of Chaos close in, and a battle for survival is abo...

The more I hear about this movie, the more I'm growing to like the sound of it... :o)   I really liked how 'low-tec' and 'non-superpowered' 'Captain America: The Winter Soldier' was and Bob notwithstanding, 'Thunderbolts' looks like it could be a little more of the same. I'm up for that. 'Thunderbolts' will be released in March next year and I'm really hoping that Lewisham gets its act together and sorts out a cinema by then, fingers crossed...

If there’s one reading habit of mine that I’ve finally come to terms with, it’s that I will always be the last one to the party. I will be so late, in fact, that the party has long since finished and become the subject of legend; the party you really missed out on if you weren’t there right at the start. If you’re me, reading can be a lonely business… ;o) Which brings us, in a roundabout way, to ‘Blackwing’, a book that had loads of great things said about it back in 2018 (upon its release). Where was I at the time…? Not important *, what’s important is that I finally grabbed a copy of ‘Blackwing’, the other way, and found the time to read it. And it was bloody brilliant, I couldn’t put it down until I’d finished it. But you knew how good it was already, didn’t you? Let me tell you about it anyway… ;o) ‘Only three kinds of people willingly enter the Misery: the desperate, the stupid and the greedy…’ The Misery is a wasteland: a dangerous, corrupted frontier between the Rtepublic and th...

I really need to stop promising myself that I'll get some reading done whenever Saturday comes round... This time round, I spent my Saturday either sleeping off the last of what the hospital dosed me with or being in no state to do anything other than watch movies of varying quality. I'll tell you all about those another time. So, pretty much like any other Saturday then ;o) Where does that leave us today then? Especially as I've been really good this week and not bought any new books at all? I know, I was pretty impressed as well (seriously, I can't remember the last time I went a whole week without buying a book) but I couldn't even do a 'Look what I've got!' post. And so... 'The Easiest TBR Pile' post was born ;o) Christmas isn't all that far away now, which means that 2025 is nonchalantly wandering closer, trying to look all innocent and unassuming. I've developed a habit, recently, of leaving certain books half finished and moving on...

Thanks for bearing with me :o) I had a 'thing' carried out in hospital on Thursday and I was a little out of it on the Friday, certainly not in a fit state for writing anything and leaving it online ;o) I'm a bit more with it today so here I am. Sorry for the deliberate vagueness by the way, you don't need the details, I'm ok though. Anyway, enough of that. It's Saturday and now the Fentanyl is out of my system (they gave me a dose on Thursday and damn, that came back to bite me on the Friday...) I'm planning on getting some reading done ahead of my kids coming over on Sunday. While I do that, I thought I'd share this trailer I found yesterday. I'll be honest, it looks like fun but maybe isn't quite enough to get me to take up a Disney+ subscription again. I don't know... I loved 'Deadpool and Wolverine' but I'm still a little burnt out on the rest of it. It looks cool but I'm going to wait for some reviews first. In the meant...

Page Count: 37 Pages After the disappointment of 'Starship Traveller', I fancied something completely different and it doesn't get a lot more different than a tale taken from the very first issue of 'Weird Tales' back in March 1923. That and I'd heard that 'Ooze' was an influence on 'The Blob', a favourite film of mine. And so it was settled, last night was all about 'Ooze'... Our narrator visits the ruins of a house in the swamp so that he can hopefully solve the mystery of the death of his friends so that their daughter (whom he has adopted) can know the truth when she is older. What he finds out though is far beyond anything that he ever expected to find... 'Ooze' takes its own sweet time to get going and given that the tale is only 37 pages long, that's a hell of a risk to take. I gave it a chance though and the approach does pay off to an extent, with Rud hiding revelations in plain sight and hopping back and forth, along...

I have many weaknesses as far as books are concerned; probably far too many to be allowed anywhere near a bookshop just after I’ve been paid ;o) And one of those weaknesses is Fighting Fantasy books. Whether they’re the latest editions, sat in Waterstones, or an original copy of ‘Starship Traveller’ sat on a shelf in Brockley Books, those books are inevitably coming home with me. And did I say ‘Starship Traveller’ and Brockley Books? Funnily enough, I found a copy of ‘Starship Traveller’ in Brockley Books, the other day, and true to form, it came home with me ;o) Back in the day, ‘Starship Traveller’ was a Fighting Fantasy book that I only read the once (borrowed it from a friend, I believe) so it was a bit of an odd one to find. Of course I was always going to buy it but it had none of the emotional resonance that I got when I found an original copy of ‘The Forest of Doom’. So I bought it, read it and… Yes, I remembered just why I only read it the once… Sucked through the appaling nig...

By the time you read this, I'll be knee deep in emails and 'catch-up' calls; that'll teach me to take a few days off... To be fair, I needed the time and, evil cat to one side, it was time well spent. Time for one last push before Christmas ;o) In the meantime... I rounded off my little break with a couple of movies that I'd planned on watching and one that I'd been meaning to show my daughters for a long time. It's pretty easy to guess which ones are which ;o) 'Airplane!' (1980) I needed a few laughs and my two daughters (just back from a week away and absolutely knackered) definitely needed a few laughs so... 'Airplane!' was the logical choice, especially as they've already seen 'The Naked Gun'. I'm not going to go into it too much here, we've all seen the movie. If you haven't then really, really, consider doing something about that very soon. Me and my kids got exactly the number of laughs that I was looking for, j...

Yep, I've had four days of annual leave and it has been lovely :o) Well, apart from my ex's cat holding a bit of a grudge from the last time I looked after it. To be fair, the poor thing did end up sedated by the vet and had its front legs shaved, all for what turned out to be a big misunderstanding on my part but even so... You would have thought she'd have gotten over it by now but apparently not :o( Anyway... I've had four days off work with no-one to please but myself and you know what that means... Yep, my good intentions of 'no book buying' ended up trampled in the rush for me to buy even more new(ish) books. Dammit. At least I've been going down the second hand route, that's something I guess. Anyway, lets take a look shall we? I had to get rid of my 'Otherland' books, years ago, and always regretted it. I managed to find the first two books a while ago but somehow never got round to buying 'Mountain of Black Glass' and 'Sea of...

This week has been a good week for reading and it’s not over yet :o) I’ve finished one book that I’ve wanted to finish for ages, got another excellent read on the go (not the one I was planning on but I’ll take it) with another couple lined up that look like they’re going to be good reads as well. I really need to take annual leave more often ;o) While all that is in play, I’ve also been reading some ‘Doctor Who’ short stories, just to fill in the gaps between reads. All of these can be found in the ‘Target Storybook’, blurb below… In this exciting collection you’ll find all-new stories spinning off from some of your favourite Doctor Who moments across the history of the series. Learn what happened next, what went on before, and what occurred off-screen in an inventive selection of sequels, side-trips, foreshadowings and first-hand accounts – and look forward too, with a brand new adventure for the Thirteenth Doctor. Each story expands in thrilling ways upon aspects of Doctor Who’s e...