Lord Samper's Library

Because I'm absolutely shattered right now and need a little extra energy back for what is looking like a very busy next few weeks. It's the same old reasons, I'm not going to bore you with them again ;o) My posts here are starting to suffer so I'm going to park the blog for a bit and come back when I'm feeling a little more refreshed. That will possibly be at the start of September but I might add a couple of extra of weeks on top of that, we'll see. In the meantime, and as ever, it's not as if there isn't enough here to keep you going in the meantime; plenty to read and all that ;o) Enjoy the rest of your summer and hopefully see you soon.

Because yesterday was a bit crazy and didn’t leave me with much time for reading in the evening. A couple of short stories and that was about it. Today looks very likely to go in the same direction (hospital appointment and a lot of work to catch up on all at the same time) so while I have a few minutes spare, let me tell you about last night’s reading. One good and one, erm… not so good, lets do the ‘not so good’ first. Here goes… ‘Embers of Extinction (The Horus Heresy Primarchs)’ – Brandon Easton (Black Library) For many long years, Perturabo has harboured a grudge against his primarch brother Rogal Dorn. With the outset of the Horus Heresy, he has a chance to finally avenge himself against Dorn and his Imperial Fists – but the disastrous Battle of Phall has just embittered him further. Determined to slake his thirst for revenge, Perturabo sets his Iron Warriors on a mission to devastate Dorn's sons… at any cost. I’ve only ever come across Perturabo as a supporting character (wh...

  Page Count: 228 Pages Apologies for the ‘blog silence’ yesterday… Things kind of caught up me (chemotherapy, again) and I’m not going to lie, I spent most of the day moping and feeling all sorry for myself ;o) The day wasn’t a complete write off though, I actually managed to get some reading done. And here’s where I tell you about some of it ;o) It has been an absolute age since I last read James Herbert’s ‘Haunted’ so when I saw an old copy in the Red Cross shop the other day, it felt like someone was telling me it was time I picked it up again. And I tried to buy it but there was no price on the book so the shop couldn’t sell it to me… Yep, it’s taken me a while but I have now officially been refused service by a charity shop :o) I didn’t let that stop me though, just went and ordered myself a copy of ‘Haunted’ from elsewhere. And I finally found the time for it yesterday afternoon.   Three nights of terror at the house called Edbrook. Three nights in which David Ash, the...

I'm on call today and today... I got a call :o) It looks like it's all sorted now (fingers crossed) but that's why, a) This post is a little later than normal. b) It's another 'Trailer Post'. Hopefully now things have quietened down, I'll have a little time for reading tonight. Anyway... I'm very partial to movies where heads explode and 'Cold Storage' looks like it will deliver on that front so... Here we are :o) Keep an eye open for this one in 2026.

  Page Count: Fourteen Pages, eight lines and two words (sorry, it has been one of those weeks) I was looking for something short and sweet, to end the week on, and came across ‘Dig Me No Grave’ courtesy of Paperback Warrior’s write-up . Having read it, I can attest to it being short (all of fourteen and a bit pages in ‘The Dead Remember’ collection) but sweet? Not at all and that is meant in the best possible way :o) ‘Dig Me No Grave’ was originally published in the February 1937 of ‘Weird Tales’ and while it has appeared in other collections since then, I read it in ‘The Dead Remember (The Dark Man Omnibus: Volume 2) and also found it in my copy of ‘The Horror Stories of Robert E. Howard. If you’re an e-reading type, you can grab yourself ‘Dig Me No Grave’ over at Project Gutenberg. John Kirowan is woken, in the middle of the night, by his friend John Conrad, bearer of bad news and come to beg a favour. The occultist John Grimlan has just died and Conrad asks that Kirowan att...

I had my daughters over, last night, so not a lot of time for reading but just the right amount of time to listen to a couple of short audiobooks after I got back from dropping them off at their place. The ‘Horus Heresy’ is always good to visit in audiobook form, especially in the shorter stories where the accompanying effects are superb, so I picked a couple of tales from David Annandale and away I went. Just quick thoughts this time round as both tales were very quick listens, just what I needed last night ;o) ‘Veritas Ferrum’ – David Annandale Run Time: 11 Minutes. When Horus' treachery was declared, the Iron Hands primarch Ferrus Manus sped to the Isstvan system with his elite forces to confront the traitors...and fell into their trap, losing the battle and his life. The Tenth Legion warship Veritas Ferrum arrives in the Isstvan system in the second wave of Imperial forces. Battered by the foes and forced to retreat, the crew must make a difficult choice when survivors of the...

  In the grim, dark universe of the far future, there is only war; even in the parts of the galaxy where you’d be forgiven for thinking that war hadn’t touched. Even on Holy Terra itself… There is an unseen war being fought for the very soul of the Imperium and no-one is safe. I’m talking, of course, about the fine work done by the Inquisitors; the last line of defence against humanity’s knack of falling prey to Chaos... I haven’t read many ‘Inquisitor Books’ but I’ve enjoyed what I have read (Dan Abnett’s ‘Eisenhorn’ trilogy) and I love Darius Hinks’ Black Library output, in general, so when I saw Hinks’ name on an Inquisitor book, well… That read pretty much chose itself :o) Let me tell you about it. Zealous and uncompromising, Inquisitor Torquemada Coteaz is the scourge of cultist and daemon alike, striking fear into the hearts of the Emperor’s foes. As lord inquisitor and High Protector of the Formosa Sector, he wields terrible power, able to purge entire systems of the tai...

  After a weekend of hardly any reading, I really wanted to head off a ‘reading slump’ and a little ‘Doctor Who’ is always good for that so… I’ve been working my way through a pile of old Target novelisations, recently, but thought a small change might help me out. ‘The Crawling Terror’ had been perched on a pile of books for a while, and I’d never read an original ‘12th Doctor’, so it pretty much chose itself. Let me tell you a little bit about it... “Well, I doubt you’ll ever see a bigger insect.” Gabby Nichols is putting her son to bed when she hears her daughter cry out. ‘Mummy there’s a daddy longlegs in my room!’ Then the screaming starts… Kevin Alperton is on his way to school when he is attacked by a mosquito. A big one. Then things get dangerous. But it isn’t the dead man cocooned inside a huge mass of web that worries the Doctor. It isn’t the swarming, mutated insects that make him nervous. With the village cut off from the outside world, and the insects becoming more...

  Please excuse the ‘slightly shorter than normal’ post. Not only is it my first day back in the office, after a week off (spoiler alert, I’m not enjoying it…), I’m also coming off the back of a weekend that involved a lot of watching ‘The Walking Dead’, with my eldest daughter, and not a lot of reading at all. Despite all my best ‘reading intentions’, that’s the way it went and I’ve got no regrets :o) I did manage to get a little reading done though, just a little… We were in Forbidden Planet the other day and while the girls were off looking for Manga, I pored over the shelves and found a lonely looking copy of ‘Conan the Barbarian #22’. I wasn’t expecting to find a copy quite so soon, after enjoying ‘Conan #21’ , but there it was so I made sure that it came home with me. Lets talk about it a bit… The cage may be beautifully gilded but Conan is still a slave and his barbarian soul chafes under this imprisonment. Conan is patient though and knows that if he bides his time, a cha...

Back to work tomorrow and right now, I'm not sure if I'm really dreading it or just dreading it at the normal level I would dread a looming Monday... Either way, dread is in the air so while I try and deal with that (possibly by reading but my kids might be over so Playstation is also a possibility), I thought I'd round off the weekend with the final post for C.L. Werner's 'Black Plague' trilogy; part of the old 'Time of Legends' series from Black Library. And yes, I am swiping another old post from an older blog, fingers crossed normal service should resume tomorrow. Anyway... The original review can be found Here but all the important stuff is below. Have a nice Sunday ;o)  It’s always a funny feeling to finish a series isn’t it? Something that you’ve invested a lot of your time in is suddenly gone and you’re left thinking, ‘oh, what now?’ There’s also that wrench where you have to leave that fictional setting for the last time (I know you can re-read...

I am swiping old reviews, from older blogs, left, right and centre at the moment; not the content I really want to be posting but needs must and all that :o) Like I said yesterday, it's been a busy week and my reading time took a hammering as a result. The plan is to try and claw back a little time, over this weekend, and catch up with some reading; we'll see how that goes... In the meantime then. I thought now would be a good time to continue posting about C.L. Werner's 'Black Plague' trilogy. Well. borrowing old posts but... You know what I mean ;o) The original review can be found over Here ; all the relevant bits (i.e. me not going off on tangent for no good reason) can be found below. Have a great weekend! The Black Plague spreads across the Empire, followed by a tide of monsters from legend: the skaven. In Altdorf, Emperor Boris’s troops valiantly hold off the ratmen while the corrupt Emperor escapes to safety. In Middenheim, Graf Gunthar and his son Mandred d...

It has been a great few days off work but next Monday has appeared on the horizon and my thoughts are starting to turn in that direction. Oh well, just a couple of weeks and I'll be headed into another weeks worth of leave; and that's the great thing about having daughters who are off school for the summer ;o) A great few days, with my girls, then but as ever, my reading has taken a hit and I'm horribly behind all over again. With other stuff going on, my energy has gone on my girls and I haven't been good for much come the end of the day. Oh well, hopefully I'll be able to catch up over the weekend. In the meantime then, I thought I'd start drawing a little attention to the old 'Warhammer' fantasy books that the Black Library seem perfectly happy to let slide out of print and into the realm of obscenely priced second hand books. Which is ok if you have these books in your collection but not so great if you don't. No worries, both 'past' and ...