Lord Samper's Library

Remember yesterday, when I said that I’d be surprised if any reading happened? Well… No reading happened and I wasn’t surprised in the slightest. As much as I will happily take any opportunity to lose myself in a good book, there’s nothing better than hanging out with my daughters, especially watching my youngest play ‘GTA Vice City’ when she decides to go ‘off mission’ :o) Anyway… Where does that leave today’s blog post? Well, it’s going to be a short one but I’ve got my fingers crossed for a day involving nothing but books so things will balance out over the next week ;o) Just a couple of very short reads that I thought had fallen through the cracks; turns out they were being saved for today… ‘The Savage Sword of Conan Reforged’ #1 – Various (Titan Comics, Heroic Signatures) REFORGED revitalizes the legendary black-and-white magazine with vivid, all-new color restorations, bringing new depth and intensity to Conan’s celebrated adventures. This new series kicks off with two of Conan’...

  A little bit of a 'cheats post' today as I had my oldest daughter over last night, to watch 'Stranger Things', and today I've got my youngest daughter for a chunk of the morning... until my oldest joins us. The bare minimum of reading happened last night; I'd be very surprised if any reading at all happened today. We shall see... So that's why you have a 'recycled' review today (just to give me a chance to breathe) and just also so I don't come across too much like the 'Laziest of Bloggers'. I also like bringing old posts out of retirement and giving books a last shot at centre stage. You can see the original post Here but to be honest, I've left it more or less unchanged here so, it's up to you which one you read ;o) And that's enough of that, lets head back to the Old World and see what kicked things off for Archaon... In the north of the world the forces of Chaos gather, awaiting their moment to strike. At their head is ...

Sorry for yesterday's 'blogging silence'... Yesterday wasn't a bad one (well, it did get better, eventually...) but it was a very busy one that demanded all my attention. Book-buying happened but I didn't get a second to sit down and read, let alone post anything here. Oh well... :o) And part of that is down to my kids' new pet kitten (I'm looking after the girls and both cats this week). Pixel is a sweet little thing but honestly, it's like she has a secret stash of amphetamines that she takes when we decide that it's time for a break. For example... I think I'm on my own in the kitchen, I open the fridge and all of a sudden, Pixel has leapt (seemingly out of thin air) right into said fridge to grab what she can. And I'm pretty sure that the other cat has prematurely aged in an attempt to quickly shuffle off this mortal coil and get some peace and quiet. Still not the worst job I've ever had but damn, it's almost enough to make me wa...

I’ve got a few bits and pieces to sort out, over the next couple of days, so content here may be a little lighter than normal. And yep, I made a pretty big assumption, about the state of my regular content, in that opening sentence ;o) Anyway… I did a spot of Christmas shopping, the other day, and made a quick detour to pick the shelves (at Forbidden Planet) clean of some comics that I’d been waiting on. Look at me being all efficient, getting two things done in one trip ;o) Here’s some quick thoughts on the first couple of comics from that little haul… ‘Event Horizon: Dark Descent #2’ – Ward, Jones, Martin (ID Dark) The ‘Event Horizon’ continues its journey through chaos and most of the crew are now dead. The survivors must deal with Paimon having arrived on board as well as his twisted creations and the secrets of the crew, suddenly brought to awful life… Well, damn… Every time I think that things cannot get worse for the crew of the ‘Event Horizon’, they promptly go and get worse ...

  Page Count: 185 Pages So many books to read and films to watch, not enough time (by far) to get through them all; it’s inevitable that some will fall through the cracks. ‘Psycho’ is both a film that I’ve never managed to watch and a book that until last night, I’d never read. I’m slowly (very slowly…) working my way through Robert Bloch’s work so when I came across ‘Psycho’ in Waterstones, it didn’t take much for me to pick it up. And yesterday afternoon was when I finally got round to reading it, let me tell you about it… She was a fugitive, lost in a storm. That was when she saw the sign: motel - vacancy. The sign was unlit, the motel dark. She switched off the engine, and sat thinking, alone and frightened. She had nobody. The stolen money wouldn't help her, and Sam couldn't either, because she had taken the wrong turning; she was on a strange road. There was nothing she could do now - she had made her grave and she'd have to lie in it. She froze. Where had that come f...

  I try to vary my reading, as much as I can, but I can never stay away from the Black Library for too long :o) The ‘why’ is probably a post for another time but for now, lets just say that the setting very rarely lets me down when I’m in need of a decent tale. I have a large pile of unread Warhammer books (40K, Age of Sigmar and even some Old World) and over the weekend, ‘Darkness Eternal’ had its turn in the spotlight; mostly because I was after bite sized stories but, being completely honest, I’d already read a few of the tales here and it was a slightly easier route to getting another book under my belt. I’ve got some momentum and I don’t want to lose it ;o) So, blurb? Go on then… In the grim darkness of the far future, the galaxy burns as its disparate races fight for resources, territory, and divine purpose. The Imperium faces threats both alien and heretic, and the touch of the warp is ever a moment from seeping into reality, with deadly consequences. Survival is earned in b...

The side affects, of the chemotherapy tablets, seem to be levelling out now (fingers crossed) so I can now go to Tesco's without having to call my kids and ask what I went out for. Well, most days anyway... Things are looking up then but I am still going to be 'bookmarking' this blog with cool looking trailers that I don't want to forget about ;o) So then, while I return to the Warhammer 40K board today, my youngest fancies her chances of another crushing victory (and to be honest, she'll probably manage it), I'll leave you with the official trailer for 'Cold Storage'. Any film that contains rampant mutant fungus, infected humans/animals and exploding heads is a film that I don't want to miss. Hopefully this post will remind me a little nearer the time...  

  Page Count: 192 Pages Winifred Notty arrives at Ensor House prepared to play the perfect Victorian governess. She’ll dutifully tutor her charges, Drusilla and Andrew, tell them bedtime stories, and only joke about eating children. But the longer Winifred spends within the estate’s dreary confines and the more she learns of the perversions and pathetic preoccupations of the Pounds family, the more trouble she has sticking to her plan. Whether creeping across the moonlit lawns in her undergarments or gently tormenting the house staff, Winifred struggles at every turn to stifle the horrid compulsions of her past until her chillingly dark imagination breaches the feeble boundary of reality on Christmas morning. Long time readers of this blog have probably worked out, by now, that while I don’t mind a little gothic fiction (every now and then), you will likely never find a books featuring Victorian governesses in my TBR pile. Until now that is :o) When a title and blurb like this ap...

I've had one of the stories from the 'End of the Line' anthology going through my head the last couple of days (James Lovegrove's 'Siding 13', just in case you were wondering) and while I no longer have a copy of the book, I do have an old review that I thought I'd share here. Yep, it was too cold, today, to do anything but shiver; normal service should hopefully resume tomorrow ;o) You can find my original review  Here  but I've included it here in its entirety. Have a read and when you're done, do yourself a favour and grab a copy of 'The End of the Line' if/when you come across it. It's still worth a read... I’ve been living in London for a few years now (sometimes seems like a lifetime...) and use the underground pretty much every day. While the underground is quite possibly the single most annoying thing I’ve ever had to deal with (for reasons perhaps best suited to another blog, if you use the underground you know exactly what I mea...

I’m now officially into the last week and a half of my sick leave and it has done me a lot of good; I didn’t expect to be off this long but I’m glad that I made that appointment with my GP back in September :o) Just one more meeting with Occupational Health and, fingers crossed, I should be good to go back to work next month. All of which is a round about way of saying that once again, I did very little yesterday; literally just what the doctor ordered. I did watch a couple of movies though, and read a couple of short stories, because well, of course I did ;o) Let me tell you all about it, movies first… ‘Good Boy’ (2025) Not to be confused with the 2022 horror movie of the same name (not a bad movie at all, just a whole different relationship between a man and his ‘dog’…) but to be honest, there’s very little danger of that happening. Everyone (and their dog) has been talking about ‘Good Boy’, this year, and I finally got the chance to watch it yesterday morning. Todd suffers from a ch...

  Page Count:158 Pages Before we go any further, I just want to ask a quick question… When you saw the cover art posted here, how many of you immediately had the theme tune start up in your head? No judgment here, I didn’t even need to Youtube it, that music has been going through my head for years (with breaks of course, don’t worry). While ‘Robin of Sherwood’ was on (back in the early/mid eighties), it was regular ‘tea-time telly watching’ in my house and I was lucky enough to have a copy of the tie-in book as well. That original copy disappeared, on its own journey, years ago but I’ve been after a little nostalgia just recently so tracked down another copy and settled down for a read last night. Everyone knows the story of Robin Hood so I was half inclined not to include the blurb here, until I read it again. I couldn’t help but chuckle at a situation where no-one knew what to write but also, no-one wanted to leave a big blank space on the back cover of the book… Traditional adv...

  Page Count: 160 Pages, collects #1 - #6 of 'Bug Wars' I saw this in Forbidden Planet and after one look at the cover… I didn’t need an awful lot of encouragement to pick it up. Seriously, is there anything cooler than a warrior sat on a giant stag beetle (ichor dripping everywhere)? No, I didn’t think so either ;o) As always, with my TBR Pile, it has taken me a little while to get to ‘Bug Wars’. I got there in the end though :o) A chunk of last night was spent trying to find somewhere to print out my youngest daughter’s homework (I found it but ‘Lewisham by Night’ isn’t pleasant…) and when I got home, I sat myself down for a read in the comfy chair. The Old Slaymaker House. Neighbors whisper about it, children dare each other to step foot in its overgrown lawn. Exterminators refuse to visit and shudder at the thought of what multi-limbed monsters may burrow in its earth. For Slade Slaymaker and his brother Sydney, it’s the last remnant of their father, a dedicated entomologi...

I read absolutely nothing yesterday, it ended up being a mix of ‘Warhammer 40K’ with my youngest (her Tyranids rolled over my Space Marines, repeatedly…) and ‘Walking Dead’ night with my eldest. I regret nothing though; well… apart from some truly atrocious dice rolls that is… Anyway :o) I spent this morning with a couple of movies that are worth mentioning here. Let me quickly tell you about them. ‘The Hitcher’ (1986) Jim Halsey is delivering a car, from Chicago to San Diego, and thinks that picking up a hitcher will help him stay awake on the long drive. Staying awake will soon be the last thing on Jim’s mind however. Once the hitcher makes his plans known, all Jim wants to do is stay alive… It has been such a long time since I watched this movie (roughly thirty years) so when I saw it was available on ‘Shudder’, it was definitely time to give it another go :o) It had been long enough, since that last viewing, that I thought it would be like going into it fresh but it ended up being ...

  Page Count: 515 Pages After reading a couple of reviews for ‘Coffin Moon’, I was keen to find out, for myself, what Keith Rosson was all about. I couldn’t quite stretch to a hard-back copy of ‘Coffin Moon’ (that has since changed) so I thought I’d start with ‘Fever House’ and see where the journey took me. I’d already polished off a few chapters and as yesterday was a quiet one, I took the opportunity to sit in the comfy chair and see how far I could get with the rest of the book. The next thing I knew, it was the evening and I was finishing the last few pages. I can’t remember the last time that happened so that should really tell you all you need to know but that wouldn’t make for much of a post here. Lets see if I can go a little deeper than just a sentence… ;o) A small-time criminal. A has-been rock star. A shadowy government agency. And a severed hand whose dark powers threaten to destroy them all. When leg-breaker Hutch Holtz rolls up to a rundown apartment complex in Por...

The TBR Pile changes on an absolute whim these days but this is what it looks like right now... There's a nice mixture of long books, shorter books and a couple of short story collections (that I can dip in and out of) here so I'm hoping that I can make a decent dent in this pile of books, maybe over the next week or so.  The position of the bookmark is a little misleading, I'm further into 'Fever House' than it looks ;o) It's looking good so far but I'm hoping for more of the apocalyptic rather than one of the leads reminiscing about his parents rock star days. Not that I've got anything against that, it's just not what I'm here for. Time will tell but I'm feeling positive about this one :o)  'Darkness Eternal' and 'Era of Ruin' are all about getting a little more 'Horus Heresy' and 'present day' (you know what I mean...) 40K reading under my belt. I've actually already read a few of the tales in 'D...

It has taken me a little longer, than planned, to get to these two comics but yesterday ended up being the day I finally opened them for a read. I am a good way into Keith Rosson’s ‘Fever House’ (which has been brilliant so far) but there was no way I was going to finish it, for a post today, so I took a short break to catch up with ‘Skinbreaker’ and ‘Savage Sword of Conan’ instead. Quick thoughts follow (yesterday was a little heavy going and today could well be more of the same)… ‘Skinbreaker’ #2 – Kirkman, Finch (Image) The challenge has been made and a new Elder will be chosen through trial by combat. Can Anok do the right thing for his tribe though? And whatever the outcome, what will the future hold…? Okay, I did not see that coming… The fight between Anok and Enor is handled just right; it has to end one way but there is a lot of subtext happening that fleshes things out and says a lot about Anok’s character. This approach dovetails with more superb artwork to create a really co...

  Page Count: 110 Pages With ‘The Siege of Terra’ books done and dusted, and a couple of other large books lurking in the TBR Pile, I thought I’d read something slim and give myself a break before tackling another ‘500 Pager’. And as we all know (well, you do now), books don’t come a lot slimmer than the old ‘Doctor Who’ Target novelizations. ‘Doctor Who and the Invisible Enemy’ lays a firm claim to being the slimmest of the lot, clocking in at a ‘waif-like’ 110 pages. I’ve never watched the serial (need to do something about that) so I was interested to read this book but was also left wondering how much story there would actually be. I was after a short book though so, off I went… Before we get into it, a random thought. I’m assuming that’s ‘The Nucleus’ on the front cover but… Is it the Nucleus or has a slightly disheveled Firey made it out of the Labyrinth and into this book? Could be either but all I’m saying is that I’ve never seen a Firey and the Nucleus together in the same...

  Page Count: 487 Pages I still have a large number of ‘Horus Heresy’ and ‘Siege of Terra’ books to get to and through (and given how much some of these go for on the second hand market…) but I’d say that I’ve now read enough to get the broad strokes of the Heresy and its conclusion. Most of the opening books, a large chunk of the ones in the middle and now, I’ve finally finished ‘The End and the Death’ with Volume 3. And… Damn. I’ve been dipping in and out of Warhammer 40K for years now so I knew how this one was going to end (how it had to end). Despite that, Dan Abnett still had a few tricks left, up his sleeve, that caught me out and ended this series on a real high note The Great Angel, Sanguinius, lies slain at his brother’s hand. Terra burns as reality itself unravels and the greatest bastion of civilisation teeters on the brink of annihilation. Desperate defenders gather, rallying against the rabid traitor hordes. The Hollow Mountain, host to the pilgrims of Euphrati Keeler...

I managed to get a fair bit read this last week, mostly related to the last couple of books of the ‘Siege of Terra’ series. Yep, I’m reading ‘Era of Ruin’ now but that’s just mopping up the last little bits of story; the main feature is well and truly done now (I still have some gaps to fill in but, you know what I mean) and even though I knew the broad strokes of the tale, I’m not quite sure how I feel about the whole thing. I’ll see if I can get my thoughts in order for a post tomorrow. In the meantime, this has also been a week of watching movies (sick-leave is doing me so much good…) and that’s what I’m here to talk about right now. I’m hoping the title of the post has you a little intrigued but, I’m going to start with something completely different ;o) This last week, I watched… Every Single ‘Scream’ movie. Apparently, ‘Scream 7’ isn’t too far away so I thought that this last week was as good a time as any to have go through the franchise again, ‘Scream 6’ being a first time view...