Lord Samper's Library

  Page Count: 128 Pages Well… This week continues to be a challenging one but there’s only a couple of days left until the weekend, I’ve got this ;o) With this being the case, you won’t be surprised when I tell you that I’m still very much about the comfort reads and tomorrows post will be more of the same. But that’s for tomorrow though, where are we today? Well… Remember yesterday when I said that ‘the only criteria [for a comfort read] is that you know exactly what you’re getting and it’s exactly what you need? ‘ What I needed last night was a ‘shot in the arm’ to stop me falling asleep too early in the evening. While the literal definition was out of the question, a ‘comic book equivalent’ was definitely do-able, especially when it had only been a few days since I read ‘Last Gert Standing’ . It was time for another trip to Fairyland, and… The twisted Fairyland adventures continue in this seventh volume… Join Gert as she continues to stick her axe where it doesn’t belong in a s...

  Page Count: 552 Pages Sorry for the ‘blog silence’ yesterday… The last couple of weeks have seen me somehow in charge of my team, at work, and given that one of my strengths is ‘usually flying under the radar’, it has been a bit of a shock to the system! No blogging yesterday then, I was trying to decompress a little… And that is what has led me to ‘The Briar King’ these past few days, the need for a spot of comfort reading. That should tell you all you need to know about how this post is going to go… I’ve been revisiting ‘The Kingdoms of Thorn and Bone’ series for years now, and rank the setting right up there with Tad Williams’ Osten Ard. Notice I said ‘setting’, this series isn’t perfect (more on that as I go through it) but there is still plenty to love here, certainly with ‘The Briar King’. So, lets take a look… In the kingdom of Crotheny, two young girls play in the tangled gardens of the sacred city of the dead where, fleeing an imaginary attacker, they discover the unkno...

As a rule, I normally stay out of the centre of London when it’s Marathon Day; nothing against the Marathon, I’m just not keen on fighting my way through the crowds, that’s why I do all my Christmas shopping online these days. With that in mind then, why did yesterday see me in town, fighting my way through ‘Post-Marathon’ crowds? Because apparently, I’m the kind of person who won’t even listen to my own advice… Yep, it went about as well as ‘more sensible me’ thought it would. If I start talking about Christmas Shopping on Oxford Street, take me to one side and have a word? Anyway… Birthday shopping, for my eldest, took me into Forbidden Planet; once I’d fought my way past the Manga shelves, the comic book shelves persuaded me to stick around for a while. Not that I needed much persuading… So, here’s what I bought and here’s what I thought of it. ‘Alien: King Killer #1’ – Ahmed, Nieto, Atiyeh, Cowles (Marvel) Whenever I’m in Forbidden Planet, I like to take a chance on a comic book th...

The answer is simple, When you remove the packaging and find that the book you ordered has somehow 'mysteriously' become this book while in transit... My first glance had me had me wondering if this was a tale of the galaxy's smallest policeman (because that is exactly how my mind works when I'm working from home and haven't spoken to anyone in hours...) but then I remembered the blurb, on the back, and that set me straight. It was an honest mistake though, especially as I've never read anything by Lois McMaster Bujold. It feels like everyone else probably has though, is 'The Vor Game' worth a read or would you start with something else instead. ?Leave a comment and let me know. (And not only did I get a refund from the seller, I don't have to return the book either. Not the luck I was looking for yesterday, but I'll take it)

  Page Count: 128 Pages For all my ‘I really won’t leave it too long before reading the rest of I Hate Fairyland’… It has been a while since I read ‘Volume 5’ . And that’s just the way it goes with this series; as much as I love it, I have to be in exactly the right mood to pick it up or it just doesn’t work for me. Well, after another stressful day at work yesterday, it suddenly struck me that I was in just the mood for something irreverent, anarchic and more than a little bit violent, all at once. And when that mood strikes me, this is where I end up! Lets have a little chat about ‘Last Gert Standing’… Death by a thousand Gerts! King Cloudeous is determined to finish what his sister, Queen Cloudia never could: kick Gert out of Fairyland FOR GOOD! And the only way to do that is to have every Gert who ever lived battle each other to the death. Who said that there’s only so many Gerts to go round?! They clearly haven’t read this comic… OG Gert returns to find the last key to escape,...

Yesterday was an absolute write-off in terms of getting anything read. I mean... I got some work done, got my eldest over to an interview (for 6th Form) and then hung out with both of my daughters, so I can't really complain, but... You know ;o)  Anyway, fingers crossed that reading happens today, we'll see. In the meantime, I came across this trailer yesterday and thought I'd share it here; mostly because of the movie title (made me laugh) but also... Look at it and tell me that you wouldn't watch it. Keep an eye open for 'Hungry' in June... 

  Page Count: 159 Pages Given that this book was first published in 1974, the word ‘New’ (in the title) is starting to look more and more redundant but… Given that I’m of an age now where shaving my head actually makes me look less bald (seriously), I’m a fine one to talk ;o) Anyway… I saw this collection in Greenwich Market, a few months ago, and had to grab it as it reminded me of the lesser frequented shelves, at my old primary school, where a kid like me could find all the old horror and supernatural anthologies, and did. It is surprisingly easy to lose a book at my place, a flat that is literally full of books, but I came across ‘Frighteners’ the other day and last night, finally settled down for a read. A beach inhabited by man-eating jellyfish… A death-mask which returns to life… A village of monster-mad zombies… A hideous body which refuses to die… A hospital menaced by a ghostly visitor… A withered corpse in search of a friend… Stories of stark originality and chilling hum...

  Page Count: 208 Pages My ongoing journey to read more of the books that I buy is going… Well… You all saw yesterday’s post :o) It’s not going brilliantly but not only do I really enjoy reading fantasy and horror, I’m also dogged and relentless with my TBR pile. Erm… Well, more the former than the latter ;o) I’ll get there, eventually… Anyway. The other day, said journey saw me take a little trek through the Hyborian Age with some quick detours along the way to take in 16th Century France and Hungary, as well as 1930s Egypt. Yep, I finally read that copy of ‘Savage Sword of Conan’, that has been been giving me reproachful looks for far too long. Lets talk a little about it :o) The second volume of ‘The Savage Sword of Conan’ collects issues #4-6 of the ongoing series and kicks things off with one of my pet hates about comic books… The humble ‘crossover’ event. That’s not the book’s fault, lets be clear, but here we are. I’m the kind of guy who settles on a title and sticks with it...

Just a mini-reset, I bet you didn't even realize that I'd gone ;o) With one thing and another (and then another), last week wasn't a good one; mostly work stuff and mental health. I thought I'd give myself a little 'time off' this weekend, just to get my head straight. Still, new week and all that, fingers crossed for a better week this week. Let's see... :o) Backing up a little bit though. Payday was last Friday and that meant 'Walking Dead Night' (for me and my eldest) was accompanied by Dominos Pizza. It also meant that on Saturday, I was able to take my daughters to Greenwich for nachos and book shopping. They like nachos and I 'really deserved' a little book shopping ;o) Lets take a little look at what came home with us... The lady who runs the bookstall, on Greenwich market, saw me coming and immediately pointed me at the small pile of 'Doctor Who' books on the table. I've never read 'Time-flight' (and I've only...

  This was originally going to be a post about the REH short tale ‘The Black Stone’; well, that was the plan until I realised that I’d already posted about it, way back in 2022 . No worries, I thought to myself, ‘The Little People’ is an intriguing title, I’ll give that a go. And to be honest, it wasn’t a bad tale either; for an entry in a collection of horror stories it certainly didn’t end how I’d expected it to (and that’s not a bad thing). The only problem I had with the tale is that while it’s certainly not a ‘fragment’, a page was missing from REH’s typescript and so ‘The Little People’ has a gap in the middle where the only thing I could gather was that the narrators sister was still annoyed with him. Not a bad tale to read, maybe not one for a whole post here though. I wasn’t in the mood to be beaten though so I took a chance and decided to do something that I very rarely do, if ever. Yep, I thought I’d read me some poetry :o) It might be the poetry that I had to study at s...

It’s kind of nice to get to Thursday and realise that no matter how hectic this week has been so far, I’ve still managed to get a decent bit of reading under my belt and write about it here. And I’ve noticed a little pattern to my weekly posts; which often start off with a full length book (or two) before moving on to comic books and finally short stories. That’s a pretty big clue as to how my energy levels progress over a week ;o) Well, I changed the order slightly this week and that’s what happens when my day in the office gets brought forward a couple of days. It wouldn’t feel the same, here, without a comic book post though so… Lets take a quick look at a couple that I’ve had on the go… ‘Die!Die!Die!’ Volume 1 – Kirkman, Gimple, Burnham, Fairbairn (Image Comics) Page Count: 128 Pages We don't like to admit it, but this is an evil world where evil people do evil stuff all the time. Thankfully, there is a secret cabal with the United States government that works outside our nor...

I’ll be honest, I’m really not sure how Wednesday has turned up so quickly, given that the last couple of days have gone so slowly. I’ll take it though, just a few more days until the weekend :o) Yesterday was a day in the office and I had a book in my bag all ready for the bus ride there and back. That was the plan anyway… What actually happened was that I overslept and had to take a train instead. Have you ever tried reading on the rush hour train? Yeah… And if that wasn’t bad enough, I fell asleep on the bus going home; not the best day for reading then ;o) And that means today’s post is one about the little bits and pieces that I’ve managed to read/listen to over the last couple of days. Hope you don’t mind… ‘More Sinned Against’ – Karl Edward Wagner Page Count: 15 Pages I’ve had a copy of Karl Edward Wagner’s ‘In A Lonely Place’ sat on my shelf for far too long now and I thought I’d dip into it and pick a story, at random, for a read. For a little context, I’ve read some of Wagner...

  Page Count: 202 Pages The hospital was pretty busy yesterday so there was a bit of a wait to see the Doctor and then, an even longer wait to pick up my tablets afterwards. Was I annoyed though, or even slightly bothered? Not this Graeme... If I’m going to be sat in a hospital waiting room, you can be damn sure that I’ll have a book or two in my bag and that’s exactly what I had yesterday ;o) It’s been a little while since I read some Warhammer 40K but I’m not quite ready to jump into another long series (not yet anyway) so Mike Brooks’ ‘Huron Blackheart: Master of the Maelstrom’, and its slim page count, seemed like a good alternative. A bite sized chunk of ‘grimdark far future’ and a leading man whom I’d heard a lot about but never really seen much of. It couldn’t go wrong, could it…? Of course it couldn’t, and it didn’t. The renegade leader of the Red Corsairs must adapt to an Imperium led by Roboute Guilliman, all while struggling to retain power in the face of dissension amon...

I’m not one for coming up with long, sprawling, posts here at the best of times, not any more. Today’s post though is definitely going to be shorter than usual, sorry about that :o) To be fair, it’s my first day back at work, after annual leave, and we all know how that goes. And on top of that, I’ll be at the hospital for most of the afternoon with blood tests and so on. And if that wasn’t enough, I felt pretty sick for most of yesterday so didn’t really read that much anyway… Not the worst problems to have but yeah, today is a ‘short post day’. I did get a little reading under my belt, yesterday, though and given the state I was in, a little ‘Doctor Who’ seemed like the best way forward. And I was pretty keen to crack open those old hardbacks that I found the other day ; given the state some of the pages were in, I thought I should read them while they were still attached to the books… ;o) There weren’t any big surprises to be had here; as a rule, Terrance Dicks sticks very closely t...

Yesterday ended up being a little bit of a bonus for this Graeme… :o) My daughters wanted to spend some time with their Mum and I had nothing urgent to take care of (or if I did, I’d totally forgotten what it was, that happens more often than it should) so… I slept in for as long as I could (I didn’t beat any records but it was a good attempt) and spent the rest of the day either reading, watching TV or prowling my flat, trying to satisfy a craving for a particular food that I still can’t quite identify. Tell me I’m not the only person who does that? Anyway… I settled for a couple of Bao Buns in the end (I had to eat something…) but that doesn’t really make for much of a blog post here so, let me tell you a little bit about some movies that I watched... ‘Thrash’ (2026) I’ve got a bit of a soft spot for ‘Shark’ and ‘Croc’ movies, at the moment, so when ‘Thrash’ popped up on Netflix, it was an easy decision to make for a little Saturday afternoon viewing. But… Is it just me or do most Ne...

Apologies for the lack of blogging yesterday! I'll be honest... After a spirited defense, this week finally got the better of me on Thursday night. Whatever book I was reading at the time (I can't remember), I just put it down and went to bed. And that left me with nothing to post about yesterday but you know what? Sometimes that's ok :o) I don't think I touched a book yesterday but that was ok too; I spent some proper quality time with my daughters and hung out with the kitten while she was coming off her anaesthetic (she had 'that' operation). The kitten is fine by the way, just really drugged up and a little more unpredictable than usual... It seemed like a good time then to have a little re-set of the ol' TBR pile and set some reading goals for the next few weeks. Notice I said 'weeks'... I got a little carried away, browsing the bookshelves, and there's no way that I'm going to finish this little lot anytime soon (especially as I'll ...

  Page Count: 168 Pages Newsagents everywhere hate me for this but I’ve got a habit of saving winning scratch-cards and cashing them in en masse. Luckily for all concerned, it’s only a problem when I have a run of good luck ;o) A bit of an odd way to open a post here then but essentially, that’s what led me to ‘Plunge’; a small run of winning scratch-cards and a need to be out of my ex’s house for a bit. Well, more like the eldest cats need for me to be out of my ex’s house for a bit, I’m considerate like that ;o) I love some horror, in my comic book reading, and while I’d never heard of ‘Plunge’, Joe Hill’s name on the front cover did exactly what it was placed there to do. Chemotherapy has knocked a few holes in my memory but I promise, this is really the last of the books that I read over the Bank Holiday Weekend... PLUNGE INTO TERROR!  In 1983, a state-of-the-art drilling ship, the Derleth, vanished near the Arctic Circle. Decades later, it has begun sending a distress cal...

  Page Count: 41 Pages We’re in the middle of the Easter Holidays, over here, so yesterday was spent hanging out with my youngest daughter and then, hanging over the back of a neighbours fence, trying to convince the kitten to come out of another empty garden. More than happy to do one of these, not so happy to do the other but it had to be done; I’m sure I don’t need to tell you which is which ;o) Absolutely no time for reading then and that’s OK; books are a huge part of my life but certain things will always be more important, that’s all there is to it. I had finished another book, over the weekend, though so now is a good time to talk about it. ‘The Sick Place’ is a short read so this will be a short post, hope you don’t mind ;o) After a dark web facilitated hookup gone wrong, Rebekah Parker finds herself in desperate need of medical help after consuming tainted flesh of the forbidden kind. Directions from a mysterious old man lead her to The Sick Place, where the sexy nurses h...

  Page Count: 151 Pages And here’s the other book that I read over the Bank Holiday Weekend :o) I’ve been looking at the ‘Black Shuck Shadows’ series, for a while, but had no idea where to start. I mean yes, I could have started right at the beginning but the fact that there were another thirty-six books, following on from the first one, felt a little off-putting to be honest (even if each book is a slim one). In the end, I went with the tried and tested method of ‘picking the book that was half the price of the others’ (thanks Amazon) and that book was number thirty-six in the series, this one ;o) I’ve never read anything by Dave Jeffrey so came into ‘Mood Swings’ completely cold but if this sampler is anything to go by, I wouldn’t mind reading more of his work. I’ll be honest, I didn’t get some of the stories but at times, that didn’t matter; I was still left distinctly unsettled by the time I spent with each tale. While I wouldn’t call this collection ‘cosmic horror’ at all, the...

  Page Count: 125 Pages Look at who’s all proud of himself :o) I managed to get through a whole week, looking after the cats, without calling the emergency vet out through my own forgetfulness. Long story, lets just say that the eldest cat will only look at me if I have food. Anyway… :o) How did I celebrate? Well, I didn’t exactly celebrate as the kitten and I got on just fine and I miss her. What I did do though, when I got back to my place, was sit in the comfy chair and read ‘Doctor Who And The Pyramids Of Mars’ because I’m very much on holiday now and I needed something fairly easy going to round off the day. Before I talk about the book though I really need to say something about the cover… I love the old ‘Doctor Who’ cover art but I don’t think I’ve ever seen a cover artist manage to make Sarah Jane Smith look so unlike herself yet unmistakably her, all at the same time. A part of me is slightly in awe of that achievement, especially how hung-over she looks… Anyway, lets get ...

  Page Count: 208 Pages Every so often, I’ll be watching Prime Video and it’ll throw me an advert for ‘Invincible’; the one where this huge creature tells a bunch of superheroes to surrender and Omni-Man just says ‘No!’ I don’t know why but that always makes me laugh. Anyway… I’ve seen that advert enough times now that the other day, I finally shrugged my shoulders and figured I’d give it a go. As someone whose ‘soap opera of choice’ was the X-Men cartoon, it was always going to happen. Me being me though, I thought I’d pick up Volume 1 of the book and give that a go first. And I’ve got to ask… Does it get better? Mark Grayson is just like everyone else his age; except his father is the most powerful superhero on the planet – Omni-Man. When Mark develops powers of his own, it’s a dream come true. But living up to his father’s legacy is only the beginning of his problems… ‘Invincible Vol.1’ isn’t a bad read, lets get that straight from the start. It knows the assignment and duly del...