Lord Samper's Library

It hasn't been a bad week but I'm really glad I've got a day, to myself, where the only solid plan I have is to sit in the comfy chair and read a book or two. Everything else is optional ;o) I'm coming out the other side of a bout of Warhammer 40K and 'Horus Heresy' reading so while I'm finishing a few bits off, it's time for my reading to head in a slightly different direction for a bit. Let me show you what's what... First things first, here's what I'll be trying to finish off today, I'm also reading 'Horus Heresy' instalment, 'Galaxy In Flames' but the spine proved to be very uncooperative, when faced with a camera, so... Here we are ;o) To be honest, 'Galaxy In Flames' is more than likely going to be a 'commuter read', later on in the week, so today, I'll be working my way through the rest of 'Ashes of the Imperium' . Look at the size of the book, there's no way I'd be taking it on ...

  Page Count: 406 Pages I told you that my ‘Horus Heresy’ reading is all over the place… While I’ve been reading the last book of ‘The Siege of Terra’, I’ve also been going back to the very beginning of the series for a little re-reading. Because as much as reading speculative fiction is about new adventures, it’s also about revisiting those old favourites. Go on, tell me that it isn’t ;o) Anyway… We’ve seen the seeds of Heresy sown , lets see them take root and grow… Far from Terra, the XVIth Legion continue in the Great Crusade as the 'Sons of Horus'. Putting the debacle with the Interex behind him, the Warmaster has become more withdrawn as he struggles to deal with the jealousy of his brother primarchs, and increasingly relies on the council of his advisors as he plans each new campaign. Noble captain Garviel Loken harbors misgivings about the clandestine ways adopted by many of his brethren, but when the Legion is sent to reconquer the moon of Davin, it is clear that Horus...

I was in the office today and we all know what that means… Well, apart from the inevitable ‘lunchtime bagel’ from Bagel Factory, that’s probably a subject for a different blog entirely ;o) Nope, what I’m talking about is that point, on the bus ride home, where I realise that I’ve finished my book so I end up seeing what’s what on my Kindle App. Luckily, I always seem to have a couple of quick reads, waiting to be read ;o) Today, I visited another nightmarish, grimdark world of the 40th Millennium and then… I’m not sure where I visited, but I’d love to go back one day… ‘The Dark Hollows Of Memory’ – David Annandale (Black Library) The sinister limbo of winter is falling on the Imperial archive world of Mnemosyne. A great fog rolls in, one that will not dissipate for months. With it comes unimaginable hell for the planet’s citizens as the Chaos Space Marines of the Company of Misery stage a brutal invasion. But as the defenders of Mnemosyne fall before the Traitors, something moves in th...

  My journey through the war zones of the ‘Horus Heresy’ and ‘Siege of Terra’ continues in much the same way that it always has; a vague nod at some kind of reading order but mostly determined by what book(s) I can afford and what cover catches my eye at any given moment. The cover for ‘Era of Ruin’ looks absolutely amazing, and I’ve been dipping in and out of anthologies at the moment, so this seemed like a good book to visit :o) We’re coming in right at the end of the Siege of Terra this time. The big guns have fallen silent but you can still hear scattered small arms fire in the ruins, amongst other things… Horus is dead. His Heresy is over. The scars of mankind’s great schism will never fully heal. For those left behind, a new Era of Ruin is dawning, promising both new beginnings and fresh peril for an Imperium riven by trauma and war. When I spoke about ‘The Shattered and The Soulless’, not so long ago , I wondered whether every plot-line needs to have a line neatly drawn unde...

  Page Count: 134 Pages I can feel my reading starting to head in a ‘fantasy direction’, more specifically a ‘Sword & Sorcery’ direction. That’s never a bad direction to head in and we’ll see where the road takes us but for now, I thought I’d start off with some short stories from ‘Old Moon Quarterly: Volume V’. Well, all the short stories from ‘Old Moon Quarterly: Volume V’, actually. You know what I mean ;o) One of the reasons I follow Jim’s blog (and you should too) is that he really knows his ‘Sword & Sorcery’ and has a happy knack for broadening my knowledge of the genre with what he writes about. So when I saw Jim had posted about ‘Old Moon Quarterly: Volume V’ , I thought to myself, ‘I’ll have some of that...’ And after I turned off my work laptop last night, that’s exactly what I did :o) I’ll be honest, I read through the whole volume, in one sitting, but came unstuck with the two poems; ‘The Kings Two Bodies’ (Joe Koch) and ‘A Warning Agaynste Woldes’ (Zachary Bo...

  Run Time: 80 Minutes I had my youngest daughter over, for a chunk of yesterday, and followed that up with a quick game of ‘Uno’ and ‘Monopoly Deal’ with said daughter and my ex-partner. Turns out that playing to win (instead of playing to lose really quickly so I can get back to my book) can be fun after all, who would have thought it…? :o) What I didn’t do yesterday was pick up a book but I did manage to watch ‘XX’ when I got home. And… It was pretty good, all the more so as I’d managed to confuse it with ‘X’ (which I still need to watch) and my expectations were all over the place going into it. Regular visitors here will know that I have a real soft spot for ‘horror anthology’ movies, almost as much as I do for zombie movies ;o) If there’s more than one separate story collected in a horror movie, I’m watching it. That’s what ultimately encouraged me to keep going with ‘X’ and it proved to be worth sticking with. That’s not to say that there weren’t issues. There are four stori...