Lord Samper's Library

A couple of comic books to round off the week; both drawn beautifully but one far more of a compelling read than the other… ‘Beneath The Trees Where Nobody Sees’ – Patrick Horvath (IDW) Page Count: 152 Pages   Don’t. Murder. The. Locals. This is adorable brown bear and small-town serial killer Samantha Strong’s cardinal rule. After all, there’s a sea of potential victims in the big city just beyond the forest, and when you’ve worked as hard as Sam to build a cozy life and a thriving business in a community like Woodbrook – surrounded by friendly fellow animal folk and the aroma of cedar trees and fresh apple pies – the last thing you want to do is disturb the peace. So you can imagine Sam’s outrage when one of Woodbrook’s own meets a grisly, mysterious demise… and you wouldn’t blame her for doing anything it takes to hunt down her rival before the body count rises and Sheriff Patterson starts (literally) barking up the wrong tree. I’ve mentioned before that there are many ways in w...

It's been a while since I've had to 're-cycle' an old blog post but last night... Well, I won't say anything other than that 'last night' crept up and ambushed me when I least expected it. It was nothing that couldn't be fixed but while I could manage a few short stories afterwards, I was in no state to conjure up a blog post about them. I can definitely say that you should read Nathan Ballingrud's short stories but that's a really short blog post; I'll have to get back to you with something a little more detailed than that ;o) Anyway... It's at times like this that I turn to older, defunct, blogs of mine and go hunting for a post that looks like it could do with a breath of fresh air. And this time round, the hunt led me to a post from about twelve years ago ; a 'Science Fiction Masterwork' that was a tough nut to crack but ultimately, worth that time and effort... I never seem to read as many SF Masterworks as I mean to. There’s...

  Page Count: 207 Pages. When I’m struggling to maintain focus at work, I find that the best way to pick my next read is to just go with my gut feeling. Whether it’s the cover or the blurb (or both), I stand a better chance of finishing a read if I don’t feel obligated to read/finish. Hence my starting off with a little Warhammer 40K on Sunday and then a brief sojourn in horror territory over the last couple of days. And today? Well, today, it’s time for a little ‘Doctor Who’; technically a re-read (although it has been a number of years since I last picked it up) and at the same time, a chance to have a little nibble at the ‘Doctor Who TBR Pile’ that I’ve built up. I didn’t realise this, until just now, but ‘Doctor Who And The Zarbi’ is actually the second ‘Doctor Who’ novelization published, back in 1965 (based on the TV serial ‘The Web Planet’), don’t ask me what the first one is… ;o) Thanks ‘Doctor Who Wiki’ ! It hasn’t been that long since I read it, just long enough that i...

  Page Count: 37 Pages You can read ‘Agate Way’ over at Reactor if you fancy it; I visit very irregularly so completely missed this tale when it appeared last year, story of my life really… ;o) No free read for me, not this time. I felt like following ‘Acquired Taste’ with a much shorter read and came across ‘Agate Way’ whilst in the middle of finding out that Nathan Ballingrud is actually a real writer (and not just a literary creation of Clay McLeod Chapman). I’m not afraid to own up to my mistakes, just don’t laugh at me too much (I’m feeling fragile)? Anyway, lets take a little trip down ‘Agate Way’; just a little one though, you wouldn’t want to end up lost. Not here… A pair of sisters are hired to find--and if necessary, dispose of--whatever is killing neighborhood pets in a dying town. No-one told them that people have been going missing as well, now Casey and Tara are about to find out that ‘nature never tires, she never rests…’ Sometimes, you read a story and by the time...

  I’m doing my absolute best not to be ‘book tempted’ (especially since my run of overtime came to an end just before Christmas…) but every now and then, I can’t help myself, especially when a certain Womble is doing the tempting ;o) Like I said before , I really enjoyed ‘Wake Up And Open Your Eyes’ , and I’m always partial to a collection of horror short stories, so it didn’t take too much persuading for me to grab myself an ‘Acquired Taste’. I’ve been dipping in and out of the book and polished it off over a lazy Sunday afternoon in the comfy chair. Let me tell you about it… They're feeding on you too. A father returns from serving in Vietnam with a strange and terrifying addiction; a man removes something horrifying from his fireplace, and becomes desperate to return it; and a right-wing news channel has its hooks in people in more ways than one. From department store Santas to ghost boyfriends and salamander-worshipping nuns; from the claustrophobia of the Covid-19 pandemi...

  Page Count: 37 Pages Just a quick one today as I’ve got the day to myself and three books (I think) that are a good way along the road to being fully read. I want to see if I can finish at least one of them, lets see how it goes… In the meantime, here’s a tale that found its way onto my Kindle, back in 2024, and then proceeded to languish unread for the next couple of years. Nothing against ‘Faith In Iron’, if you’ve seen my place, you’ll know that it’s very easy for a book to get lost in the crowd; especially if it’s hidden away on my Kindle ;o) Anyway… I was watching a lore video that mentioned ‘Faith In Iron’ the other day; I put two and two together and realised that I needed to get my moneys worth out of the read. And that’s exactly what I did... The tech-priests of the Adeptus Mechanicus eschew the weakness of flesh, preferring to show their faith in the Omnissiah by replacing their organics with machine parts. As well as religious, this is practical – disease can't affect ...