Lord Samper's Library

If you've been reading the blog for a while, you'll know by now that I have a real soft spot for zombies, whether it's in film or books. Don't just take my word for it though, click the 'zombies' tag and see what happens... ;o) I love seeing the potential for great storytelling realised in the face of a zombie horde and on the occasions when that doesn't quite happen, well... it's also all about the gore and seeing how many different ways there are to kill a zombies. Nobody loses when there's a zombie tale being told... Having said all that though, there are a lot of zombie tales out there (and I do mean a lot ) so I'm always on the lookout for something that's a little different to the standard 'run, shelter and eventually get eaten' plot that a lot of these tales seem to follow. With that in mind then, a book about an undead Russian Special Forces unit trying not to eat everyone whilst fighting Nazi re-enactors... That was just t...

I was going to read some other stuff first but I really got into the tale of Corporal Cully, in 'Blood Sacrifice' , and wanted to see where it all began. So I did :o) This of course means that over the last couple of days, I have managed to take a duology and read it in entirely the wrong order... I'm not even surprised at myself as this type of behaviour is turning out to be par for the course this week. I would promise not to do it again but there are two 'Sharpshooter' books, on the shelf, that are daring me to even try and work out where they sit in a series that I haven't managed to collect yet. Oh well... But back to 'Baphomet by Night'; a tale that also stands very well on its own (even if you read it after its sequel...) and invites you to read the next tale rather than ending on a cliffhanger and demanding that you keep going. If you're anything like me you'll keep going but even if you don't, 'Baphomet by Night' is a nasty...

When I said I wanted to finish the 'Crabs' series, this side of the New Year, I wasn't planning on finishing it quite so quickly. I ended up really getting into 'The Charnel Caves' though so went straight onto 'Crabs Omnibus' without even thinking about it. And then Guy N. Smith passed away, on Christmas Eve, and it really didn't seem like the time to be writing a review. I said I would though so here I am :o) Before we get into that though.. Looking back over the last few months; if there's one thing that reading this series has taught me, it's that I don't think Smith meant for anyone to read through the whole lot at once. Smith does 'giant crabs' brilliantly but if you're reading one books after another, in short order, then you will feel like you're reading the same book over and over again (and that's only natural, they're giant crabs). That's not his fault though and the next time I pick the series up, I'...

The Christmas holidays are a lot of things to a lot of people and one of the things it is for me is the ideal excuse to dig out some favourite movies, on DVD, and watch them while stuffing my greedy face with chocolate, Jelly Tots (a personal favourite) or anything else that happens to be at hand. I'm not fussy ;o) I've loved 'Ray Harryhausen movies' since I was tiny (well, maybe not that tiny...) and used to watch 'Sinbad' movies on a Sunday afternoon. It was the first time that I had ever seen monsters that weren't cheaply djasonressed 'Doctor Who' extras and actually moved and interacted with the characters. I was enthralled and have been enthralled by Harryhausen movies ever since, even in these days of CGI. Damn, I feel old saying that but it's true. There' something about a 'stop motion' monster, and the way it's set against the human cast, that gets me every time so of course I was going to use Christmas as an excuse to g...

Well, today was going to be a review of Guy N. Smith's 'Crabs Omnibus' and then I found out that he died today and suddenly I didn't want to write that review any more. Don't get me wrong, it's a good book and I will talk about it here, just not today. So where does that leave us then...? Well, it is Christmas Eve so lets have a little chat about 'A Creepshow Holiday Special'. A quick chat though, I've got a lot of presents to wrap up before I see my kids in the morning... Robert Weston has reason to believe that he might be a werewolf, but when he goes to a Shapeshifters Anonymous support group, he learns that there's something far more sinister than his curse to worry about. Lets see if he makes it through the night... 'A Creepshow Holiday Special' is basically a long lead up to a flurry of Santa Claus' getting gunned down by possibly the unlikeliest group of were-people that you have ever met. It shouldn't work, it really sh...

For loads of reasons (up to and including, 'that book has a really cool cover, I'm reading it RIGHT NOW'), I've been pretty awful at keeping to my vague promises of reading particular series this year. And you know what? That's ok. There are far more important things going on than whether you finish reading a series or not, don't beat yourself up over it. So long as you're getting something out of whatever you read, I think that's the main thing this year. Having said that though, I would like to finish at least one 'series read through', before the end of the year, and it wasn't going to be the 'Elric' books (more on that another time, maybe) so it had to be Guy N. Smith's 'Crabs' books, it just had to. If you've been following my reviews of this series, you'll know that I got more and more frustrated with a series that felt like it was going through the motions 'but look, there are giant crabs so that make...

The closer it gets to Christmas, the less likely I am to be reading all the books that I should be reading as I'm pretty much letting my brain go on permanent time out now. Look, it's been a long year and my brain deserves to just stop for a bit ;o) Just one more day of work and then I'm pretty confident that I can make it through the next week and a bit on auto-pilot. I'm pretty sure that no-one will notice. I'll try and get at least one book review up before Friday but yesterday saw me back at work, after a couple of weeks off sick, and there was no time left for reading after catching up with everything then heading out to see my kids. So what did I do instead? Watched Jason Momoa being Conan the Barbarian of course ;o) After watching Arnie make for a much better Conan than I remembered, and then reading 'Queen of the Black Coast' the other day, it was inevitable that I'd find myself watching the 2011 'Conan' movie sooner rather than later. ...

It was probably inevitable that after watching 'Conan the Barbarian' and 'Conan the Destroyer', I'd want to go to the source (as it were) and read a little Robert E. Howard 'Conan'. I don't know if you're the same but the closer I get to Christmas, the more I find myself reading comfort reads (instead of the actual books that I should be reading, sorry!) and Robert E. Howard's 'Conan' is very much one of these, a lot of fun to read and they don't ask an awful lot of you while you're reading them ;o) The beauty of Howard's 'Conan' output is that there's always a story to match what you're looking for, whether it's short and snappy or something a little more involved. This time round, I fancied something a little longer so decided to read 'The Queen of the Black Coast', a story that I hadn't read for a long time... 'The Queen of the Black Coast' sees Conan fall foul of civilized men once ...

As last night was half about reading and half about watching movies, I thought I'd make today a 'two post day' and tell you all about what I read and watched. First up is the movie 'Prey', chosen because I was in the mood for a 'creature feature' last night and 'Slugs' really didn't work out when I watched it. Seriously, it was a case of having all my slightly negative thoughts, about the book, confirmed. Slugs are really slow and react badly when you pour salt over them, you can't make a whole movie about how dangerous they are, you really can't. But anyway... After having fast forwarded my way through 'Slugs', I thought I'd give 'Prey' a go instead. It's been sat on my watch list for a while and I thought last night was the time to finally give it a go. The plot of 'Prey' is very simple, a little too simple in fact but I'll come onto that in just a minute. The long and short of it is that there'...

I still can't quite get my head round Black Library having a dedicated line of horror fiction. Don't get me wrong, the stories that I've read have been great but one of the points of grimdark fiction is that there's a vein of horror running through it already and that's what we already had with 99% of Black Library fiction. Having a horror line then feels a little bit like the cake is being over-decorated or how it would look if Mills and Boon suddenly decided to do a line of books focusing on just weddings. Not that Black Library are anything like Mills and Boon but, you know what I mean (hopefully) ;o) I'm a big fan of the Black Library's output though, and I'm a huge fan of horror fiction in general, so I'll keep reading em', of course I will, especially as the nights get colder and darker. I've had my eye on 'The Wicked and the Damned' for a while now but had to wait until last payday before I could finally grab a copy. Then it ...

The plan was get loads done today, read a book and post a review for another. What really happened though... Well, I slept in late (really late), replied to the wrong email from my home insurer (having a go at them after they'd apologised, well done Graeme...) and then just wasn't in the mood for reading or posting at all. My mental health isn't brilliant at the moment and there's nothing like coming across as a complete arsehole to make me just curl up in bed and do nothing much for the rest of the day. Well, I say 'nothing much' but I did watch a few movies over the afternoon and evening; part of my trawling the depths of Prime Video to see if I can find anything, free to watch, that's half decent. Or absolute garbage, I'll take either :o) I made it through three movies today, ranging from asolutely awful to 'I loved it' (that was a bit of a cheat as it's a favourite of mine, the other two weren't great though and I had to watch somet...

After watching 'Conan the Destroyer' the other day, I realised that there was no way I could go on without watching (and posting about) 'Conan the Barbarian' as well. It would be like starting with 'The Empire Strikes' back and then carrying on without bothering with 'A New Hope'; do-able but strangely unfulfilling at the same time. It was this realisation that led to the next realisation, I didn't have a copy of 'Conan the Barbarian'. Luckily, a random browse through the Deptford CEX sorted me out and I settled down to watch it last night... Okay, and part of this morning as well, I'm all middle aged now so can't quite manage the late nights these days ;o) 'Conan the Barbarian' tells the story of Conan (surprise!) and his lifelong quest to have revenge on the men who slaughtered his village and, for some inexplicable reason, sent Conan to do loads of exercise, learn how to fight and then gain his freedom. What was that all a...

I've never really been a big fan of historical fiction as, well... I don't know really. Actually, yes I do... As a kid, I was constantly being pushed not to read fantasy and having certain historical fiction held up as being a better read as it was about stuff that actually happened. I'm as stubborn as you like so, of course, not only did I carry right on reading what I wanted but I also stayed away from reading any historical fiction at all, just on principle really. Also, it felt like a lot of the 'swords and sandals' historical fiction was just fantasy for people who didn't want to be seen reading a fantasy book. You know, a little bit of history for context but the same old sword fights, quests and high adventure. Look, I'm not saying I was right; just that it was the way I felt at the time ;o) So why is today all about a review for 'The Last Kingdom'? Well, loads of reasons really, most of them to do with the fact that I wanted to read somethin...

Today was meant to be my review of Bernard Cornwell's 'The Last Kingdom' but I'm having trouble ordering my thoughts there so you might have to wait a little longer for that. In the meantime, lets just say I loved it, because I did. That did leave a 'blog post sized gap' in today but then I woke up this morning, realised that today is 'new episode of The Mandalorian' day and got watching soon afterwards. Pretty good timing really :o) After last week's episode, I didn't want to hang around getting into whatever happened next. There's a little green Grogu in peril and I need to see people rushing to his rescue, dammit! 'The Believer' gives us some of that (which is fair enough as there's still one more episode to go) but gives us a lot more at the same time. Not the episode you're expecting then but very much the episode you didn't realise that you needed, until you watch it. There will be mild spoilers, just so you know ...

Look, today was meant to be a book review but stuff happened, then more stuff happened, then I had a little sleep and the next thing I know it's the evening and there's not an awful lot of time left for a book review (especially if I do what I normally do and put off writing anything until about 11pm). I did watch 'Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom' though so here are some thoughts on that instead. Not many thoughts though because to be honest, 'Fallen Kingdom' isn't a film to inspire much in the way of thoughts. And that may be the way I like it, normally, but I'm not so sure this time. It’s been three years since theme park and luxury resort Jurassic World was destroyed by dinosaurs out of containment. Isla Nublar now sits abandoned by humans while the surviving dinosaurs fend for themselves in the jungles. When the island’s dormant volcano begins roaring to life, Owen (Chris Pratt) and Claire (Bryce Dallas Howard) mount a campaign to rescue the remain...

Today was going to see another movie post here but... Well, the movie I tried to watch, last night, was 'Age of the Dragons' which was essentially 'Moby Dick' but with dragons instead of whales... I could never get through the book and the addition of dragons was nowhere near enough to keep me interested. I did about twenty minutes, fast forwarded to the end and that was that. That'll teach me not to pick up DVDs whilst in the queue at Poundland... Luckily, I'm a couple of books ahead of myself at the moment so figured that now was as good a time as any to take a look at James Herbert's 'Lair'. I read 'The Rats' back at the end of September and did that thing where I always meant to pick up 'Lair' next but never got round to it. When 'Breakfast in the Ruins' had a read of, and chat about, 'The Rats' (for their Hallowee n Special ), that put the idea back in my head and a few weeks later, finally got round to it. I a...

It's funny how that I'm always after a book that will make me think, while I'm reading it, but when it comes to films, I'm totally the opposite... How about you? I think there's something about moving pictures where I'm just happy to let them wash over me and take me wherever the story goes. I was particularly in the mood for this today so it was perhaps inevitable that I would sit down and watch 'Conan the Destroyer'. Well, it was going to be 'Conan the Barbarian' (the 'Arnie' one) but I couldn't find the DVD so had to make do with what I had. It wasn't exactly a chore to be honest, 'Conan the Destroyer' was as fun to watch as it always is. Queen Taramis tasks Conan, and his accomplice Malak, with a mission to escort the Princess Jehenna while she fulfils her destiny to retrieve the horn of the dreaming god Dagoth. If the Princess does get the horn though, she won't live long enough to enjoy her triumph as she must ...