Lord Samper's Library

The first couple of days back have gone ok, can’t ask for a lot more than that really :o) Now I just need to get my Christmas Shopping in order and I think we’re all good (fingers crossed). When your twelve year old daughter has no idea what she wants though, there will be twists and turns to come… Anyway, this is another of those posts where I round up all the little bits and pieces I’ve read over the last few days. I wouldn’t be surprised if there are a few more of these to come as I fit blogging round my return to work. Lets see how it goes. For now then, lets take a quick look at what I mentioned in the title… ‘Honour to the Dead’ – Gav Thorpe (Black Library) Run Time: 1 Hour, 14 Minutes As Calth burns, the Battle Titans of the Fire Masters legion take to the streets of the city of Ithraca, ready to massacre the fleeing civilian population in the name of their new, dark masters. But the remaining loyalist engines of the Legio Praesagius - the True Messengers - still stand ready to...

I'm more than a little run off my feet today with month-end, at work, bringing two deadlines that I'm trying (unsuccessfully, it has to be said) to bend to my will. Oh well, just tomorrow to go and then it's the weekend :o) In the meantime, I haven't been able to focus on any current reads enough to finish them for a post here. Because of that, I'm relying on the work of 'Past Me' to cover todays post; I hope you don't mind too much! The plan was to read 'The Ice Schooner' for a more current review but that never quite happened and I need a break today so, here we are ;o) You can read the original review Here but all the important bits are below, A new Ice Age covers an Earth of the distant future, an earth where men pilot mighty ice schooners and hunt down the slowly dwindling race of land whales. It is a world where time is running out for its lonely inhabitants, or is it? Schooner captain Konrad Arflane’s life takes an unexpected turn when he...

I'm not sure what happened yesterday (it's all a bit of a blur...) but I was wiped out by the end of it and didn't read anything last night. I did have a mid-evening nap though which isn't a good thing, I really need to stop doing that and actually sleep when I'm supposed to. Anyway...  I thought I'd see if 'Past Me' had anything that he wouldn't mind me borrowing for the blog and, as it happened... He did and I'm very grateful (gives me a chance to catch my breath a little). There I was, thinking that my 'Elric Re-Read' was done and dusted, there are a few more books to go. I never read 'Destiny's Brother', or 'Son of the Wolf', so will have to dig them out and add them to the TBR Pile. In the meantime, have some thoughts on 'Daughter of Dreams' (my original review can be found Here )... Dark forces are behind the rise of Hitler and imprisoned Count Ulric von Bek must fight to keep his family's black sword...

So yesterday was a productive one but left me with no energy to do anything but watch 'Superstore' (again) when I finally got home. I really need to find a new series to watch, but anyway... Where does that leave today's blog then? Not in as bad a place as you'd think ;o) I thought I'd take advantage of earlier blogging endeavours and present you with a Michael Moorcock post from way back in 2014 (thanks 'Past Me'!) I have no idea where my copy of 'The Golden Barge' is right now so this is the next best thing. Normal service should resume after this weekend, when I've had a chance to catch up with my reading, but for now... The last time I had anything to say about ‘The Golden Barge’, the year was 2011 (only just though…) and my thoughts went along the lines of… ‘With certain stories in ‘The Time Dweller’ the problem for me was that whatever Moorcock was trying to say was drowned out in a mass of admittedly beautiful but overall stifling imagery...

Today is 'Half Year Review' Day, at work, and comes complete with all the stress that you'd expect so you probably won't be surprised to hear that I didn't read at all last night; I went to the pub instead to watch a little football and try and forget about today (a good result for my team brightened the mood a little). While I'm going through my review business then, I thought I'd recycle another 'post from the past', just to keep things ticking over until I can get home and write tomorrow's post ;o) It's been a while since I featured anything by Michael Moorcock ( November 2nd, to be precise ) so figured it was time to do something about that :o) The full review is over Here but really, it's just the addition of an opening paragraph that no-one will miss in this post... A chance meeting leads Karl Glogauer into the maelstrom of time and space; cast in various roles but always a witness to man's inhumanity. What will be left of him ...

Well, it took about a week longer than I’d planned but I got there in the end :o) ‘To Rescue Tanelorn’ ended up being the first story read from ‘The Singing Citadel’ but ‘The Greater Conqueror’ was the tale I was really after reading and the main reason I bought the book. My edition of ‘The Singing Citadel’ is pretty old and one of the reasons it took a while to finish ‘The Greater Conqueror’ was that the book actually started to come apart in my hands as I was reading… A touch of superglue took care of that ;o) There were other reasons for the delay though, let me tell you about it. Simon of Byzantium wants to travel East and as a fighting man, sees an opportunity to do just that as part of the army of Alexander the Great. After meeting the man himself though, Simon finds himself drawn into a much wider struggle with the fate of far more than an empire at stake… As I get older, I’m becoming more aware of what I bring to my own reading experience; because it’s not just on the book, is ...

I originally bought this copy of ‘The Singing Citadel’ as I’d never read the short story ‘The Greater Conqueror’ and at the time of writing… I still haven’t :o) I’ll probably pick the book up again, over the next week, but as I was settling down for a read yesterday, it struck me that I’d never read ‘To Rescue Tanelorn’ and having a soft spot for Rackhir the Red, I figured that I should really do something about that… And here I am. The edition I’m reading from has ‘To Rescue Tanelorn’ weighing in at a slender thirty four pages so don’t expect anything too deep from this post then. More like quick thoughts on a quick read, you know how it goes… ;o) The Lords of Chaos grow tired of their human servants renouncing Chaos and finding peace in the fabled city of Tanelorn. The time has come for the city to burn and the Chaos Lord Narjhan raises an army to do just that. In it’s way stand the defenders of Tanelorn but they are far too few to do anything other than delay the inevitable. It fal...

I didn't even know that the 'Warlocks and Warriors' anthology was even a thing until I was on eBay, looking to revisit Douglas Hill's 'Last Legionary' series. It very much was though so of course I had to have a copy. And this week being what it was, reading time has been at a real premium, it was pretty much inevitable that I'd be dipping into this collection; especially when I realised that the rest of the week has mostly been Black Library works (nothing wrong with that at all but I fancied a change). The problem I find with Sword & Sorcery collections is that they're all drawing from the same well so it's a question of how many stories you've already read. Doesn't stop me buying them though ;o) The 'Warlocks and Warriors' collection was a bit of a welcome surprise then in that there was only the one story that I'd read before ('The Sleeping Sorceress' of course). Luck of the draw or a little reminder that there...

Well, it has been one of those weeks this week; what with work kicking things up a gear and having to field Twitter messages from someone whom I suspect is trying to scam me. Don't get me wrong, he's very polite but he's also persistent (I have a feeling that a blocking may well be imminent)... It hasn't been the best week for reading then which is a real shame as 'Brothers of the Wind' is just amazing, hopefully I'll be able to get back into it over the weekend. Short stories always come in handy at times like these as they're basically nice bite sized chunks of story that you can fit into that one hour you have free where you just want to clear your head a bit before jumping back into it. That's why I have short story collections placed strategically round my flat; so that when I need one of those bite sized chunks, there's always one close to hand ;o) I needed some of that last night and 'Tales of the White Wolf' was the collection t...

I'm feeling pretty proud of myself with this one... :o) The number of times that I've tried to read this book and then crashed and burned... Well, lets just say it was more than a few times and leave it at that. Not this time though, 'Revenge of the Rose' has been well and truly read and not only that, I also did 'The Stealer of Souls', 'Kings in Darkness' and 'The Caravan of Forgotten Dreams' (also known as 'The Flame Bringers') for good measure. Go me :o) I didn't read 'The Last Enchantment' (because I've already reviewed it over Here ) and 'To Rescue Tanelorn' will wait for another day as Elric doesn't make an appearance here. In the meantime, lets take a look at what I did manage to read... Searching the world for a civilisation that will remind him of his lost home, Elric – last emperor of Melnibone, wielder of the black sword Stormbringer – decides that he must return to the ruined place of his birth. T...

I haven’t had the best of days today, turns out that your mouth can hurt just as much after the offending tooth has been extracted as it did beforehand… Oh well, nothing that repeated doses of paracetamol won’t eventually fix 😊 In the meantime though, I haven’t really been up to much as far as reading goes but luckily, I had a couple of comics on hand for a situation just like this… ‘The White Wolf’ did take an unexpected turn at the end (that had me wondering if I’d strayed into ‘What If…?’ territory) but there was still enough there that when I saw that ‘The Dreaming City’ was going to be a thing, I knew I had to pick up the first couple of issues. And me being me (and never getting round to picking individual issues up on time…), I was able to pick up the first couple of issues when I was in Forbidden Planet the other day. I love fantasy comics (there really need to be more though) and Moorcock adaptations tend to be a lot of fun more often than not so I was keen to see where th...

I knew I’d have a little time to myself, yesterday, so my reading plan was to really get stuck into ‘The Revenge of the Rose’; I’m further along with that book than I’ve ever got so really wanted to keep the momentum going. It’s me though so I got halfway down the street and checked my bag, only to find that ‘Revenge of the Rose’ had been left at home and I’d come out with a copy of ‘The Warhound and the World’s Pain’ instead. It was a little bit annoying but not the worst thing in the world; ‘The Warhound and the World’s Pain’ is one of those Moorcock books that I keep meaning to read, but somehow never do, so I figured this was the best time to do something about that. Even though I’d forgotten to bring my reading glasses as well… The Forest flourished, a lush and spreading refuge from the Wars, cooly green and welcoming. Beyond its borders the land burned flame red, blood red, ghastly black. Men and women, hacked to death, choked the paths and streams as the Armies of Religion c...

Mark this moment well as moments like this don't come along too often for me... I've actually finished another Moorcock 'Eternal Champion' series! ;o) The blog is what...? Only just under three years old now and this is the second trilogy of his that I've managed to get through... It's no surprise that both of them feature Corum, quite possibly (and by possibly, I think I mean definitely) my favourite of the Eternal Champions. Here's a man who has lost everything (including his family, his human love and a couple of body parts but still fights valiantly to protect humankind from threats including it's own kind. Corum has been through a fair bit, over the last five books, but it's almost time for his journey to end with one final fight and a reckoning. The time for the final fight, against the Fhoi Myore, has come but the Mabden people are sorely outnumbered by their foes. Prince Corum's latest quest then, takes him to Ynys Scaith, hazardous Isle...

I've developed a really annoying habit, just recently, of picking up a book, reading about fifty pages and then putting it down for fifty pages of something else. This last week then has been really satisfying as I've gone about polishing off some of these unfinished books. I still need to make more of a dent in the August TBR pile but I'm feeling good about my reading, so far, this month which is a hell of a lot better than I felt last month... Lets see how the rest of the month goes, onto 'The Oak & the Ram'. I actually read 'The Bull and the Spear' back in January, of this year , but a small dose of Covid put paid to any attempt to read 'The Oak & The Ram', just couldn't do it. By the time I was feeling more myself again, life had moved on and I was reading other books instead; poor old 'The Oak & The Ram' got left on a shelf and forgotten about. Until now that is, I found my copy again and finally finished it over the las...

I really want to get more book posts in this week so thought I’d kick things off with a short story as it feels like ages since I’ve done one of those (the last one was 'The Fall and Rise of the House of the Wizard Malkuril' back at the beginning of July). It’s been even longer since I read any Michael Moorcock (there’s something about ‘the Revenge of the Rose’ where I just can’t get into it) so I thought I’d combine the two and I ended up reading ‘The Time Dweller’. I found it in ‘Breakfast In The Ruins And Other Stories’, I don’t know where else you might find it.   Dusk had come to the universe, albeit the small universe inhabited by Man. The sun of Earth had dimmed, the moon had retreated and salt clogged the sluggish oceans, filled the rivers that toiled slowly between white crystalline banks, beneath darkened, moody skies that slumbered in eternal evening.   I don’t think it’s any coincidence that just after the title, Moorcock choses to lead with an opening parag...

Reading the, much slimmer, Grafton editions has actually really helped me power along a little bit with my long running re-read of the 'Elric' series. While I do like how the 'new' (they're not that new now but, you know what I mean...) Gollancz look on my shelves, they're also just chunky enough to make me think, 'I'm only after a quick read, maybe I'll choose something else...' Nope, I'll stick with the Grafton editions for now ;o) So, on to 'The Weird of the White Wolf' and a book that had me a little puzzled to begin with... Imrryr, the dreaming city; Yrkoon, the hated usurper; Cymoril, the beloved – all had fallen to the fury and unearthly power of the albino prince and his terrible sword. And Elric faced at last the fate that was to be his in this haunted era: that he must go forth, sword and man as one, and havoc and horror would be forever at his forefront until he found the Purpose that was yet obscured to him... There is ...

No, not the whole book; just the short story of the same name. Nothing against ‘Sojan the Swordsman’ (which I may look at another time) or Catharz (just a little bit embarrassed that I didn’t get all the little jokes last time I read it); they’re cool but they’re not Elric. And I’ve already reviewed ‘The Last Enchantment’ ( over Here if you’re interested). Nope, we’re all about Elric’s adventures at the End of Time today albeit in a slightly shorter post than normal, the story is only a very slender fifty three pages long. I’m using the Grafton edition as this was the first ‘Elric’ book that I picked up all those years ago in my first year at high school, which I think makes ‘Elric at the End of Time’ the second ‘Elric’ story that I read after ‘The Last Enchantment’. Wikipedia told me that this story is next, in the reading order, and I’m never one to argue with Wikipedia so here we are. But enough of me leaving these not very subtle notes to myself in the event that my memory goes ...