Lord Samper's Library

Well, they should have done but they didn’t; I just really (really) wanted to use that as the title for todays post :o) Sorry, it’s been one of those weeks, not the worst week ever but far from a favourite. Oh well, it’s over and done with now. Anyway… A week like that normally involves me heading to Forbidden Planet at some point, just to try and dull the pain a little. That’s what I did yesterday, here are some quick thoughts on a couple of comics that I picked up (and one that I should have posted about earlier but… didn’t) ‘Hillbilly: The Treason of Twelve-Toe Maggie #1’ – Eric Powell (Dark Horse Comics/Albatross Funnybooks) It has been an absolute age since I’ve read any ‘Hillbilly’ (or anything by Eric Powell for that matter) so it was kind of nice to see ‘Hillbilly’ on the shelf and remember that Powell is still out there, doing his thing. And ‘The Treason of Twelve-Toe Maggie’ is only three issues long so of course I had to take it home for a read. I’ll be honest, I’m going to ...

  Page Count: 326 Pages It feels like a while since I last had an ‘Aliens’ post here (‘Aliens: Genocide’, back in May , just in case you were wondering…) but I have been pecking away at ‘Alien Harvest’, a page here and then a few pages here. And that should be a little bit of a red flag right there. The four preceding ‘Aliens’ novels (or, one and a half omnibuses) were all very readable and, ultimately, a lot of fun despite a few misgivings here and there. ‘Alien Harvest’ though…? Honestly, it has taken me weeks to get through and if it wasn’t for my generally enjoying the franchise (and being an awkward middle-aged chap who sometimes, just won’t let a book beat him…), I’d have DNF’d this book and moved on without a second thought. I didn’t though (because I’m awkward and needed the win) and here I am, trying to make a little sense of how I feel about ‘Alien Harvest’. Lets see how I do… Royal jelly, the most illicit of Alien by-products, is keeping Dr, Stan Myakovsky alive. A once ...

  Page Count: 291 Pages Another day, another ‘Aliens Omnibus’… Well, half an ‘Aliens Omnibus’ ;o) It’s not quite how I saw this years reading going (although I did buy the books so I really should have seen it coming at some point) but I’m enjoying it nonetheless. That love of ‘sci-fi horror’ has never really left me and the xenomorphs do it so well. And if that wasn’t enough, it always fun to watch dysfunctional groups of Colonial Marines pour ridiculous amounts of bullets etc into the Aliens, reducing them to acid drenched chunks of… Well, whatever they’re made of. What are the Aliens made of? Anyone? Anyway… Yesterday was a ‘commuting day’ and that led me to go looking for a book that would wake me up, in the morning, but would also be something that I could relax with on the bus home. Sounded like just the right time to pick up an ‘Aliens’ tie-in novel… ;o) The Alien Queen is dead, the hive mind left to flounder… and on a world bereft of its leader, two strains of Alien divide ...

  Page Count: 261 Pages When I picked up ‘The Complete Aliens Omnibus: Volume 1’ last week, the plan was to read the three books in between, well… All the other books that are waiting ‘patiently’ in the TBR pile. No urgency, just another way of adding a tiny bit of variety to my reading diet ;o) And now here I am, a few days later, having just finished off what I can only describe as an ‘Aliens Reading Frenzy’. What happened? Well, my posts on ‘Earth Hive’ and ‘Nightmare Asylum’ can speak for themselves but the bottom line is that fun was in short supply until I found it here. That’s what led me into ‘The Female War’, in record time, let me tell you about it… Ellen Ripley is back! Waking from a long journey in space with a mysterious hole in her memory, Ripley finds her way to the Gateway station and a meeting with Wilks and Billie. Ripley has the beginnings of a plan, a plan that might help humanity take the Earth back from the Aliens. Ripley also has a secret though, one that s...

  Page Count: 271 Pages Well, yesterday wasn’t the ‘day of reading’ that I’d planned; more like a day of playing on my phone (with an ill-advised break for a scary movie that wasn’t scary at all) and trying to stay awake. It did get to a point though where I thought, ‘if I don’t read something now…’ and resolved to do something about that. The immediate TBR pile wasn’t particularly inspiring so in the end, I figured I’d go back to the ‘Aliens Omnibus’ and see what happened after Wilks and Billie escaped the Alien home world. ‘Earth Hive’ had its issues but there was enough there for me to want to keep reading . Turns out that it was a good choice of mine :o) ‘Nightmare Asylum’ was a big improvement on ‘Earth Hive’ and all of a sudden, I’m back in the groove again. Billie, Wilks and Bueller (well, half of him anyway…) have escaped the Alien home world, on board a pre-programmed robot ship, destination unknown. They will eventually make it back to Earth but not until they’ve spent so...

  Page Count: 277 Pages Sorry about the ‘blog silence’ yesterday… Blame it on a mixture of work and a ‘long lunch break’ involving a trip to my GP and then on to the hospital for more blood tests. Yay. It did give me a bit more free time, for reading, though so I’m not complaining too much. Work continues to be demanding so I was pretty glad to escape into a book. Anyway… I’ve had ‘The Complete Aliens Omnibus: Volume 1’ on my shelf for a couple of years now but have somehow never quite got round to picking it up; it’s a thick old book and I think that’s put me off a little. Until yesterday that is… Instead of taking on the whole book at once, I thought I’d tackle it ‘one book at a time’ instead and, here I am. ‘Earth Hive’ was up first and… They come in silence like death in the night. They are perfect killing machines. They are the Aliens and some people value them above all else. But the attempt to weaponize a creature of such tremendous power is a very dangerous game for the inh...

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...

  Page Count: 136 Pages How cool would it be if I could have coloured the word ‘Blood’ in red…? Yep, I’m looking at ten days with no work and I’m feeling just how you’d expect at the prospect of not doing an awful lot ;o) Anyway… I may well be fifty now but I’m still not above doing things like promising myself a new comic book if I made it through last week’s MRI scan without freaking out. Look, I know how I work and what the pressure points are ;o) I made it through the scan (just waiting on the results, I don’t think there’ll be anything to worry about though) so the next time I found myself near a Waterstones, I had the ideal reason to go in and not come out until I’d bought something. I always enjoy the ‘Alien’ movies but while I’ve got a few of the books on my shelves, I’ve always shied away from them as I can’t help but wonder… How many times can you tell what is essentially the same story? And again, don’t get me wrong (love the movies) but the whole point of the Aliens is ...

Because yesterday was a bit crazy and didn’t leave me with much time for reading in the evening. A couple of short stories and that was about it. Today looks very likely to go in the same direction (hospital appointment and a lot of work to catch up on all at the same time) so while I have a few minutes spare, let me tell you about last night’s reading. One good and one, erm… not so good, lets do the ‘not so good’ first. Here goes… ‘Embers of Extinction (The Horus Heresy Primarchs)’ – Brandon Easton (Black Library) For many long years, Perturabo has harboured a grudge against his primarch brother Rogal Dorn. With the outset of the Horus Heresy, he has a chance to finally avenge himself against Dorn and his Imperial Fists – but the disastrous Battle of Phall has just embittered him further. Determined to slake his thirst for revenge, Perturabo sets his Iron Warriors on a mission to devastate Dorn's sons… at any cost. I’ve only ever come across Perturabo as a supporting character (wh...

I somehow never got round to watching ‘Alien: Romulus’ at my local cinema (and there’s a big question over whether anyone will watch anything there ever again but that’s another story) but after a few weeks of waiting for the price, on Prime Video, to come down, ‘Romulus’ suddenly became affordable and that was my cue to grab a copy, order a pizza in and give it a watch. I’ll be honest, I’m more of a ‘Predator’ fan myself but I’ll never pass up the chance of watching an ‘Alien’ movie and the prospect of an ‘Alien’ movie directed by the same guy who directed the ‘Evil Dead’ remake was an intriguing one to me. So, slice of pizza in hand, I started watching and… While scavenging a derelict space station, a group of young colonists looking for a better life find the most terrifying life form in the universe instead. And there may well be something even more terrifying on board… As I’ve got older, I’ve found that my natural ‘movie run-time tolerance’ peters out at about an hour and half. An...

I was in no fit state to get any reading done, over the weekend, but luckily, I was in just the right mood to sit in my comfy chair and watch some TV. Well, a lot of TV actually ;o) Me and my eldest have a little movie night on Friday so I thought I'd take the opportunity to watch 'Alien vs. Predator' and 'Alien vs. Predator Requiem' and see if either would work for next Friday. It won't surprise you to learn that we'll be watching one but not the other... And I'd never seen a 'Saw' movie, until I saw that 'Jigsaw' was on Netflix and I thought 'why not...' Let me tell you about them ;o) 'Alien vs. Predator' (2004) A pyramid lies between the Antarctic ice. But what has it called, and what is hatching within it...? An archaeological team are caught between two warring alien species, one of which must not be allowed to escape the pyramid... Sometimes I feel like I'm the only person who enjoys 'Alien vs, Predator';...

Just a quick one today as it’s my first day back, after a week’s leave (which was really nice thanks, I’ll have to do it again sometime), and I’ve got a horrible feeling that my inbox is going to be heaving. Fingers crossed that it isn’t but… Wish me luck? Anyway, a few ‘Predator’ novels have featured here, over the last few weeks, so I thought it was only fair that I balanced this out with at least one ‘Alien’ novel and that novel ended up being ‘Enemy of My Enemy’; a book that Amazon ‘helpfully’ reminded me has been on my bookshelf for far too long. I’ll be honest, the state of my head at the moment, if I’m not reading exactly the right book at exactly the right time… Well, I wouldn’t finish anything. Anyway… The stars aligned and I’m very glad that they did. ‘Enemy of My Enemy’ was exactly the book I needed. HYGIEIA―AN OUTER RIM COLONY―IS DOOMED The moon on which it was built hurtles toward an inevitable collision with the dead planet Hephaestus. The clock is ticking, yet when a d...