Lord Samper's Library

  Page Count: 413 Pages (of which I made it through 153 Pages before saying to myself, ‘just because I’m unemployed now, doesn’t mean the time to stick with a book that isn’t working for me…) I hate to start September with a ‘Did Not Finish’ but I ended August on a ‘Did Not Finish’ so… Here we are :o) We all know how it goes here... Not every book is a winner and of these, there are books that I will finish out of a morbid fascination. Not so much these days though… Due to (resignedly gestures at everything…), my reading time is precious so I am much more inclined to drop a book, that isn’t working, and move on to something that I’ll enjoy. Which brings me round to ‘Scourge The Heretic’ and another lovely cover from the Black Library. It was a shame that the book itself didn’t work out… First up, lets have some blurb… While Space Marines and the Imperial Guard battle aliens among the stars, it is the job of the Inquisition to hunt down the heretics who corrupt society from within. ...

  Page Count: 300 Pages These days, what with various bits and pieces going on, I try and make sure that for at least one day over the weekend, I do as little as I can; mostly sitting in my favourite chair and trying to make a dent in my TBR pile. Gives me a chance to recharge ahead of starting over again the following week ;o) Well, that was pretty much my Saturday and while I didn’t get an awful lot of reading under my belt, I did manage a little. I was kind of ‘half and half’ about Steve Lyons’ ‘Krieg’ books until he came up with ‘Siege of Vraks’ and all of a sudden, I found that I needed to read more :o) Well, I finally got the chance, over the weekend, with ‘The Relentless Dead’ and… Five hundred years ago, Oleris III was ravaged by a Chaos plague. Now it is a world of tombs and catacombs. It belongs to the dead. Colonel Graven and his 401st Krieg Regiment are charged with searching for a missing inquisitor in the bone-filled ossuary tunnels beneath the planet. But the dead...

  Page Count: 253 Pages (I didn’t read them all though, not this time) Before I kick this post off, I just want to start off by saying that I’m pretty proud of myself over here :o) Yep, I’ve made it through ten days of ‘cat-sitting’ without mistakenly calling out the emergency vet; you’d think that’s a low bar to aim for but it’s a surprisingly easy one for me to miss completely. And ‘Cat Number One’ really knows how to hold a grudge. Anyway, lets actually talk about the book, shall we…? ;o) When I’m trawling charity shop bookshelves, I will invariably grab any Black Library book that I come across, especially the older ones that seem to go for an absolute fortune on eBay. If you don’t take a chance right there, you might not get another one; it’s either that or I just really want to buy a book (any book…), both reasons are valid as far as I’m concerned ;o) Now a lot of the time, this approach will more or less guarantee me a decent read but every now and then, I get one that doesn...

  Page Count: 405 pages After a ‘not so great’ experience with ‘Domain’, I really needed my next read to be a decent one, that’s what led me back to ‘Carnage Unending’; an anthology that I’d started reading, about a month ago(ish) but had somehow found its way way to the bottom of a pile of books on my desk. It’s funny how that seems to happen fairly regularly at the moment… Anyway :o) I figured a little ‘Warhammer 40k’ reading would be a safe bet and I’d already read a fair chunk of 'Carnage Unending' so it would be a fairly quick read as well. As it turned out… Both of these were true, to a point. I’m not going to go into my usual ‘something for everyone’ spiel (oh, hang on…) but lets just say that for me, ‘Carnage Unending’ was a decent palate cleanser after ‘Domain’ with a varied set of tales from the sides of ‘Imperium’ and ‘Ork’. The other thing I realised is that after a ‘negative read’, I am much less inclined to stick with a story if it’s not doing it for me. I’m sure ...

  Page Count: 346 Pages I’m not much for ‘reading resolutions’ these days; I don’t have anything against them, they just don’t seem to work for me and I’ll be honest, I’d rather enjoy my reading than feel all guilty about not finishing a book that I didn’t want to read but thought I should. That’s me anyway, good luck with your reading resolutions if you have any ;o) One thing I am trying to do though, this year, is to read more of the books that have been sat on my bookshelves for way too long. Books that I wanted to read but somehow never got round to because… Well, I ended up buying more books. I know :o) ‘Genefather’ is one of those books and I have been hankering for a little more ‘Warhammer 40k’, in my reading... It didn’t take a lot to put two and two together and make ‘Genefather’ my next read… In the hope of taming the Great Rift that divides the galaxy in two, Archmagos Belisarius Cawl invites representatives from across the Imperium to the artificial world of Pontus Aver...

  Page Count: 120 Pages I’ve been picking up the last few issues of ‘White Dwarf’ magazine to read the continuing adventures of Sergeant Elias Bain and his Cadian Shock Troopers. It was a great tale but if ‘Veterans of the Fall’ is anything to go by, I could have saved myself a few quid and waited for those adventures to be collected in book form. Oh well, like I said, it was a good read and there’s still something cool about having to wait a month to find out ‘what happens next’ ;o) At the same time, there’s also something cool about having the whole story in one place and that’s what I had with ‘Tatters of Hope’. All five episodes collected in 'Veterans of the Fall', lined up and ready to go. The ‘Tattershield’ Kasrkin troopers have taken down the Maligner but there are still plenty of Traitor Guard and Heretics who are ready to take his place and carry on the fight for the planet 04-Gavaine. The Tattershields, and supporting Anvil Battalion, are outnumbered and low on suppli...

  Page Count: 418 Pages ‘The greatest conflict this galaxy has ever seen reaches its climax and the players in this drama must congregate. From the lead actors to the chorus, where else in this melodrama could any soul of consequence be drawn?’ -  ‘The Fury of Magnus’ I’d blame it on middle age, if I could, but the truth is that I’m naturally awkward so when I saw these lines in ‘The Fury of Magnus’, my first thought was, ‘Really? Does everything have to be tied off neatly…?’ Because, really, does it? That’s not how life works, for everything that does come to an end, everything else keeps on moving and not necessarily in the same direction. When you’re looking at a ‘mega-series’ like ‘The Horus Heresy’ though, I guess there’s some justification for it, and I’m not just talking about the need to eke a few more coins out of readers. With a series of this length and the resulting size of the cast, everyone is going to have favourites that they follow and I guess it’s only fair t...

This week hasn’t been a bad one but it has been pretty intense (what with one thing and another, and another) and my reading took a bit of a hit. I’ve got the day to myself so hopefully I can catch up with myself a little bit :o) In the meantime, I did manage to get a few more ‘Warhammer 40K’ reads under my belt last night so lets talk about them :o) ‘Eternal’ – Dan Abnett (Black Library) Page Count: 8 Pages Captain Froer of the Astra Militarum and his men receive a new ally in their attempts to push into enemy territory - a Space Marine of the Blood Angels Chapter. But as Brother Gammarael wages war with a monstrous foe, Froer gets a glimpse of the eternal darkness that lurks at the heart of the sons of the Angel. I chose to stick my hand in my wallet, for an 8 page tale that costs exactly the same as Black Library eBooks three times the length, so I can’t really complain but… It’s worth bearing in mind if you’re thinking about giving ‘Eternal’ a read. Maybe try looking for it in an a...

  Page Count: 737 Pages I’ll tell you what, I know it sounds really dumb but I didn’t realise just how much I was struggling with my reading until I got new lens’ in my glasses… :o) Just seeing words suddenly come back into focus was just the best feeling and gave me a little boost to finish off some books where the bookmark has stayed on the same page for far too long. And there was only one book that I could go to first… With its small, blurry font, ‘The End and the Death Volume 2’ has been a nightmare to get to grips with but that all changed yesterday when another visit from insomnia gave me some unexpected time to finally finish the book. Terra is besieged. Humanity’s salvation lies on a knife edge. The Warmaster Horus’ bloody seven-year crusade has led to this: the cradle of mankind, where he is to kill his father, the Emperor. With the war at this critical juncture, Sanguinius, primarch of the loyalist Blood Angels, braves the horrors of the Warmaster’s flagship, The Vengefu...

I thought I'd switch things up, just a little bit :o) Instead of making the commute to work all about catching up with the Black Library stuff on my 'phone Kindle', I thought I'd treat myself to an hours reading when I got home, last night, after dropping my girls off with their Mum. The flat is always a lot quieter after they go, almost too quiet sometimes, so what better way to drown out the silence than with a hefty dose of gunfire and heroism? Nope, me neither ;o) So that's exactly what I went and did... And it worked. Let me tell you about it. 'The Strong Among Us' - Steve Lyons Page Count: 33 Pages Blackfire Forge is under siege. For seventeen days, faceless warriors have bombarded the walls of the forge, trying to break through its formidable defences and take the facility in the name of their god. Jarrah, a menial in the forge, may not know how to use the weapons that are attacking them, but he knows who built them: he and his fellow workers. For it ...

Page Count: 179 Pages As the Great Rift unfolds in the night sky above Terra and daemons walk upon the birth world of mankind, the Primarch Roboute Guilliman returns, heralding a dark new age. During the breaking storm, Cypher and his band of Fallen escape from the most secure prison in the Imperium. Now loose in the Imperial Palace, they are hunted by warriors of the Dark Angels, forces of the Adeptus Custodes, and Imperial Assassins. But what are Cypher’s intentions? Can anything or anyone be trusted? Told from Cypher’s own, unreliable point of view, this tale of truth, lies and secrets sees one of the Imperium’s most mysterious figures make war at its very heart. But what are the true motivations of the Lord of the Fallen? The whole point of the Warhammer 40K setting, at least from where I’m sat, is that nothing changes. On the one level, it can’t because if it does, Games Workshop suddenly has no product to sell ;o) My cynicism to one side though… The Imperium has stagnated, ov...

Page Count: 172 Pages Apart from my regular trips to a certain war-torn universe of the far future, the Grimdark thing kind of passed me by. Unless things, outside my reading, have reached a point where I’m reading Grimdark stuff and just haven’t noticed…? Possibly, I don’t know. By the time I get to the party, everyone else has already gone and I’m trading slightly embarrassed looks with the guy sweeping up. But anyway… ;o) I’d been hearing a lot of good things about ‘In the Shadow of their Dying’, mostly via ‘Spells & Spaceships’ , and resolved to be into this book right from the start. Okay, when the paperback was released, you know what I mean… I should note, before I start, that I’ve never read anything by Michael Fletcher or Anna Smith Spark (and I may need to do something about that now) so honestly, I’ve got no idea where one’s writing ends and the other begins. Apologies then, if I miss something really obvious. And on that note... The third best assassin. A second rat...