Lord Samper's Library

It's been a while since I've been into the office so the Kindle App has been left feeling all sad and unappreciated... until yesterday when I had to go into the office and needed some reading for the journey home :o) A feeling that 'It's October so I should probably read something scary' and then coming across Kealan Patrick Burke's 'The Tent' sealed the deal. I mean, what's so scary about a tent with no-one in it, right? Quite a fair bit actually... Let me tell you about 'The Tent' and the other two stories that I ended up reading afterwards (yep, 'The Tent' was so good that I ended up looking for more to read, and found it). Quick thoughts are the order of the day again. Work is looking like a tough one today... The perfect getaway...The perfect place to hide...Hocking Hills, Ohio is an oasis for campers, hikers, nature enthusiasts, and for those who just want to get away and lose themselves in the wild.And as long as you follow you...

When I was in Forbidden Planet the other day, spending some of my hard earned bonus, I saw some 'Conan' comics on the shelves and thought I'd pick them up. No 'Elric' this time, I was too late or too early, not sure which... Either way, waiting for the trade now ;o) Anyway, three 'Conan' comics is more than enough to be going on with and last night, I finally got the chance to sit down and read them, Quick thoughts follow below (you're going to hear that a lot this week, I just want it to be the weekend already...) 'Conan: Battle of the Black Stone' - Zub, Scharf, Canola (Titan Comics) So, all that early talk of a Black Stone has expanded into a broader tale, taking in other characters from Robert E. Howard's writings (I really want to call it the 'Howard-verse' but I'm not going to...) I have a passing awareness of these other characters (I really need to read more of Howard's short stories) so it was good not only to see the...

Page Count: 167 Pages I’ve always had a soft spot for the old ‘Doctor Who’ Target novelizations, I’m pretty sure that most of them taught me to read, and this has inevitably transferred into the new range. I say ‘new’, you know what I mean… ;o) Anyway. The new range comes with absolutely gorgeous cover art and gives me a little nostalgia buzz, just like I’m reading the old Target books as a kid. I can’t really ask for any more than that. Okay, they could be a little cheaper, ten quid for a book that’s only just over a hundred and sixty pages long? Hmmmm…. That page count really worked for me this weekend though, with not a lot of time to read and a thick old cold to fight. ‘Planet of the Ood’ it was then :o) Quick thoughts are the order of the day today; I’m still full of cold and I’ve got a lot to catch up on at work… "The Ood came from a distant world, they voyaged across the stars, all for one purpose... to serve." The TARDIS lands on the Ood-Sphere in the year 4126. Her...

I had a doctor's appointment on Thursday and as that particular doctors office lies within walking distance of two of my favourite second hand bookshops... You can guess what happened next. Off I went for a spot of 'I should be working but it's on my way home so why not...' book shopping ;o) Faction Books has clung on grimly while all the other shops, in the Leegate Centre, gradually closed down around it but you can only stave off the inevitable for so long. One of my favourite haunts (a shop that you'd think was actually made out of books, you couldn't see the walls or the floor...) finally closed down... About three or four days before I arrived at it's padlocked door. This isn't the first time that Faction Books has had to relocate though so I'm hoping that we'll see it pop up again in some form. Fingers crossed ;o) Halcyon Books though, that was well and truly open for business so I stopped in to see what their sci-fi and fantasy shelves loo...

That’s our lot for Season 2, now we sit back and wait for news about about Season 3. And I’ll be honest, there was a time when I wouldn’t have been waiting with the enthusiasm that I have right now. I’m not going to go into it all again, not in great detail, but I’ve had problems with Season 1 and a chunk of Season 2, up until a couple of weeks ago when things not only started to turn round but for me, shed a new light on a lot of what we’d already seen. As a result, I spent most of the last week looking forward to last night’s Season Finale. Was it any good in the end? Well… There was one bit that felt a little flat (for me anyway) but on the whole, ‘Shadow and Flame’ not only hit every target that it aimed for, it left the target a smouldering pile of splinters on the floor… Yep, I enjoyed it ;o) As always, I’ll try and avoid spoilers, where possible, as not everyone has seen the episode yet. That means no recaps here. If you want one of those, well… Wikipedia is always a good bet a...

Page Count: 123 Pages I’m all about the short reads at the moment, can’t seem to focus on anything longer at the moment, so ‘Thornhedge’ immediately ticked a box. It was a little more than that though. I’ve always had a soft spot for fairy tales, even more so the ‘retellings’ that do more than hint at the blood and horror that lie beneath the surface of tales that most people think are ‘just kids stories’. Not me though ;o) ‘Thornhedge’ looked like it could tick that box as well so it swiftly became the book that I’ve been reading over the last couple of nights. And was it the book I thought it would be? Yes, yes it was, and a little bit more besides. Quick thoughts follow the blurb, I really should try sleeping at some point... There's a princess trapped in a tower. This isn't her story. Meet Toadling. On the day of her birth, she was stolen from her family by the fairies, but she grew up safe and loved in the warm waters of faerieland. Once an adult though, the fae ask a fav...

If I’d got my act together, this would have been the final entry for #CimmerianSeptember but, well… I clearly didn’t :o) Last month was crazy (again) and something had to give. I wasn’t that far off though! If you squint your eyes and think really hard… You can still pretend it’s September? Nope, forget all that, lets talk some Conan. I read ‘Bound in Black Stone’ back in February, this year , and the final two sentences of my review read, You won’t see me collecting single issues but I will definitely be around for the next trade. Conan is in safe hands here and I’m excited to see where his story goes next. Reader, I’m back on the single issues (couldn’t help myself) but I’m still just as excited as I was about where Conan is headed under Jim Zub, probably even more excited now that I’ve read ‘Thrice Marked for Death’, here’s the blurb… Now 27 and mourning the death of his beloved Bêlit, when Conan is approached by the Thieves Guild to act as muscle for a heist in Shadizar they’re p...