Lord Samper's Library

Page Count: 161 Pages. It’s Monday and that can only mean that it’s time for some ‘Classic Doctor Who’ in book form ;o) The old Target novelizations are what really got me into ‘Doctor Who’ when I was a kid (and into sci-fi and fantasy books in general, horror came a lot later) and recently finding a whole pile of these books, on Greenwich Market, has sent me down the most nostalgic of rabbit holes :o) I’ve supplemented that pile with a few Amazon purchases and ‘Genesis of the Daleks’ was on offer so… Here we are ;o) If you want my thoughts on the TV serial then click Here . We’re talking about the book here though so lets get to it. The Time Lords have a mission for the Doctor. Together with Sarah and Harry, he finds himself stranded on the war-torn planet Skaro where the conflict between the Thals and the Kaleds has been raging for a thousand years. Chemical and biological weapons have started a cycle of mutation among the planet’s inhabitants that cannot be stopped. But Kaled scien...

The plan is very much to use today to catch up on some sleep as well as make some dents in a few of the TBR piles that have grown around the flat (they keep growing and the only way to keep them in check is to keep reading). We'll see how that goes :o) In the meantime, I'm giving myself a day off and letting 'Past Me' take up the slack. I found an old review of Brian Aldiss' 'Non-Stop' and figured it was due its time again. You can read the full review Here but all the important bits are below... The Green tribe have no time for idle speculation about their existence, spending their lives in cramped Quarters and hacking away at the encroaching plant life. Curiosity about their past is an idle luxury they cannot afford. Roy Complain has always secretly thought there was more to life though and he is about to get the chance to find out just what lies beyond his limited world. Complain and the renegade priest Marapper strike out into territory unknown and, on ...

My reading kind of tailed off towards the end of the week (yet again, I've ended up with four or five books on the go but am struggling to get into any of them) but when I've been able to stay awake for long enough, I have managed to watch a few more movies. And this is the post where I tell you all about them ;o) Quick thoughts today, I've got a few things that I need to get done, one of which is try and catch up on my sleep... 'The Coffee Table' (2022) A couple buy a new coffee table for the flat; by the end of the day, three people will be dead. These events are all connected... Well, damn... I saw 'The Coffee Table' on Shudder and naturally assumed that it would be a movie about a possessed coffee table. I think it's a fair assumption to make...  Gentle reader , 'The Coffee Table' is not about a possessed piece of furniture...  'The Coffee Table' is a very good film (as tense as hell) but not one that I'd easily recommend, due to ...

When the power went out the other night, I was lucky enough to have enough juice left in my phone to read a couple of short stories while I waited for everything to turn back on, Which it did, eventually, about an hour after I’d finally gone to sleep… I learned, the hard way, that my doorbell does a little ‘test ring’ when the power comes back. Dammit. But anyway, I’m digressing… It wouldn’t feel like a week without a couple of ‘Black Library’ short stories here so I found a couple and… Here they are ;o) A bit of a mixed bag this time round. I think I said, fairly recently, how I don’t like the idea of ‘Horus Heresy’ short stories that exist just to fill in a gap in the timeline, whether it needs filling in or not. One of the following stories comes across a little like that, the other has a little more purpose about it. ‘Stratagem’ – Nick Kyme One of the great things about the Horus Heresy series is learning about the characters and events that shaped the 41st millennium, and few hero...

Because there was a power cut in our block of flats, last night, and that kind of put paid to, well... everything really (couldn't see to read and had no wi-fi for blogging). And then I've been trying to catch up with work today, almost the weekend... This looks good though, I can see myself re-subscribing to Disney+ (for a couple of months at least) and watching the show. Check out the trailer... What do you reckon? Looks like fairly standard 'Alien' fare but... If it's done right, it will be awesome.

It took me a little longer than planned to get to ‘Dreadnoughts Book Two’ but, well… *Gestures hopelessly at everything* ;o) Last night suddenly ended up being a good time to do something about that so I didn’t hang around, just settled down for a couple of hours reading instead. And there were no surprises here (which was great, I wasn't after surprises in last nights reading), ‘The March of Progress’ is a very solid follow up to ‘Breaking Ground’ and I think I’m more or less following this series for the duration now. After a crime blitz in Boulder leads to riots against the Judges’ excessive use of force and violation of human rights, the Hemlock Cartel takes advantage of the chaos to declare all-out war against the Justice Department. It is up to Judge Glover to eradicate their threat – even if her crusade could risk revealing the long-buried secrets of her past. ‘The March of Progress’ keeps a little of the social commentary, of its predecessor, and what better way to do th...

It’s starting to look like this could be the week where I make a half decent dent in my ‘Comics TBR Pile’, lets see how we do... I’ve really been struggling with the ‘Savage Sword of Conan’ collection just recently (more than one reason but I want to finish the collection first before I talk about it) and I thought that I’d have to take a little step back from ‘Conan’ comics and come back when I was in a better mood for it. Until I realized that there was another ‘Conan’ comic lurking in the TBR pile and maybe I could give that a go instead. So that’s what I did. I’ve caught little glimpses of the ‘Black Stone’ storyline, in other ‘Conan’ comics, but I can’t help but feel that the event has kind of passed me by a little. That’s on me though to be fair, I’ve got the attention span of a goldfish right now and there are so many books that I just haven’t been able to focus on; I suspect a couple of them talk about a Black Stone… Oh well, I’m here now. Where better a place to catch up on ‘B...