Lord Samper's Library

  Page Count: 128 Pages After a long hard slog through the battlegrounds of the Siege of Terra, I needed a real change in direction, for my next read, and change doesn’t get any more emphatic than by moving from original Grimdark to ‘I Hate Fairyland’ . So, here we are :o) We very almost didn’t end up here though. A lot has happened since I last read Volume 4 (‘Sadly Never After’) and I’ll be honest, the book ended so well that I didn’t even stop to think whether any more books would follow it. Sometimes, an ending is so final that everything just stops there. Doesn’t it? Well… Not so long ago, I bought a blind bag of comics and was pleasantly surprised to see that the story didn’t end after all. I still wasn’t sure whether to pick up the trades though; I learned a hard lesson with ‘The Goon’, an awesome series that has never quite hit the heights of the original ‘Labrazio’ storyline. Could ‘I Hate Fairyland’ be headed along the same path? I didn’t hold out for long, I found mysel...

  Page Count: 665 Pages It took me a little (okay, a lot) longer than I’d planned but I’ve now got ‘The End and the Death: Volume 1’ under my belt and I’m ready to keep going with the next two. Well, maybe I’ll read something else first… This book was one heck of a slog to get through but if you’ve made it this far in the series, there’s no way that you’re jumping ship now, not three books from the end of the whole thing. You knew what you were getting into ;o) And yep, I’m still reading ‘The Siege of Terra’ out of order; I’m going for the ‘time has stopped and reality is breaking down’ reading order, that’s my excuse anyway ;o) I’ll get to the others at some point. There is no way out. The walls have fallen, the gates are breached, and the defenders are slain. It is the end and the death. After seven brutal years of civil war, the Warmaster stands on the verge of victory. Horus Lupercal, once beloved son, has come to murder his father. The Emperor, a shining beacon of hope to ma...

Well, I'm now one tooth less than I was yesterday and while I didn't exactly cover myself in glory, I didn't embarrass myself as much as I thought I would (I'm the worst at having injections). It's all a little on the sore side but that will go so definitely better than having toothache :o)  I'll be honest, I was feeling pretty sorry for myself yesterday so stopped off in Greenwich (on the way home) to see if there were any books that caught my eye. And... There were, of course there were ;o) I stopped in at 'Rare Books & Curios', Greenwich Market, as they had a nice spread of horror fiction the last time I was in there. As luck would have it, there was a bag of books that hadn't been put out and the owner was happy for me to have the first look. I was a little more restrained with my purchases this time, check 'em out... I was always partial to a 'Fontana Book of Great Horror Stories' collection, as a kid (my primary school had a nic...

I’m having a tooth out tomorrow so don’t be too surprised if you don’t see anything posted here; I’ve blocked some time out especially for the purpose of feeling all sorry for myself ;o) In the meantime… I’ve spent the weekend trying to work my way through ‘The End and the Death: Volume 1’ and catching up with a few movies. One of these activities was way more successful than the other… Yep, ‘The End and the Death’ has a lot to like about it but has to be one of the most unwieldy books I’ve read in a long time (and there are two more books to follow…) More on that when I finally finish it. For now, lets have a quick chat about a couple of movies that I finally got round to watching this weekend. ‘All Hallows Eve 2’ (2015) A woman is stalked by a mysterious figure, wearing a Jack o’ Lantern mask, who leaves a VHS tape on her doorstep. Does she… A) Lock all the doors and windows, call the police and put the tape to one side as evidence? B) Settle down, with a large glass of red wine, and...

As a child, I used to hate going back to school, after the summer holidays, because… Well, it’s obvious, I was a kid and I hated school. Those days are long behind me now, thank goodness, but as a parent, I still hate it when school starts up after the summer. Nothing to do with the work etc, more a case of September & October being the months where I come down with at least one heavy cold that one of my daughters has brought home, from school, with them. My youngest daughter was the responsible party this time and so, pretty much all of yesterday was spent in the comfy chair, drinking Lemsips and generally feeling sorry for myself. Luckily for me, I’m already on sick leave ;o) I’m working my way through ‘The End and the Death: Volume 1’ and if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that I really need to be on top of my game to stand any chance with this book. I’ll tell you more about that when I finally post my thoughts; for now, lets just say that I wasn’t on top of my game yesterd...

  Page Count: 164 Pages I wouldn’t recognise the people behind Valancourt Books if I bumped into them in the street but I still owe them a hell of a lot. There’s a lot of horror from the seventies and eighties that I never saw (being too young to read for a chunk of it) and a whole load, before then, that I wasn’t aware of at all. Thanks to Valancourt Books, I’ve been able to revisit some of it without having to trawl through second-hand bookshops (not exactly a chore but you never know what, if anything you’ll find) or resign myself to being fleeced on eBay. Which brings me round to Robert Bloch. I’ve read a couple of Bloch’s short stories (and I posted about them, Here & Here ) but even though I’ve always meant to read more, I’ve never really known where to start. Thanks (again) to Valancourt Books, I got to do just that with Robert Bloch’s collection, ‘Midnight Pleasures’. And… Midnight Dreams (1987) collects some of Robert Bloch's best tales from later in his career, feat...

  It feels like a long old while since I’ve watched any ‘Classic Doctor Who’ for the blog; ok, July , this year just feels like it has gone on for as twice as long as normal… I was at a bit of a loose end, the other day, and figured it was time to do something about that. Scrolling through the ‘Doctor Who’ episodes on Prime Video, I thought that, instead of revisiting an old favourite, I’d take a chance on a serial that I watched back in the day but could barely remember the other day. So that is just what I did :o) And… The Doctor is enjoying the sun on a holiday island, until things get hotter than he bargained for... Rescued from the sea by Turlough, Peri Brown, brings a mysterious object to the TARDIS that her archaeologist step-father has found in a sunken wreck. When the Doctor’s robot friend Kamelion reacts to the object unexpectedly, it has bewildering consequences for the TARDIS crew. For Kamelion sends the Doctor and his friends to Sarn, a terrifyingly beautiful planet o...