Monthly Roundup – September 2020

It’s time for another look back at all the books I’ve been reading over the last few weeks, but this time I’ve taken a slightly different approach and called this a Monthly Roundup, rather than the usual Monthly Highlights. The main difference is that I’m going to include a quick sort of ‘life update’ as well as the reading recap, partly to provide a bit of a heads up about what to expect from Track of Words for the next few months and partly as a bit of an outlet for myself. Feel free to read as much or as little of this as you’re interested in – no obligations either way!

September’s reading recap

It’s been an interesting few weeks on the reading front. Compared to previous months I’ve not read anything like as many books, especially when you consider that three of the eight I did read were audio editions of books I’ve read before. Partly that’s because of life rather getting in the way – more on this later – but the other thing that made an impact was my choice to read a challenging, almost-1,000 page novel that took up all of my brain power for well over a week! I’m tremendously glad that I did read XX by Rian Hughes, but boy did it tax my brainpower…

As usual I’ve tried to stay reasonably succinct in these recaps, with links out to reviews where they’re available.

Foxglove Summer by Ben Aaronovitch
I couldn’t resist jumping straight into this after enjoying the Broken Homes audiobook so much, and as expected I had fun revisiting Peter Grant’s unexpected trip out of London and into the heart of Herefordshire. When I read it for the first time I was surprised at not just how much I missed the presence of London but also how much this leaves the Lesley May question (I’m being vague in case of spoilers) hanging – both of which observations ring true second time around. It’s definitely a change of pace for the series (not least in how gently paced the opening scenes are), but it does work overall. I wouldn’t put this one up there with my favourites in the series, but there’s more than enough here to keep me entertained!

Check out my review (from 2014) of Foxglove Summer.

No Good Men – a Warhammer Crime anthology
This anthology is really interesting, in a few ways. In general, when you take this into consideration alongside Bloodlines and Dredge Runners, I would say that the new Warhammer Crime imprint from Black Library has got off to a reasonably good start, playing things pretty safe but delivering entertaining stories (Dredge Runners being probably the most adventurous, and in my opinion most successful). As seven individual short stories, I’d say the same thing applies to the tales featured here – nothing too risky, but generally satisfying. Personally though, I think the BL editors made a mistake by featuring such similar stories here. I’d have preferred a more diverse range of protagonists (both in terms of tropes and gender), and I can’t help but think that this isn’t going to help BL appeal to a wider, less SF-centric audience.

Check out my review of No Good Men.

The Vinyl Detective: Written in Dead Wax by Andrew Cartmel
Like the Rivers of London series, I absolutely adore the Vinyl Detective books – pacy, sort-of-crime stories with great characters and lashings of musical references. I’ve fallen a bit behind with the most recent novels though, so I thought I’d revisit the first book in audio to remind myself of the characters, and just how much I love these stories. While they’re much more grounded in the real world than Aaronovitch’s series, there’s definitely a similar feel in terms of their humour and the obvious affection Cartmel has for London, and they hold up brilliantly well to multiple readings. I’m not sure yet if I’ll get the rest of them in audio or just jump back into my paperbacks, but revisiting this has definitely got me back in the mood to read more about these fabulous characters!

Check out my review (from 2016) of Written in Dead Wax.

XX by Rian Hughes
I wrote my longest ever review (I think) for this book, which felt appropriate considering it’s a wildly ambitious, utterly unique 980-page beast of a ‘novel, graphic’ – a book unlike any I’ve ever read before. There’s simply no way to properly do it justice in a review, however long it might be, and I certainly can’t encapsulate it all in just these few words here. Instead, I’ll just say this: while XX categorically won’t be for everyone, it achieves what it sets out to do in barnstorming, swaggering style. If you’re at all interested in the idea of a bold, modern sci-fi novel combining traditional prose, poetry, graphic design, data visualisations, newspaper cuttings, wikipedia articles and so much more, then I strongly recommend you get hold of this book! It’s a commitment, but it’s worth the time and effort.

Check out my review of XX.

The Doom of Fallowhearth by Robbie MacNiven
I’m continuing to blast through upcoming titles from Aconyte Books, and this first introduction to the world of Descent: Journeys in the Dark was another excellent illustration of just how good this new venture is turning out to be! To be honest I don’t tend to read a huge amount of high fantasy these days, but this was a lot of fun – a sort of dungeon crawl adventure, with ageing characters who have clearly been through a lot together in their past, but are now approaching their latest adventure with rather more experienced (and in some cases more jaded) eyes. It’s as pacy and action-packed as you’d like, but there’s an underlying emotion to the story that lends it a real sense of weight and elevates it above a straight-up adventure story. 

Check out my review of The Doom of Fallowhearth, and a quick interview with Robbie MacNiven.

Unconquerable Sun by Kate Elliott
This was my first introduction to Kate Elliott, and it blew me away! I do love a good space opera, especially one that doesn’t spoon-feed me too much information but rather expects me to keep up (I know that sounds a bit masochistic, but I think it works for the genre), and this delivered everything I was hoping for. Don’t get me wrong, in its depiction of lethal court politics, competing galactic empires and inter-family power plays there’s a lot of complexity, but that’s all nicely balanced out by breathless action and a handful of fabulous characters who I grew to really love. It’s not that often I come to the end of a first-in-trilogy book and have that agonising sense of “I NEED the next book right away but it’s not yet published, noooo!” but that’s exactly what I got with this one. Loved it.

Check out my review of Unconquerable Sun.

Domino: Strays by Tristan Palmgren
Another upcoming Aconyte title, this was the first time I’d ever read a novel set in the Marvel universe, so I wasn’t quite sure what to expect. To be honest, even going in with a pretty open mind I was slightly taken aback by its description-light, inner voice-heavy style, but I quickly grew to enjoy it. Pacy but cleverly constructed (with three interweaving timelines), action-packed but impressively thoughtful, it felt fresh, interesting, enjoyable and really easy to read. I’ll be the first to admit that I’m not especially well informed when it comes to superheroes and comic book characters (mostly I know them from 90s cartoons or recent big-screen movies) but this felt to me like a really smart, unusual take on the mutant/superhero story. I’ll have a review ready sometime soon.

Check out my interview with Tristan Palmgren.

Fabius Bile: Clonelord by Josh Reynolds
I re-read Josh Reynolds’ first Fabius Bile novel – Primogenitor – a few months back, but for the second book I decided I’d give it a go in audio, as I continue to gradually remind myself of what happened ahead of finally reading Manflayer. It’s another great story, and a welcome reminder of just how well Josh writes this character – you know that objectively speaking Bile is an absolute monster, but it’s just impossible not to warm to the cranky old apothecary and his dream (however twisted) of a better future for mankind. For me personally, I felt that the audio medium didn’t quite work as well for this, as it’s a very talky novel and while I love that in a physical book, in audio it sometimes felt a little slow. I’m being picky there, though. Whenever I eventually get round to Manflayer, I’ll be grateful for having revisited the first two books in the series!

Check out my review (from 2017) of Clonelord.

Life update

I don’t often talk too much about my life outside of Track of Words, largely because writing reviews, interviews and articles is a great way for me to enjoy myself regardless of what’s going on elsewhere in the craziness of the real world. Sadly, the Covid-related craziness has caught up with me recently, in that I’ve been made redundant from my day job as a result of the company being forced to cut costs, so I thought it would be worth talking briefly about what the impact of that might be on Track of Words.

First of all, I’m supremely grateful that I’m still safe (inasmuch as any of us can be) and healthy – far better, in my opinion, to be made redundant than to catch a life-threatening virus! Also, this isn’t the first time I’ve been made redundant, so while it’s not ideal timing it hasn’t been as unpleasant an experience as it might have been. At least this time I only have myself to worry about, and not a team of people looking to me for management and support. As anyone who’s been through this process will know, it’s not a nice experience – but I’m confident it’s going to end up being a good thing in the end, as I hopefully find myself a job I enjoy a lot more!

The way I see it, there are two ways in which my redundancy might affect Track of Words – the amount of reading and writing time I have available, and the amount of money I can spend on reading material. I’m hoping that I’ll still find plenty of time to read in amongst the inevitable job hunting, and likewise write reviews, plan interviews etc., but if I end up writing fewer reviews over the coming weeks then it’s probably down to just not having the time (or the brainspace) for it. Like I said earlier, working on Track of Words is usually a good way for me to forget about the real world, so hopefully I’ll still be able to put plenty of content out…but I might not be able to prioritise it as much as I usually do.

Keep an eye out for more content coming soon, all being well

The money situation, however, is a bit more black and white. Simply put, I need to cut down on my spending until I have a job again, so buying books is going to become much more of a luxury than it usually is. I could obviously dig into my existing TBR stack (…who am I kidding? Stacks plural) for things to read and review if I wanted, but I’m actually in the really lucky position of having some fantastic publishers very kindly sending me (or giving me access to) new and upcoming titles to review. Why am I even bringing this up, then? Well, because I know a lot of people follow me here because of the Black Library content I’ve been posting over the years – and that’s the content which I’m going to need to reduce for the time being. Consider this a PSA for Warhammer-loving Track of Words readers.

With the exception of an occasional advance copy now and then, and some very generous authors (you know who you are – thanks so much!), I’ve bought almost everything BL-related that I’ve ever reviewed or written about. That is, of course, absolutely fine. I’m very happy to buy books, as long as I can afford to! The blunt truth, however, is that with other publishers actively getting in touch asking me to read and review their books and providing advance review copies (all of which I’m really enjoying so far), Black Library is – for now, at least – going to have to take a back seat on Track of Words. I simply can’t afford to keep buying BL books at anything like the rate I have done in the past. I hope I’ll still be able to pick up the occasional paperback (I’m already budgeting for The Reverie) but it’s going to be a case of picking and choosing just the odd book that I’m particularly looking forward to.

If that means you’re less interested in keeping up with Track of Words, I’ll understand. I do hope, however, that you’ll still check out my reviews, interviews etc. for non-BL books – Warhammer is pretty awesome but there are countless wonderful fictional worlds out there too! Also, rest assured that I will still cover some Black Library/Warhammer content on here. It’s a bit harder at the moment to plan for author interviews, given that the WarCom ‘Coming Soon’ page has stopped giving specific release dates, but I’ll try to keep working on interviews where and when I can, and I’m sure I’ll find the time to dig into my BL backlog now and then!

In the meantime, wish me luck for the job hunt, let me know if there’s anything you would particularly like to see here on Track of Words, and good luck to everyone out there dealing with your own Covid-related craziness!

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I’d love to hear about what you’ve enjoyed reading or listening to recently, whether you’ve read and enjoyed any of the books I tackled this month, and whether there’s anything you’d like to see in these roundup articles…so do drop me a line in the comments below, or get in touch on Twitter.