Hello and welcome to this Monthly Roundup article here on Track of Words, where I’m looking back at what’s been happening over the month of June. For various reasons it’s been another quiet month, which has meant I’ve only managed 11 posts – mostly reviews – but to be honest I’m pretty pleased I got even that much done! As usual, for the first part of this article I’ll do a quick retrospective of those 11 posts, complete with links so that if you’ve missed anything over the last few weeks you can go take a look. Once that’s done I’ll do a general update with a few quick observations on the month as a whole.
I’m always interested to know what you think, so once you’ve read through the article, do let me know if you’ve particularly enjoyed any of these articles, or if there’s anything you’d like to see more or less of on Track of Words!
Reviews
As with May, I’ve found it tough getting in the headspace for writing reviews…but at the same time I did manage one more full book review than I did last month, so that’s something! I’m not sure I could single one of these books/stories out as a favourite for June, as they’ve all been really good – I can happily recommend all of them!
Death’s Kiss by Josh Reynolds – the second ‘Daidoji Shin Mystery’ and the sequel to Poison River, this fun, old-school detective story is another fantastic Legend of the Five rings novel from Josh. I’ve loved both of these books, and would strongly recommend them to pretty much anyone.
Hochmuller’s Hound by Josh Reynolds – one of Josh’s Royal Occultist short stories (and the title story of the second anthology), this dark and bloody tale is set during the Great War and features Charles St. Cyprian and his mentor Thomas Carnacki, his predecessor in the role, searching for a dangerous creature in the trenches.
The Black Hawks by David Wragg – the first book in the two-part Articles of Faith story, this fun, action-packed and very (very) sweary novel takes lots of the usual fantasy tropes and gleefully subverts them to deliver a fresh, entertaining variation on the classic fantasy quest story.
The Devourer Below edited by Charlotte Llewelyn-Wells – eight tales of pulp adventure and occult horror exploring the characters, creatures and locations of Arkham Horror, offering a brilliant range of stories all rooted in a consistent theme.
Roadwarden by Liane Merciel – a low-key and wonderfully characterful Age of Sigmar short story offering an unusual perspective on life in Aqshy, and regular people’s relationships with Chaos.
This Eden by Ed O’Loughlin – a cross between a vintage spy drama with a high-tech modern thriller, populated by ambiguous but brilliantly drawn characters and brought to evocative life by beautiful prose, this is a little different from your usual thriller but very much worth checking out.
Subject Twenty One by A.E. Warren – a characterful, entertaining post-apocalyptic tale full of genetic engineering, Neanderthals, sabretooth tigers and a rigid caste system, which kicks off the Tomorrow’s Ancestors series in style. Not sure how it’s being marketed, but I would call this a YA/adult crossover.
Author interviews
Just three interviews this month, but one of them was especially interesting as I was lucky enough to talk to the translator of a cool new Aconyte novel! I find anything to do with translation absolutely fascinating so I’m really glad I was able to do this interview, alongside the usual author interviews as well.
RAPID FIRE: Nikki Kopelman Talks Translating The Ming Storm – the latest Assassin’s Creed novel from Aconyte Books was originally written in Chinese, but it’s now available to read in English. I spoke to the book’s translator, Nikki, about what she thought of the book and her experience of translating it into English.
RAPID FIRE: David Wragg Talks The Righteous – I caught up with David for an overview of the Articles of Faith series as a whole, and the lowdown on what to expect from the second and final book in the series.
AUTHOR INTERVIEW: A.E. Warren Talks Subject Twenty One – get the lowdown from A.E. Warren on her Tomorrow’s Ancestors series (the first two books of which were originally self-published before being picked up by Del Rey) and the first in the series, Subject Twenty One – it’s especially interesting if (like me) you think the idea of repopulating once-extinct species is awesome!
Articles
Looking back it’s not surprising that the one type of content which has really fallen by the wayside over the last couple of months has been longer-form articles. It usually takes a lot of work to put these together, and I’ve just not had the brain space for many of them…but I did do one, and it’s an article I’d been looking forward to writing for ages!
40k Reading Order: The Horusian Wars – John French – in my latest Reading Order article I’m looking at John’s fantastic series of Inquisition stories, and with John’s help I’ve put together a chronological order for the whole lot, including all the individual short stories.
General update
I’m not sure that there’s really all that much to talk about this month, in terms of a general update – the long and short of it is that for pretty much the whole month I’ve had a hard time finding the time and motivation to sit down and write. I talked in a little bit of detail about one of the reasons for that in one of my weekly updates over on my Ko-Fi page (TL;DR – travel up north for a family funeral, and a general struggle for headspace thereafter), which you can have a read of here if you’re interested. There’s not much more to say on the topic really – I’m trying to keep as productive as I can without knackering my mental health, and hopefully I’ll get back in the swing of things sometime soon.
One thing I’ve noted – which isn’t surprising I suppose – is that during this time I’ve been incredibly grateful for audiobooks and the joy of completely losing myself in stories that way. I’ve read plenty of prose books as well, but when it comes to reading purely for fun I’ve found that a good audiobook is about the best possible form of escapism for me. For the last few months I’ve been enjoying sticking my headphones on and going for daily walks with audiobooks keeping me company, and I’m still doing that, but over the last few weeks I’ve been listening more and more at home too. I’ve been turning Audible on while doing the housework, cooking meals and painting minis, and sometimes just chucking my headphones on and sitting down to simply listen and enjoy the story. I wouldn’t normally do that, but I’ve been finding it remarkably relaxing!
More than ever though, I’ve recognised just how important a great narrator is to the success of an audiobook. Early on in June I decided I fancied revisiting Rachel Harrison’s Honourbound, which I LOVED when I read it back in 2019, and the audio edition seemed like the obvious choice. I only made it a couple of hours into the book before I gave up though, and that’s simply because I bounced right off the narrator. Obviously these things are very much down to personal taste, but for me the Honourbound narrator just didn’t grab my attention, and I found it really hard to suspend my disbelief with all the different characters. I think if I’d liked her core narration of Raine’s character more then I’d have been happier overall, but she just didn’t sound right…and then when I struggled with the other voices it just put me off listening. I gave it a good go, but when I found myself wanting to listen to music or just not have anything in my headphones at all, I knew I needed to give it up. I’ll come back to my hardback of Honourbound one of these days instead!
On the subject of physical books, it was my birthday on the 28th and while I don’t often get a lot of books as presents (everyone always says “you’ve got so many, I don’t know what to buy you”), this year I had a fantastic haul of birthday books! I may have also gone out and immediately bought even more with a birthday book voucher, so I’ve got plenty of great new titles to look forward to reading. I’m really looking forward to making a start on some of them, so hopefully I can ride that wave of enthusiasm and get my head fully back into reading! I haven’t decided yet if I’ll review any of them or just read them for fun, but I don’t think I’m likely to run out of books to talk about any time soon…
***
So there you go, that’s it from me for June. I hope you’ve had a good month with plenty of great books, and hopefully July will bring plenty more books! I’m always keen to hear about what you’ve enjoyed reading or listening to recently, what you think about the interviews and articles I’ve been publishing of late, 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! Do drop me a line in the comments below, or get in touch on Twitter.
If you’d like to support Track of Words and help me to keep working on new content, you can leave me a tip over on my Ko-Fi page.
