Over the years here on Track of Words I’ve written over 1,100 reviews and counting, and for a long time I’ve been meaning to put together a quick article to talk about what you can expect if you check out one or more of my reviews. At the time of writing this I’ve also just posted my first deliberately shorter book review (which I’ve called ‘In Brief’, as the start of a new type of review), which reminded me that I really ought to clarify what you can expect from the different types of reviews too. So what I’ll do here is give a quick overview of my general style of writing and the things you can expect to see or not see in my reviews, then break down the different review types as well. Hopefully this will be useful!
General style
Every reviewer has their own idiosyncrasies, much like every author does. When I started Track of Words I decided to try and emulate the overall approach of something like Empire magazine (although I’m not suggesting I write as well as Empire journalists), and largely that’s still my approach. Here are a few points of what that means:
- Third person: generally speaking I try to write as objectively as I can, using third person rather than first (although as you’ll see later I do make some exceptions).
- Reasonably concise: I try not to write essays, but rather keep things fairly quick and to the point. I tend to try to give an overview of each story as a whole, before focusing in a little more detail on what stands out to me, whether that’s characters, world building, themes etc.
- Spoiler-free: I really, really hate spoilers, so while I will talk a little about the plot in general (certainly the basic setup) I always do my best to avoid giving away any specific details that might affect your enjoyment.
As I said, I won’t go into huge amounts of detail in a review, so look elsewhere for in-depth analysis or discussions of minutiae – there are plenty of places you can go online for good examples of that. If I’m reviewing a Black Library story I’ll generally assume a certain amount of knowledge of the relevant setting, but I’ll try to provide useful context where I can, and link out to other reviews, articles or author interviews which might help with that. In general, it’s always worth keeping an eye out for links as – whether it’s a BL review or not – I’ll often link out to something and with over a thousand other reviews (plus hundreds of interviews and articles) there’s plenty more content that you might find interesting.
Hopefully that all makes sense (leave a note in the comments below if not, or if you have any questions). With that done, let’s take a look at the different types of reviews you can find on Track of Words.
Regular reviews
What I would call my ‘regular’ type of review covers books (novels, novellas, anthologies etc. – about 500 of these) or audio dramas (about 100 of these), and ranges from about 400 words up to maybe 600 or 700. Here’s an example, for the wonderful Braking Day by Adam Oyebanji. These reviews are the most likely to stick within those principles of being concise and in third person that I mentioned earlier (compared to other types, which I’ll talk about below), and they’re probably the most consistent type of content on Track of Words.
Check out all of my regular book reviews (from newest to oldest)
Quick reviews
I’ve reviewed loads of short stories over the years (more than 500 of them – a lot of those being Black Library shorts), and these all come under the QUICK REVIEW label. Here’s an example, for Hochmuller’s Hound by Josh Reynolds. It seems appropriate to largely keep these relatively short, so they’re generally about 200 to 250 words, although for some particularly interesting stories (often non-BL) I’ll go up to more like 300 to 350 words. With such short word counts I keep things really brief, generally about 50% quick overview of the plot setup and 50% discussion of interesting themes, characters, stylistic approaches etc.
Check out all of my short story reviews (from newest to oldest)
‘In Brief’ reviews
There are times when I don’t have the time or headspace to write a full review of a book, or perhaps when there’s just a bit less to talk about than usual, and that’s where my IN BRIEF review type comes in. The aim for this is to be maybe 200 to 300 words, and the sort of short review that you might read in a magazine like SFX or a book reviews site like Kirkus – less detailed than my regular reviews, more focused and streamlined and to the point (but still covering a full-length book, unlike my short story reviews).
Check out all of my ‘In Brief’ reviews (there’s only one so far, but this will grow)
‘A Few Thoughts On’ reviews
When I want to write something a bit different to the norm, I’ll usually publish it as one of my ‘A FEW THOUGHTS ON’ reviews, where I give myself free rein to just write what comes to me. That means these are usually, although not always, a bit longer (up to about 1,200 words so far), and often written in first person rather than the usual third person. Here’s an example, for Piranesi by Susanna Clarke (which I adored!). In theory these reviews could be about any length of story, but in practice they’re usually for novels, and generally I write these when I feel like going off on tangents rather than writing the usual sort of focused, objective review.
Check out all of my ‘A Few Thoughts On’ reviews (from newest to oldest)
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So there you go, that should hopefully give you a rough idea of what to expect from the reviews here on Track of Words. The only other thing I should mention is that there are also a few guest reviews available, from friends of mine and/or very generous SFF authors, and you can find all of those here.
If you have any questions or comments then please do let me know below, or come and find me on Twitter. Otherwise I hope this has been useful, and that you enjoy any of the reviews that you read on Track of Words!
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