Hello and welcome to my Monthly Roundup post for April 2022, which this month is going to be more of a reading roundup than usual…given that I only published five posts, the lowest number I’ve managed since way back in March 2016. Since there isn’t much to talk about in terms of what I’ve been writing, this will probably be quite a quick post, as even in my usual ‘General Update’ section I don’t really have too much to include. Perhaps I’ll find more to write about what I’ve been reading recently – we’ll see! In the meantime though, I’ll start off as usual with a quick (in this case very quick) recap of the posts I did manage to write and publish last month.
April’s posts
The five posts I published in April consisted of two blog articles and three reviews, each one of a different type and length – one full book review, one brief book review, and one quick short story review. If I had just managed an interview as well, that would actually have been quite a nice illustration of what to expect on Track of Words! Ah well, maybe next month I’ll get an interview or two ready to go.
Monthly Roundup – March 2022 – my usual look back over the previous month, including links to all of my recent posts and a general overview of how the month went. March was a bit of a weird month for me, but somehow I still managed to read 12 books, so I can’t really complain. I also wrote six book reviews, which is far more than I expected!
Mask of Silver by Rosemary Jones – another excellent Arkham Horror novel from Aconyte Books, this time mixing cosmic horror with the Golden Age of Hollywood to excellent effect. Silent movies and this sort of slightly pulpy horror is such a great combination, and not only is this a great story but it’s just lovely to read a book written by someone with such a clear love for the subject matter.
QUICK REVIEW: Bone Armour by Victoria Hayward – a deceptively bleak, razor-sharp little story, this is Hayward’s first non-Black Library story to be published, and I can’t think of a better home for it than Grimdark Magazine (it’s available in issue 30). It’s genuinely grim, not as a result of showing anything overtly awful but by virtue of what it implies, and it’s a story that’s going to stay with me for a while.
IN BRIEF – Assassinorum: Kingmaker by Robert Rath – for the first of a new, shorter type of book review I’ve taken a quick look at Rath’s second Black Library novel, which features an explosive mix of assassins and Imperial Knights to create a brilliant blend of spy thriller and action-packed sci-fi adventure. There’s a lot to enjoy with this novel, which once again demonstrates why Rath is one of BL’s rising stars.
Track of Words Reviews: What to Expect – in light of having published my first ‘In Brief’ review I thought it was about time I finally put together a guide to what you can expect when you check out a review on Track of Words. Regular visitors will already be aware of much of this I’m sure, but I think it’s worth clarifying what I’m trying to achieve with my reviews, and what each of the different review types is intended to offer.
General update
As you can see, April really wasn’t a particularly productive month for me. I do have a couple more reviews to write for some interesting books I’ve read recently, and I’ve made some steps (of varying number) towards arranging some new author interviews, but I really found it hard to concentrate last month. What with catching Covid and generally not feeling myself both physically and mentally for most of the month, it just hasn’t been a great few weeks for me all round. I can’t guarantee when or even if I’m going to get back in the swing of writing reviews, but we’ll see what happens.
What I have done, however, is quite a lot of reading. Ok, that’s hardly a surprise, given that I usually spend quite a lot of time reading, but even for me I read a lot in April. The fourteen (!) books I read or listened to took me up to 51 books for the year so far, which means I’m on the verge of completing my 52-book challenge with almost eight months still to go! That genuinely is a surprise – I really didn’t expect to read anything like as much this year as I did in 2021, but so far I’d say I’m probably reading more. Obviously spending a week in bed with Covid gave me a pretty good opportunity to get some reading in, even discounting the first couple of days when my head was all over the place and all I could do was watch TV and sleep.
Over those few days at the start of Covid I decided to go for comfort reading, which for me means Warhammer fiction, so I blitzed through both of Matthew Farrer’s Urdesh books and the Warhammer Crime anthology Broken City. I was a bit puzzled by The Serpent and the Saint when I first read it last year, but reading it back to back with The Magister and Martyr I thought it made a lot more sense – both parts of the story are very action-heavy and a bit light on genuine character development, but the majority of that action is really good. Overall, I think there’s a lot to enjoy with this extended story, although I’d definitely recommend reading both parts back to back. As for Broken City, I’d say Robert Rath’s novella Bleedout is comfortably the highlight; the other stories are all fun, but not of the same quality.
Looking back, I’d already read (or listened to) three Black Library books – Kingmaker as mentioned earlier, plus David Annandale’s excellent A Dynasty of Monsters and revisiting Guy Haley’s Dark Imperium in audio. Perhaps that’s representative of how I was feeling already, that I wanted to take refuge a little in easy, comfortable reading. I think that’s probably true, given that around the same sort of time I was also reading the latest Rivers of London novel (Amongst Our Weapons) from Ben Aaronovitch, which is one of my absolute favourite series, and a couple of fairly cosy crime novels. I’m absolutely loving Kerry Greenwood’s Phryne Fisher Mysteries (having adored the TV adaptation), which I’m dipping in and out of any time I find one available cheaply on Kindle, and I’ve almost reached the end of LJ Ross’ DCI Ryan series with Cuthbert’s Way – I only have two left, now! So none of those were the sorts of books to test my brain really, but clearly that’s what I needed.
Towards the end of the month I did enjoy a couple of review copies – Under Fortunate Stars by Ren Hutchings, an interesting time travel/space opera SF novel, and Equinox by David Towsey, a surprisingly dark fantasy involving a witch hunter in a world where everyone shares their body with another, one living through the day and the other through the night. Fingers crossed I’ll get reviews written for those; certainly I can recommend them both, albeit for very different reasons. At the same time though, I also read my first two Marian Keyes books – Watermelon and Under the Duvet – both of which were beautifully observed delights of wit and heart, and probably spell the start of another comfortable literary obsession for me. Oh, and lastly I sped through Cat Rambo’s novella Carpe Glitter, which was short but really smart, and the sort of thing I think I’d enjoy revisiting.
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So there we go, in making myself sit down and work on this post I’ve actually written much more than I expected I would. Okay, it’s rambling and unstructured and I’m not sure how interesting it will have been, but at least I’ve done some writing!
I hope you’ve had a better, more productive April than I did, and here’s hoping for a good May all round!
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