Hello and welcome to May’s Monthly Roundup post here on Track of Words. After a couple of months in which I really struggled for motivation and headspace, and therefore didn’t have a lot to talk about in my roundups, I’m pleased to report that May went pretty well, and has definitely felt like an uptick all around. As always I’ve put together a quick recap of everything I posted this month, and then this time around I’ve also written a quick reading update, some thoughts on several book events I recently attended – including Comic Con, and the brilliant Black Crow Blogger Brunch – and some cool book news and recommendations.
May’s Posts
My rough aim is to publish two posts per week these days, or roughly eight or nine per month, so I’m very happy to have managed 10 (including this one) in May. It’s quite a mix this month, which has been fun!
Monthly Roundup – April 2023 – these roundups are normally the last thing I post each month, but this time around I was a bit late with it. As usual (just like what you’re reading now) this contains a recap on everything I posted in April, and a general update on how the month went for me in terms of reading, writing and general life.
Spotlight On Guy Haley’s Original Fiction – the first instalment in a new series in which I invite authors who are largely known for their IP fiction to talk about their original work. In this case Guy’s written a considerable number of original novels, so here he talks through each novel/series and gives us the lowdown on what to expect.
Terror World by Cath Lauria – you just can’t beat a good bit of ‘zombies in space’, right? This is the second of Aconyte’s Zombicide Invader novels that I’ve read, and honestly I couldn’t put it down – less militaristic than the previous one and focused more on scientific exploration and adventure, with some truly great characters (I just loved Mason Bane’s detachable arm brains) and a fun, pacy plot.
AUTHOR INTERVIEW: Sebastien de Castell Talks The Malevolent Seven – I chatted to Sebastien about his latest novel, which is out now from Jo Fletcher Books. If you’re interested in knowing more about this irreverent, antiheroic fantasy novel – its characters and their gallows humour, why Sebastien wrote this, which kind of wonderist he would be, and loads more – then definitely check this interview out.
The Malevolent Seven by Sebastien de Castell – once you’ve read the interview, you can then read my review of Sebastien’s novel! I had a lot of fun with this (my first de Castell novel), and I’d definitely recommend it if you’re a fan of antihero/just plain villainous characters, psychotic battle wizards, fun magic systems and irreverent, entertaining fantasy.
Spotlight On Danie Ware’s Original Fiction – the second in this new series, this time looking at Danie’s original fiction. Check it out to learn about her cyberpunk/fantasy mashup Ecko series, and her queer fantasy Children of Artifice!
Working With Reviewers – I get a fair few review requests, and I see a lot of reviewers and authors talking online about what the process is of requesting reviews. I thought I’d put together some recommendations (purely from my perspective) of how authors can go about this process, and the sorts of things that would make me more likely to say yes to a review request. Hopefully it’s interesting, and helpful!
Short and Sweet – May 2023 – the usual roundup of quick reviews, with another three books to talk about. This time around I’m discussing The Righteous by David Wragg, Devil’s Gun by Cat Rambo and The Twice-Dead King: Reign by Nate Crowley – one book that I absolutely loved, and two that I enjoyed in parts, but had complicated feelings about.
The Game of 100 Candles by Marie Brennan – the sequel to 2021’s The Night Parade of 100 Demons, this is another brilliant Legend of the Five Rings novel and a wonderful continuation of the story. Two samurai in love but bound by honour and duty, trying to understand how to be together while dealing with the impact of past events and wrestling with the mystery of a supernatural sleeping sickness. Fantastic stuff.
My May
As I said at the start of the article, May has generally been a much better month than the last couple. I’ve not been unwell, I’ve managed to balance my reading and writing, and for the most part I’ve just been happier and more productive than I’ve felt for a while. I keep reminding myself not to put too much emphasis on productivity, but the fact is I do feel better when I get things done, and conversely feel much worse when I can’t get into the headspace to write and work on things like the site.
Review writing is still quite a slow process, but I’m largely enjoying it. I know I ought to try to write more shorter reviews, and not just for my Short and Sweet spotlights, but I still gravitate towards my usual length, which I find quite hard to settle down and write. Still, some progress is better than no progress! Away from reviews, I’m really pleased with the first couple of original fiction spotlights I’ve put together, with Guy and Danie. I hope they’re interesting (I mean, I think they are), and I’ve got lots more of those still to come!
Reading Update
I read/listened to 12 books in May – 2 of which were in audio – which takes me to 62 for the year to date. So that’s 10 more than my initial goal of 52 for the year (which I was pretty sure I’d smash, but it’s tradition now), which I’m delighted by. Only two audiobooks in a month is pretty slow going for me, but for various reasons I found both of them – The Coming Storm by Greg Mosse and Unconquerable Sun by Kate Elliott – a little slow to begin with, before really getting into them once I got a bit further in. Unconquerable Sun in particular is excellent – I’ve read this before, but I decided I’d revisit it before reading the sequel, Furious Heaven.
If you’ve read my latest Short and Sweet roundup you’ll have seen that I was variously disappointed and baffled by a couple of books this month – those were definitely the lowlights of my May reading, even though there were still plenty of things I enjoyed in both books. It’s hard to pick out highlights when I enjoyed all the rest of the month’s reading, although I will say that it was brilliant to get a new Peter Fehervari short story – Altar of Maws, released as an e-short from Black Library. I’m going to need to read it again (at least once) before I can get my thoughts sufficiently together to consider a review, but that’s not going to be a hardship, as it was typically excellent!
The other thing I want to mention here is Dracula Daily, which I’m thoroughly enjoying. If you haven’t come across it, it’s a serialised version of Dracula (via Substack) which cleverly takes advantage of the book’s epistolary nature. Running between May and November, every day that something happens in the book (i.e. in characters’ diaries or letters), you get an email/Substack post containing that section of the book, sections which so far have ranged from a single paragraph to a chapter and a bit. It’s a slightly strange way of reading a novel, but I’m finding it thoroughly enjoyable to revisit a classic in an unconventional manner! Here’s a link if you want to know more and/or sign up.
Cool Book Stuff
I went to no fewer than three book-related events in May, which for someone like me who’s not particularly sociable I think is a pretty good tally! First off was the launch for Gabriela Houston’s second middle grade novel – The Storm Child, out now from UCLan Publishing – which was held at Waterstones in Harrow, and was an absolute delight. I’ve loved all of Gabriela’s books so far, from her adult fantasy debut The Second Bell to both of her middle grade books (I’ve already read and enjoyed The Storm Child), and I was delighted to be able to be there to celebrate this launch, chat to Gabriela, and spend some time with some good friends. I highly recommend these books if you’re on the lookout for some Slavic folklore-inspired middle grade fantasy!
Next up was a talk at a different Waterstones – Tottenham Court Road this time – with Saara El-Arifi, to celebrate the launch of The Battle Drum, her second novel and the sequel to the excellent The Final Strife. This one wasn’t quite as raucous and chaotic as the ‘Broads With Swords’ event (with Saara, Hannah Kaner, CL Clark and Kate Dylan) I went to a few months back, but it was pretty close! I only read The Final Strife in April so I felt nicely primed for this event, and it left me even more enthused for The Battle Drum. It was also a delight to find out that the first book in Saara’s next trilogy – Faebound – is going to be coming out in 2024 as well as the third and final novel in the Ending Fire trilogy, so there’s loads to look forward to!
And then there was the big one…
Comic Con
On Sunday 28th I headed over to Excel in London (via the DLR, on which I obviously sat at the front and pretended to be the driver) to go to my first ever Comic Con. I wasn’t really sure what to expect, but I had a spot on the Blogger Brunch organised by Jamie and Stephen from the fantastic Black Crow PR (which I’d never attended before either), so I was keen to see what would happen! The Blogger Brunch was a lovely event, with dozens of bloggers (really it was Bookstagrammers, Booktubers, bloggers, and all sorts) sitting around tables and a selection of authors, who skipped from table to table like SFF speed dating.
Fifteen minutes per author doesn’t sound like a lot of time, but it was enough to enjoy hearing them talk about their books, ask a few questions, and suddenly feel deeply tempted to read their books! I’ve read bits and pieces by Adrian Tchaikovsky and Anna Smith Spark already, but this definitely put the other authors – Alexander Darwin, Olivie Blake, Gareth Worthington, A.Y. Chao and T.J. Klune – on my radar. Meeting the authors was obviously great, but it was lovely to meet other bloggers too, and the atmosphere in the room was just super positive and happy – which is always great. Jamie and Stephen did a fantastic job, so thank you to them!
Comic Con itself was…well, it was massive, and incredibly busy, and all a bit overwhelming, but at the same time really quite fun. I’ve been to conventions before, and events at Excel, but nothing with quite this scale. It might not quite be my world – I was somewhat stunned by the stall after stall selling Funko Pops, in particular – but I guess I’m sort of nerd-adjacent, and I loved seeing so many people absolutely in their element. I’ve never been anywhere with so many swords (I’m fairly sure that most of them weren’t real) on display…boy, do cosplayers like carrying swords! I would totally want a sword if I was cosplaying, so fair enough.
I had a good look around the main halls, and was tempted by quite a few of the creator stalls selling books and artwork, but ultimately I resisted by virtue of simply reminding myself that there is literally nowhere to put any new art prints, and my TBR pile is out of control as it is. My one purchase of the day (can’t go to an event like that and not buy anything!) was a copy of Anna Smith Spark’s novel A Woman of the Sword (from Luna Press), which I’m looking forward to getting stuck into. Added to the impressive goody bag provided by Black Crow at the Blogger Brunch, I’ve got lots more to add to the TBR pile now!
SFF Book News
While I haven’t been actively searching for interesting book-related news in May, when I look back at things like my Twitter feed it’s clear that there has, in fact, been quite a lot of exciting news! Here are a few of the cover reveals and announcements that I spotted over the last few weeks, in the order in which I spotted them.
Storming Heaven by Miles Cameron – the sequel to the excellent Against All Gods, coming in July from Gollancz. If you like the idea of a fantasy setting inspired by real-world Bronze Age history then I can highly recommend this series, and I’m really looking forward to reading book two.
The Hunting Moon by Susan Dennard – the sequel to The Luminaries, which I read and enjoyed very recently, coming in November from Daphne Press. This one is the UK cover – I’m not sure when the US cover was announced, but it’s quite different. This sort of YA/adult crossover, contemporary fantasy isn’t necessarily the sort of thing I normally go for, but I thought The Luminaries was great.
The Dead Cat Tail Assassins by P. Djèlí Clark – a new novel from Clark is always an exciting prospect, and I simply can’t wait to read this! I don’t know if this will get a specific UK publisher, but the cover recently revealed is from Tordotcom – due in March 2024. There’s not a lot of information available yet about the plot, but the cover looks ace and I’m confident it’s going to be brilliant.
The Bootlegger’s Dance by Rosemary Jones – I love the idea of a Christmas Arkham Horror novel, and Jones’ style definitely seems to suit this subject. It’s due out in November from Aconyte Books, and given how good their Arkham Horror range has been so far I’m expecting this to be excellent. I love the vintage movie poster vibe that Aconyte have gone with for all of Jones’ books!
The Narrow Road Between Desires by Patrick Rothfuss – it’s been a long time since the last Rothfuss release, so even though a lot of people are still patiently (or maybe not so patiently) waiting for book three, a new novella is still pretty exciting. No cover as yet, but it has a UK release date of the 14th November, via Gollancz. Personally I don’t think I have the energy to revisit the first two novels (it’s been so long since I read them, I can’t remember much) so I’m not sure I’ll bother if Rothfuss does finally release book three, but I could be tempted by a novella that explores an interesting side character. We’ll see.
A Fire Born of Exile by Aliette de Bodard – isn’t that a gorgeous cover? Much like de Bodard’s previous novel, The Red Scholar’s Wake. This is the UK cover, and the book is due out in October (I gather it will have a US release, so keep your eyes peeled US fans) from Gollancz. I loved the last book, so I’ve got high hopes for this too. The author describes it as “(More) Lesbian Monte Cristo”, which is enough for me to want to read it!
Other Recommendations
To finish off, I thought I’d try out making a few non-SFF recommendations, just for a bit of a change. These are all things I’ve been reading/listening to recently, so maybe they’ll give you a little sense of what I do outside of Track of Words too!
Music: the Once soundtrack – I love this film, and the soundtrack is incredible (as long as you like folk – or at least folky – music). Seeing the stage show live is actually my favourite way of experiencing this music, but the original film soundtrack is the next best thing.
Podcast: the Peter McLean episode (#16) of ‘The Publishing Rodeo Podcast’ – I’ve seen a lot of online talk about this podcast recently, and its eye-opening honesty regarding the realities of life in the publishing industry. I’ve only listened to this one episode so far, but it was genuinely fascinating, and Pete is always good value and well worth listening to.
Fiction: The Mill House Murders by Yukito Ayatsuji (translated by Ho-Ling Wong) – a really good locked room mystery is hard to beat, and this classic Japanese crime novel offers up an engaging, interesting take on the trope. A little slow to get going, but really clever overall with its combination of a remote, unconventional house, reclusive owner, murders, art theft and unexpected detective.
Non-fiction: The Salt Path by Raynor Winn – I’ve just started reading the sequel to this (The Wild Silence) but I figure the first book is the best recommendation. It’s the story of a couple whose lives are utterly turned upside down, and who find themselves walking the entirety of the 630-mile South West Coast Path as they try to process what’s happening and figure out what to do next. It’s part memoir and part nature writing, it’s not always an easy read but it’s a wonderful, powerful story all told.
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If you’re still reading this, thanks for sticking with me! I think that’s a good point at which to end this – hopefully there’s been something interesting in there for you. If you’ve got any comments or questions, please let me know in the comments below or over on Twitter.
In the meantime, have a great June (I’ll be turning 40, which is really weird to think about) and happy reading.
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