Author Archives: Michael

Creed: Ashes of Cadia – Jude Reid

Jude Reid’s debut novel for Black Library, Creed: Ashes of Cadia introduces readers to the character of Lord Castellan Ursula Creed, in a story about the burden of legacy and questions of Cadian identity. Pulled away from her current campaign by the returned Primarch Guilliman himself, Ursula is entrusted with a daring mission to return to what’s left of her homeworld and retrieve a weapon purportedly left behind by her father, Ursarkar E. Creed, before the Fall of Cadia. She knows it’s a propaganda exercise as much as anything, but she has her reasons for accepting it. Far from a glorious return home though, this proves to be a clumsy, chaotic mission driven – to Ursula’s mind – by all the wrong reasons, and plagued by disaster right from the off.

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Short and Sweet – October 2023

Hello and welcome to my Short and Sweet review roundup for October 2023, here on Track of Words. As usual I’ve got another trio of brief reviews for you, this time looking at three horror-tinged titles – I didn’t do this consciously, but seeing as it’s October it’s actually quite appropriate to go down the spooky route! These include an Age of Sigmar novel from Black Library, a straight-up horror novella from Titan Books, and a darkly unsettling novella from Tordotcom, all of which I’d been meaning to read for ages. So read on to find out a bit more about these three books, and what I thought.

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Does Low-Stakes Mean No Stakes? – Keith W. Dickinson Guest Post

Hello and welcome to this Track of Words guest post, where today I’m delighted to welcome author Keith W. Dickinson to talk about low-stakes fantasy stories – or, to be specific, whether these stories are actually as low-stakes as they seem! Keith’s own low-stakes fantasy novella, Glunda The Veg Witch, is coming out very soon, described as “a tale of heroism and hotpots”, so what better time to talk about this subject than now? Keep reading after the end of Keith’s post to check out the synopsis for Glunda, to find out more about it!

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Take a Break, Take It Easy

What do you do as a book blogger when you’re feeling burned out, or you’re ill, or life is just getting in the way? Ideally, you take a break. Go easy on yourself, remember that this is something you do for fun and not for money, and spend some time doing whatever else you do to relax and unwind (yes, I know you probably read to relax, usually – more on this later). It’s not always that simple though, is it? Maybe you’ve made commitments, or you want to keep up your site stats and social media engagement, or it just feels weird to not always be thinking about reviews, articles, and so on. Sound familiar? Trust me though – taking a break is almost always the right thing to do.

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Monthly Roundup – September 2023

Hello, and thanks for checking out September 2023’s Monthly Roundup post. If you haven’t read one of these roundups before, here’s how it’s going to go – first up, I’ve got a quick recap on everything I posted in September (which was mostly reviews, this month), so check that out to see if you missed anything. After that, I’ll talk a bit about my September as a whole, give a quick reading update, then finish off with a roundup of the coolest SFF-related news that I spotted over the last few weeks, and a couple of final recommendations. So read on, and please do let me know if you’ve got any questions or comments.

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SPOILER REVIEW: Kasrkin – Edoardo Albert

Edoardo Albert’s first Black Library novel tackled the sinister, almost inhuman Carcharadons, but with his second novel, Kasrkin, he returns to telling stories about regular human soldiers in wild, harsh environments (like short stories Last Flight or Green and Grey). It follows a single squad of Kasrkin – the elites of the Cadian elite – delving into a vast desert in search of a downed Valkyrie and the general it was transporting, attempting to retrieve their target before the forces of the T’au Empire find him. Led by the veteran Captain Obeysekera and accompanied by an inexperienced but politically-connected Commissar, the Kasrkin are challenged as much by the desert as by their enemies, although it’s not long before they realise that Dasht i-Kevar holds a terrible secret beneath its burning sands.

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QUICK REVIEW: The Regression Test – Wole Talabi

First published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction in 2017, Wole Talabi’s short story The Regression Test is a deceptively dark tale exploring human involvement with artificial intelligence. In an ugly corporate conference room, Titilope Ajimobi takes part in a regression test designed to ascertain whether an AI has deviated too far from the original human source of its thought patterns. As the person who knew the human subject best, it’s her role to pose a series of questions that will determine whether the AI is still recognisable – as her mother, who’s been dead the last 40 years.

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Short and Sweet – September 2023

Hello and welcome to this Short and Sweet review roundup for September 2023, in which I’m taking a quick look at another three books that I’ve read (or listened to) recently. This time I’ve gone for quite the mixture of genres and styles, including a female-driven historical fantasy novel, a Star Wars audiobook that delves deep into the Dark Side, and a science fiction novel which sets a locked-room murder mystery on an isolated space ship. So read on to find out more, and if you’ve read any of these books yourself then do let me know what you thought of them too!

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Dark Horizon – James Swallow

His second standalone thriller (after the also-excellent Airside), Dark Horizon sees James Swallow tap into his love of aviation and tell a gripping, pacy tale from the perspective of a civilian pilot caught between shady government officials and deadly criminals. I’m going to break all my own rules with this review and include the publisher’s description here rather than writing my own summary, because I really don’t think I can write anything better than this to give you the gist of what Dark Horizon is about. So good work, Welbeck publicity team – over to you!

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Shark Heart – Emily Habeck

Now and then a book comes along with a concept and a style that genuinely stands out, and Emily Habeck’s Shark Heart (subtitled ‘A Love Story’) is one such book. It’s the story of a newlywed couple – Lewis and Wren – whose happiness is rocked when Lewis is diagnosed with a rare mutation, which will see him slowly transform into a great white shark over the course of the following year. As Lewis changes and Wren cares for him, the couple try to adapt to the realities of their new lives, holding on to one another as best they can while preparing for the inevitable, all the while learning more about themselves and each other.

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