Category Archives: Reviews

The Daughter of Doctor Moreau – Silvia Moreno-Garcia

Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s eighth novel, The Daughter of Doctor Moreau is – as the title suggests – a retelling of H.G. Wells’ The Island of Doctor Moreau, transplanting the story to Mexico’s Yucatán peninsula in the nineteenth century and focusing on Carlota Moreau rather than her father, the doctor. Carlota lives a happy, sheltered life, beholden to an illness that only her father’s medical expertise can keep at bay, content with just the hybrids for friends – amalgams of humans and animals, brought to life by the doctor’s arts. When the son of her father’s patron arrives out of the blue though, the Moreaus’ safe life is turned upside down. Carlota begins to wonder what else life might offer beyond the walls of her quiet home, while her father sees opportunity, and the hybrids see only danger.

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The Game of 100 Candles – Marie Brennan

Following on from The Night Parade of 100 Demons, Marie Brennan’s The Game of 100 Candles – her second novel in Aconyte Books’ Legend of the Five Rings range – once again balances supernatural investigation and gentle queer romance to engaging, heart-warming effect. The months since their victory over the Night Parade at Seibo Mura have largely kept Ryōtora and Sekken apart, until the two samurai meet again at the Phoenix Clan’s Winter Court. Amid the cut and thrust of court life, as the pair struggle to find their feet together again they come under suspicion when members of the court start to mysteriously fall asleep, and are unable to be woken. Even as they search for answers to what’s afoot, they also have to come to terms with the reality of the bond between them, and learn anew what they mean to each other.

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Short and Sweet – May 2023

Hello and welcome to the May 2023 Short and Sweet roundup here on Track of Words, where I’ve chosen three more recent reads to talk about. This instalment is very much a set of twos: I’ve gone for the second book in a fantasy duology, the second novel in a science fiction trilogy, and the second part of a Black Library duology. I didn’t set out to pick all these book twos, I promise – it just happened that way! As always, these are books that I want to make sure I talk about, but which for one reason or another I don’t have the time or headspace to cover in a full standalone review.

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The Malevolent Seven – Sebastien de Castell

Irreverent, foul-mouthed fun is the order of the day with Sebastien de Castell’s The Malevolent Seven, an action-packed fantasy romp in which a mismatched group of mercenary wonderists (i.e. dangerous, largely unhinged wizards) find themselves in the unlikely position of having to save their world. And not even getting paid! After their last mission goes spectacularly, messily wrong, sort-of-friends Cade Ombra and Corrigan Blight take on a new job that they hope will keep them out of trouble for a little while. Recruiting a handful of fellow war mages (and a dog…ok, a jackal) along the way, little do they know that they’re actually going to be facing up against appalling odds, bargaining with angels and demons, and generally getting caught up in the machinations of the powerful beings that battle eternally over the mortal realm.

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Terror World – Cath Lauria

The second novel in Aconyte Books’ Zombicide Invader range (zombies in space!), Cath Lauria’s Terror World offers another fun, horror-tinged slab of sci-fi action which sees a disparate, multi-species team brought together to investigate an ancient distress signal on a remote world. In true SF zombie fashion, when they arrive on Sik-Tar the team discovers an ancient spaceship full of strange mysteries and unanswered questions, which soon turns into a deathtrap when the long-dead bodies of the original crew start coming back to life in horrifying fashion. Before long, what began as a scientific mission becomes a frantic scramble for survival in the face of rampaging alien-mold-monsters (otherwise known as Xenos) and a fracturing team.

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Short and Sweet – April 2023

Hello and welcome to April’s Short and Sweet review roundup on Track of Words, where I’ve picked out a trio of my recent reads to talk about in relatively little detail. This time around I’ve gone for a modern fantasy novel that a lot of people have been talking about, a brand new Black Library novel (which is something of a novelty for me these days), and a reread of a classic epic fantasy book, that’s part of one of the biggest fantasy series of all time. As always, these are books that I’d like to talk about, but which for one reason or another I don’t have the time or headspace to cover in a full standalone review.

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Silver Nitrate – Silvia Moreno-Garcia

Mexican horror movies, golden age cinema and Nazi occultism combine to great effect in Silver Nitrate, another fantastic novel from prolific, genre-hopping author Silvia Moreno-Garcia. In 90s Mexico City, horror movie-aficionado Montserrat is a sound engineer fighting to keep her place in the male-dominated industry, and Tristán is a washed-up soap actor struggling to find work in the wake of a tragic accident. When the two friends meet once-famous horror movie director Abel Urueta, it doesn’t take much for them to agree to help him complete an unfinished film of his, the ‘lost’ movie that essentially ended – and maybe cursed – his career. As they learn more about the origins of the film and its occult subject matter, and the other parties originally involved in it, they find themselves caught up in a dangerous new world where film and ritual combine.

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Ascension – Nicholas Binge

With Ascension – published by Harper Voyager – Nicholas Binge has gone big and delivered an epic, cinematic experience, a speculative thriller blending big ideas and intense personal stakes. Told in epistolary format by way of somewhat disjointed letters written by the protagonist – Harold Tunmore – to his niece Harriet, it’s the tale of a man both losing his mind and finding himself. A renowned physicist, among other things, Harold is recruited by a shadowy organisation to assist with a secretive scientific project: a vast, impossible mountain has appeared out of nowhere and a group of brilliant minds are tasked with understanding what it is, how it can possibly exist, and what its implications might be. As they scale its towering sides in search of answers, it exerts an inexorable pull on each of them, testing them in ways they couldn’t expect and placing them in danger they couldn’t imagine.

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Have You Decided On Your Question – Lindsey Croal

Out now from Shortwave Publishing, Lindsey Croal’s novelette (somewhere between a short story and a novella) Have You Decided On Your Question plays out a Sliding Doors-esque ‘What If’ scenario to a darkly logical conclusion. In a not-so distant future Edinburgh, Zoe reluctantly agrees to visit AltRealTech – or ART – for a ‘personalised therapeutic experience’, a technological simulation that allows her to revisit a moment from her past and experience what might have been. Initially suspicious of her housemate’s assurance that it will help her out of the slump she’s currently in, that first session soon snowballs into an obsession with the life and love she could have had, leading Zoe down a dark and dangerous path.

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Short and Sweet – March 2023

Hello and welcome to my Short and Sweet review roundup for March 2023, here on Track of Words. I’ve picked out another three books to talk about this month, and I suspect I’ll be hard pressed in coming months to find another set with such a wide range – there’s a 650-page Warhammer novel that’s only actually half a book, a 130-page dystopian novella (I guess) about a spry 100+ year-old man in a future Japan, and an anthology of Star Wars short stories from no fewer than 40 authors! As always, these are books that are well worth talking about, but which for one reason or another I don’t have the time or headspace to cover in a full standalone review.

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