Category Archives: Reviews

Velvet Was the Night – Silvia Moreno-Garcia

Set in Mexico City in the 70s, Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s historical noir Velvet Was the Night – her seventh novel, released in 2021 – is tale of two very different people struggling for identity in a city wracked by political turmoil. In the wake of disrupted protests and violence on the streets, tensions in Mexico City are running high. When Maite, an unhappy secretary who spends her free time reading romantic comics and collecting records (and occasionally stealing little trinkets from her neighbours), agrees to feed her neighbour’s cat for a few days, little does she realise the peril she’ll soon be in, or what it will do to her. Dangerous men are looking for her neighbour, Leonora, and one of them – a Hawk named Elvis, who prefers music to violence – finds himself drawn to Maite even as he struggles to understand his role, and who he wants to be.

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Dragonfire – James Swallow

The follow-up to 2022’s Firewall, James Swallow’s Dragonfire is his second novel in Aconyte Book’s Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell range of high-tech thrillers, and another gripping, action-packed page turner. Set after the events of both Firewall and the game Ghost Recon: Wildlands (specifically the ‘Operation Watchman’ mission, according to the author’s note), it sees Sam Fisher sent into North Korea on a typically high-risk mission to prevent a dangerous weapon from falling into the wrong hands, only for the mission to go badly wrong leaving Sam captured by ruthless enemies and disavowed by his own people. Ignoring orders from a Fourth Echelon wracked by political manoeuvring, Sam’s daughter Sarah risks her own life to bring him back, and between them the two Fishers start to unveil a plot that threatens to destabilise the global status quo.

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Untamed Shore – Silvia Moreno-Garcia

Originally released in 2020 on a small press (Agora Books), Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s fifth novel now has a much-deserved wider publication (in the UK via Jo Fletcher Books), giving more readers the opportunity to enjoy this dark, slow-burn noir set in Baja California. Viridiana is a dreamer, determined to find her way out of her dull life in Desengaño and into something brighter, worried that if she doesn’t then she’ll find herself swallowed up by the tedium of her family and small-town life. When she begins working for a trio of wealthy American tourists, she’s quickly swept up in the glamour and romance of their lives, enchanted by the possibilities that life with them might offer. When one of the Americans dies though, Viridiana finds herself tangled up in a dangerous game that she’s not sure she’s prepared for, and forced to choose who she really wants to be.

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Short and Sweet – February 2023

Hello and welcome to February 2023’s Short and Sweet review roundup here on Track of Words. This month I’ve got three books to talk about, and unusually (and sadly) one of those was my first DNF (Did Not Finish) of the year. I don’t often talk about books that I don’t finish, but I’d got far enough through this one that I do actually have a few things I’d like to mention about it, and even though I didn’t quite get along with it I do actually think it’s an interesting book that a lot of other people might well enjoy. My review isn’t, perhaps, actually all that short…but this felt like the right place for it, rather than a dedicated review post which I don’t think would feel right given that I didn’t finish the book.

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Secrets in Scarlet – edited by Charlotte Llewelyn-Wells

Leaving Arkham behind and venturing out into the wider world, Aconyte Books’ Arkham Horror anthology Secrets in Scarlet – edited by Charlotte Llewelyn-Wells – brings together nine authors with globetrotting tales of occult adventure, ancient mysteries and sinister clandestine organisations. Following government agents, artefact hunters, art thieves and more, these nine stories gradually build up a picture of competing agencies, cults and secret societies all searching for objects with the potential to unlock terrible powers, though whether to use those powers or prevent them from falling into the wrong hands remains to be seen. Some stories feature protagonists actively involved in this dangerous search, while others are merely caught in the middle, but one thing unites them all – the consequences of failure are utterly deadly.

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The Lies of the Ajungo – Moses Ose Utomi

Moses Ose Utomi’s fantasy debut The Lies of the Ajungo is a short, beautiful, heart-rending novella set in an Africa-inspired world of magic, monsters and manipulation. In the city of Tutu’s birth, the City of Lies, everyone aged 13 or older must sacrifice their tongue in exchange for a pittance of water from the powerful Ajungo Empire, enough to keep the city just about alive. Days before his 13th birthday, Tutu bravely ventures out from the city in search of water, determined to return a hero and save his ailing mother. Out in the Forever Desert he meets unexpected friends and dangerous enemies, and grows into himself as a man. The truths he learns, however, reveal the true darkness behind the City of Lies and the realities of the Ajungo.

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In the Coils of the Labyrinth – David Annandale

With his first Arkham Horror novel, In the Coils of the Labyrinth, David Annandale delivers a slow-burn tale of physical illness and mental torment that ably demonstrates why this is such a perfect author/setting combination. Worn down by what she’s long suspected is tuberculosis, Professor Miranda Ventham reluctantly checks herself into the Stroud Institute, Arkham’s newly-opened sanatorium. While the care she receives there seems genuinely beneficial to begin with, something about the Institute feels unsettling, and Miranda’s plagued by troubling, confusing dreams. Determined to understand what’s happening, and helped on the outside by her friend, parapsychologist Agatha Crane, Miranda sets out to learn what she can about the Institute and its director, Donovan Stroud. As dreams and reality become harder to tell apart though, the darkness at the heart of the Institute threatens to drag her down and never let her go.

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Short and Sweet – January 2023

Hello and welcome to my first Short and Sweet reviews roundup of 2023, where today I’m taking a quick look at a trio of books I read in January. It’s quite a fun mixture this month, combining gothic horror, contemporary fantasy(ish) and Warhammer fiction (specifically Horus Heresy/Siege of Terra), so hopefully there’s something of interest to you in here! As always with these review roundups, the idea is to take a fairly brief look at a few SFF books that for one reason or another I’m not going to cover in full reviews, but which I’m still keen to talk about. I’ve included buy-now links for each book – I’ll receive a small affilliate fee for anything ordered via these links.

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Godkiller – Hannah Kaner

Hannah Kaner blasts onto the epic fantasy scene with her debut novel Godkiller, an impressively tight and thrilling tale of vengeance, honour, murdered (and murderous) gods and sundered families. With civil war looming and enemies closing in, four disparate characters make their way to a ruined city in search of answers from the old gods – mercenary godkiller Kissen, troubled knight-turned-baker Elogast, and the bound-together duo of runaway young noble Inara and tiny god of white lies Skediceth. Despite their differences, and a conspicuous lack of trust, they find themselves travelling together, forced to rely on each other to survive the curses, demons, gods and men that bar their way to the war-ravaged city and the truths they hope to find there.

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The Mimicking of Known Successes – Malka Older

Set on a colony encircling Jupiter in a distant future, Malka Older’s genre-blending novella The Mimicking of Known Successes opens with Investigator Mossa looking into the disappearance of a university scholar assumed to have jumped or been pushed from a remote transit platform, thereafter presumably perishing in the gas giant’s freezing, punishing atmosphere. Back at the university she recruits her once-girlfriend Pleiti, also a scholar, to assist with her investigation, the two of them attempting to understand what might have prompted an almost universally disliked man to disappear. The deeper they dig the more the mystery thickens, becoming more dangerous than they could have expected, while their unexpected reunion inevitably stirs up old memories and emotions once thought laid to rest.

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