Tag Archives: Fantasy

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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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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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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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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Finally! Series I’m Going to Start (At Last)

Like pretty much everyone else, I find there are always too many books I want to read and not enough time in which to read them, so I inevitably end up having a bunch of books that I really, really want to read…but never get around to. With that in mind, in 2023 I’m planning on making an active effort to look back at books that have been on my TBR list for a while but which I haven’t managed to get to. In particular, I’ve picked out 10 trilogies or series which I haven’t yet started but have been meaning to, and I’m going to at least make a start on each one. Ideally I’d like to read the whole trilogy/series (or at least whatever’s been published so far) in each case but I might not manage that, so the plan is to read at least the first book from all 10.

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ToW Advent 2022 – Collected Recommendations

After 24 days of brilliant guest posts, insightful author interviews and compelling original fiction (and a few roundup posts from me), the Track of Words Advent Calendar has come to an end for its second year running. If you’ve been following the series from the start, I really hope you’ve enjoyed at least some – if not all – of the content, while if this is your first engagement with the series I’d strongly recommend you skip to the main article and check out all the great posts there! Either way, now we’ve reached the end of the Advent Calendar I want to say a massive thank you to everyone who contributed to the series, without whom it would have been a quieter and much less interesting month on Track of Words!

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TBR: SFF Books Coming in 2023

Last year I put together a TBR list of science fiction and fantasy books I was particularly looking forward to reading in 2022, and yep…I thought I’d do the same this year! It’s always fun to look ahead and think about what looks particularly exciting, and it’s useful to have a list like this to refer back to as the year progresses. From last year’s list, only nine of the ten books have actually been published yet, so I’ve cheated a bit and included the unpublished one from 2022 on this list too. Of those nine though, I did read seven (and a half)…which is pretty good going I think, and I’d say that they mostly (if not entirely) lived up to expectations.

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David Towsey – One David To Another: Three Films That Influenced Equinox

Welcome to this Track of Words guest post, where today I’m joined by the fantastic author David Towsey who’s going to talk about three films by a single director that had an impact on his brilliant novel Equinox. Published by Head of Zeus, Equinox first came out in May 2022, and the paperback edition is due in February 2023 so it feels like a good moment to look back at this fantastic fantasy novel! I haven’t read anything quite like it, with its fascinating central concept of day and night siblings – each body inhabited by two distinct personalities, one present during the day and the other at night – and I loved its blend of fantasy and horror, and the attention to detail in its setting. It’s always interesting to get an author’s thoughts on some of the inspirations behind their work, and in this post David takes an unusual but really cool approach to talking about what inspired his novel.

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Best SFF Books of 2022

Every year I put together an article talking about the best science fiction and fantasy novels I’ve read over the last twelve months (here’s 2021’s article), and this year is no different – welcome to my Best SFF Books of 2022 article! Over the years I’ve tweaked how I approach this task, and this year I’ve decided to keep it nice and simple. No honourable mentions, no exhaustive top 20, just the 10 books that I’ve enjoyed reading the most in 2022. As usual, I’ve restricted myself in this to books published in 2022, so you won’t find any old classics here (or even books published only a year or two ago) – just great books that were released this year. The only criteria I went by were that they had to be SFF books (or SFF/horror crossover) – whether aimed at adults or a YA audience – and they had to be books that I enjoyed so much I would wholeheartedly recommend them.

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Shauna Lawless – The Rise of Historical Fantasy

Hello and welcome to this Track of Words guest post where I’m delighted to hand the reins over to the fantastic Shauna Lawless – author of The Children of Gods and Fighting Men (Head of Zeus/Ad Astra, 2022) – to talk about historical fantasy, and some of the best recent examples of the genre. Featuring some fascinating insights into what historical fantasy actually is and why it appeals to us as readers, observations on what drew her to the genre as both a reader and a writer, and loads of recommendations for great historical fantasy novels – both recent releases and classics – this is a brilliant primer for a justifiably popular genre.

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