Tag Archives: Fantasy

Mischief, Power and Tricksters – Gabriela Houston Guest Post

Hello and welcome to this Track of Words guest post, where today I’m thrilled to welcome author Gabriela Houston to the site to talk about the fascinating concept of tricksters in fiction! I read Gabriela’s debut novel The Second Bell earlier in the year and loved its Slavic mythology-inspired magic, and themes of family and community. With Gabriela’s second novel (and her Middle Grade debut) The Wind Child due out in February 2022, this fantastic guest post is a great opportunity to see how the familiar figue of the trickster relates to The Wind Child. Check out the publisher’s synopsis for this brilliant-sounding story of friendship, gods and monsters, then read on to enjoy Gabriela’s article on tricksters and the balance of power.

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Original Fiction: Valkyrie by Danie Ware

Hello and welcome to this very special post on Track of Words, where I’m delighted to publish a fantastic piece of original fiction from a wonderful author – Valkyrie by Danie Ware. A bleak tale of the Viking invasion of England, it’s a powerful story that hearkens back to the oral tradition of storytelling – try reading it out loud for full effect!

“In the names of Frey and of Freya,” he said, “tell me where the creature lies.”

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A Master of Djinn by P. Djèlí Clark – Josh Reynolds Guest Review

Hello and welcome to this guest review here on Track of Words, where the fantastic Josh Reynolds – author of (amongst other things) the Royal Occultist series, the Daidoshi Shin books and some of the most entertaining Warhammer stories of all time – is here to talk about A Master of Djinn by P. Djèlí Clark. I couldn’t be happier to have Josh on the site as a guest reviewer, not just because he’s one of my absolute favourite authors but because he’s talking about a book that I utterly adore! It really is an incredible book, and Josh has done a great job of illustrating why that is in this clear, concise, persuasive and spoiler-free review.

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A Master of Djinn – P. Djèlí Clark

P. Djèlí Clark’s debut novel A Master of Djinn builds upon the world already introduced in several fantastic shorter tales – A Dead Djinn in Cairo, The Angel of Khan el-Khalili and The Haunting of Tram Car 015 – and delivers more in every sense. More of this wonderful world of djinn, angels and mechanical marvels in 1912 Cairo. More scope, more scale, more danger and adventure, and more of the marvellous agent Fatma el-Sha’arawi from the Ministry of Alchemy, Enchantments and Supernatural Entities. The streets of Cairo are fired up when the man responsible for a horrifying mass murder proclaims himself to be Al-Jahiz, the legendary mystic who ushered in this new age of magic and wonder, returned from his long absence. As tensions rise, Fatma has the unenviable task of hunting down and stopping a man who, whether he truly is Al-Jahiz returned or not, wields fearsome powers and seems to know exactly how to get the poor and downtrodden of Cairo on his side.

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A Marvellous Light – Freya Marske

Freya Marske’s debut novel, and the first volume in her Last Binding trilogy, A Marvellous Light is a queer historical fantasy that’s warm, magical and an absolute delight from start to finish. Set in Edwardian London, it’s the tale of two very different men thrown together by circumstance and forced to put aside their differences. On his first day in an obscure civil service role, Robin Blyth gets quite the surprise when he learns about the existence of magic and meets Edwin Courcey, his counterpart in the country’s magical administration. Edwin has little patience for bringing Robin up to speed, but when the matter of Robin’s predecessor having inexplicably disappeared develops from an inconvenience into a dangerous problem, the two of them begin to develop a fragile friendship as they investigate a mystery that could affect every magician in the country.

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The Stitcher and the Mute – D.K. Fields

The sequel to Widow’s Welcome, and the second volume in the Tales of Fenest trilogy, D.K. Fields’ The Stitcher and the Mute is another fantastic tale of stories within stories that adds depth and detail to both the overarching narrative and the world being explored. Having caught the man responsible for the Wayward storyteller’s murder, Detective Cora Gorderheim thinks she’s making progress, but when the killer is himself murdered on the way to serve his punishment she realises that all she has really found is more questions. As two more of the realms’ stories are told, Cora digs deeper into what’s increasingly looking like a serious conspiracy at the heart of the Union, and one in which her own family’s history might yet play an important part.

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A Few Thoughts On: Legacy of Steel by Matthew Ward

I’m delighted to have another review live on the British Fantasy Society website, this time for Legacy of Steel by Matthew Ward – the sequel to Legacy of Ash, and the second book in the epic (in every sense of the word) Legacy Trilogy. I’m not going to just reprint the review – here’s the link to the BFS website so you can read it in full – but I feel like this article should be more than just a paragraph and a link. As such, I thought I would use this space to talk a bit about the series (so far) as a whole, and my experience of reading Legacy of Steel, which was a little unusual for me.

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AUTHOR INTERVIEW: Michael S. Jackson Talks Ringlander The Path and the Way

Hello and welcome to this Track of Words Author Interview, where today I’m welcoming Michael S. Jackson to the site to talk about his debut novel Ringlander: The Path and the Way. The first book in a new female-led fantasy series, it’s available to order in various formats right now (including a lovely ‘Author Edition’ hardback – more details at the end of the article), and I’m delighted to have this interview as part of the Ringlander blog tour! Make sure you check out the other interviews and reviews on the tour (I’ll include details of these at the end) but before you do that, here’s Michael with the lowdown on what to expect from the Ringlander series and this novel in particular, including a beautiful map he’s created for this world – I do love a good map!

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Re-reading The Eye of the World by Robert Jordan

Robert Jordan’s The Eye of the World, the first book in the epic Wheel of Time series, has an incredibly strong nostalgic hook for me. I first read it in 1999, at age 16, and I’ve lost count of how many times I ended up re-reading it (and many more of the early books in the series) over the following years to refresh my memory about what happened, each time one of the final books was published. After reading, and loving, A Memory of Light (incredibly, 24 years later in 2013) to finish the series I wasn’t sure I would ever go back and read the whole thing again from the beginning – after all, even though I love this series, despite its flaws, we’re talking tens of thousands of pages (4.4 million words) across the whole thing, so it’s a massive commitment. Eight years on though, the trailer for the TV adaptation of The Wheel of Time was released…

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The End of an Era – Matthew Ward Guest Post

Hello and welcome to my stop on the blog tour for Matthew Ward’s new novel Legacy of Light, the third and final volume in the Legacy Trilogy, which is published today by Orbit. For this post, Matthew has written a fantastic guest blog in which he talks about the experience of finishing this epic fantasy trilogy, and offers up some interesting (and spoiler-free) facts about the brand new Legacy of Light. If you haven’t already, make sure you also check out all the other stops on this great blog tour for reviews, interviews and more guest blogs from Matthew – I’ll include details of where to find these at the end of this article – but for now I’m delighted to hand Track of Words over to Matthew…

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