Tag Archives: Fantasy

The Second Bell – Gabriela Houston

Bleak yet hopeful, grounded but magical, Gabriela Houston’s debut novel The Second Bell is a quiet, powerful story of family, community and survival inspired by dark Slavic mythology. In a remote, mountainous village, Miriat gives birth to a child with two hearts – a striga – and is forced to choose between abandoning her daughter or leaving the village forever. Choosing exile, Miriat raises her daughter amongst other strigas, who teach Salka to control her second heart and the dark powers it possesses. Life in the striga village is hard but safe until nineteen year-old Salka faces a choice of her own, which puts both her and her mother at risk and threatens the balance of her life, and the village as a whole.

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A Few Thoughts On: The Archive of the Forgotten by A.J. Hackwith

A.J. Hackwith’s The Library of the Unwritten was a pacy, darkly funny and deeply satisfying take on the interdimensional/time travelling librarian trope, and I loved it to bits. Its sequel, The Archive of the Forgotten, tries hard to dig into the relationships between the key characters, picking up the story as they’re still adjusting to the changes forced upon them, with Brevity now the new Librarian and Claire relegated to stewardship of the titular Archive. It’s a smaller-scale story in which the safety of both the Library and the Archive is at risk even as Brevity and Claire are at odds with each other, their friendship strained to breaking point. Sadly, while the world in which it’s set continues to be engaging, the story itself doesn’t live up to expectations.

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The Haunting of Tram Car 015 – P. Djèlí Clark

Set in the same world as his short story A Dead Djinn in Cairo, P Djèlí Clark’s novella The Haunting of Tram Car 015 is another slice of alternate-world urban fantasy, full of characterful storytelling and vibrant world building. Agent Hamed Nasr of Cairo’s Ministry of Alchemy, Enchantments and Supernatural Entities, along with his younger colleague Agent Onsi, are called to Ramses Station to investigate a haunting in one of the city’s trams. When it transpires that it’s the tram car itself which is haunted, what Hamed assumed was going to be a simple task becomes much more complicated, as the agents attempt to identify the spirit and coax it out of its mechanical host…to varying degrees of success.

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Cover Reveal: The Splinter King by Mike Brooks

Today I’m thrilled to reveal the amazing cover for Mike Brooks’ upcoming fantasy novel The Splinter King, book two in The God-King Chronicles, which is due to be published by Orbit on the 15th July 2021. It’s an unusual situation as the first book in the series – The Black Coast – isn’t out yet (it’s coming very soon, on the 18th February in the UK), but the way I see it this just means we’ve got TWO awesome new fantasy novels in this series to look forward to in 2021! Along with the cover itself, I spoke to Mike to get a few of his thoughts on the artwork and what we can expect from the series as a whole – so read on to find out more.

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Widow’s Welcome – D.K. Fields

Book one in the fantasy/crime trilogy Tales of Fenest by D.K. Fields – pen name of Katherine Stansfield and David Towsey – Widow’s Welcome introduces a vibrant, unconventional world in which stories hold great power. In the Union of Realms, a “collective of six different peoples with their own customs and traditions”, political control is determined in an election every five years by carefully-chosen storytellers and the popularity of their stories. The city is always hectic during an election year, as people from across the Union descend on the central city of Fenest to hear each realm’s story. When a Wayward man is found dead in an alley with his lips sewn shut, however, Detective Cora Gorderheim starts to realise that there’s more going on than general unrest.

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AUTHOR INTERVIEW: David Guymer Talks The Shield of Daqan

Welcome to this Track of Words Author Interview – today I’m speaking to David Guymer about his new novel The Shield of Daqan, which is coming very soon from Aconyte Books as part of their range of Descent: Journeys in the Dark fiction. I asked David for the lowdown on the story, the characters, and his take on the Descent world. If you’re a fan of David’s Warhammer fiction and are keen to see him explore a slightly different, somewhat less grim and dark setting, this looks like being the perfect opportunity! It’s due out as a global ebook and US paperback on the 2nd February, with the UK paperback coming a little bit later on the 15th April.

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AUTHOR INTERVIEW: Anna Stephens Talks The Stone Knife

Welcome to this Track of Words Author Interview – this time around I’m chatting to author Anna Stephens about her new novel The Stone Knife, the first book in a new trilogy called The Songs of the Drowned. It’s due out from Harper Voyager in hardback, ebook and audiobook on the 26th November, so take a look at the interview to get the lowdown on what you can expect, and then head out and get your pre-orders in!

Without further ado, on with the interview…

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Legacies: The Power of the Past – Matthew Ward Guest Post

Hello and welcome to the first ever Track of Words guest post – The Power of the Past – in which the fantastic Matthew Ward discusses the importance of legacies in storytelling. With the second novel in Matthew’s Legacy Trilogy just released via Orbit, I’m delighted to present this guest post as part of the Legacy of Steel blog tour, alongside some fantastic bloggers and SFF websites. I’ll link out to all the other stops on the tour at the end of this article, and I would highly recommend you check out all the reviews, interviews and guest posts that make up the tour.

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AUTHOR INTERVIEW: D.K. Fields Talk The Stitcher and the Mute

Welcome to this Track of Words Author Interview, in which I’m talking to D.K. Fields – the pseudonym for collaborative authors Katherine Stansfield and David Towsey – about their new novel The Stitcher and the Mute, which is book two in the Tales of Fenest. It’s published on the 12th November by Head of Zeus, in hardback and ebook formats, and ahead of its release I asked Kath and Dave to give us a rundown on the series, some details of the new novel, and what it’s like writing as a pair.

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Legacy of Ash – Matthew Ward

Matthew Ward’s The Legacy Trilogy opens with Legacy of Ash, a 240k word behemoth of a novel which sets out Ward’s stall for the series and emphasises the epic in epic fantasy. Fifteen years after a failed Southshire rebellion, the Republic of Tressia is still mired in internecine conflict, its ruling Council divided on how to deal with their troublesome southern subjects. When the looming threat of the neighbouring Hadari Empire becomes too much to ignore, it falls to the Council’s champion Viktor Akadra to rally the Southshires in defence of the Republic, while siblings Josiri and Calenne Trelan – whose mother led the failed rebellion – face difficult choices as they confront both the lasting implications of their mother’s actions, and Viktor’s role in her death.

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