Tag Archives: Warhammer 40k

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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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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Writing For Black Library – Open Submissions January 2023 Part 3: Writing Samples

Hello and welcome to the third and final instalment of my January 2023 edition of Writing For Black Library here on Track of Words – in this part our nine brilliant Black Library authors are discussing the tricky task of planning out short stories and putting together writing samples. If you haven’t already, I’d recommend checking out the previous two articles first: part one, in which we discussed writing 100-word story pitches, and part two, which was all about what makes a great Space Marine story. If you’ve already read both of those, read on to find out what advice and recommendations our authors have for writing short stories in general.

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Witchbringer – Steven B Fischer

After a trio of excellent 40k short stories, Steven B. Fischer makes his Black Library novel debut with Witchbringer, a bleak tale of the Astra Militarum told from the viewpoint of a newly-trained sanctioned psyker. Once a captain in the Cadian 900th before her burgeoning powers saw her shipped off to the Scholastica Psykana, no sooner has Glavia Aerand completed her gruelling training than a portent-filled vision sees her unhappily assigned back to her old regiment, who are embroiled against Traitor Guard on the miserable, mist-shrouded world of Visage. Finding fear and mistrust where once there was comradeship, Glavia has to fight to find a place in the regiment, while trying to understand what lies behind the mysteries of the gloomy, waterlogged world she finds herself on (including the unusually high rate of psykers it generates), and the fate of her missing mentor.

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Short and Sweet – December 2022

Hello and welcome to the third instalment of Short and Sweet, my ongoing series of short review roundups. I’m using these roundups to gather together a few brief thoughts on books that I’ve been reading recently but haven’t been able to write full reviews for, concentrating as always on my usual SFF fare. If you’re a Black Library reader, it’s worth pointing out that this is where you’re likely to find most of my BL content in future! In this instalment I’m going to talk about a pair of Black Library books – an Age of Sigmar novel (sort of) and a 40k short story anthology – and a science fiction novella that’s a sequel to something I read and loved in 2019. I could have included more books in this roundup, but I’m going to try and stick to three each time as a nice balanced amount to write about (and for each one I’ve included buy-now links – I’ll receive a small affilliate fee for anything ordered via these links).

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QUICK REVIEW: Aria Arcana – Peter Fehervari

The 17th instalment (short story number 12) in Peter Fehervari’s incredible Warhammer 40,000 Dark Coil series, Aria Arcana takes place during the finale of Requiem Infernal, offering a little insight into what the Angels Resplendent of the Ninth Rhapsody were doing as the city of Sophia Argentum burned. In the midst of the madness, Epistolary Ignacio Verlaine and a squad of Angels Resplendent patrol the storm-wracked skies waiting for revelation. When their gunship is destroyed, Verlaine falls from the sky only to find himself on an unexpected path that leads him inexorably towards the light of the Candelabrum, the great cathedral of the Koronatus Ring, and the destiny it heralds.

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Best of Black Library 2022

Every year, as we approach the end of December I look back at the best Black Library books I’ve read over the preceding twelve months, and it’s time now to take a look at 2022’s BL highlights. There are plenty to choose from, but I’ve narrowed it down to just five that I can personally recommend as being genuinely fantastic reads. It was hard to cut things down to five though, so I’ve also added a few honourable mentions that I couldn’t help but include. As always this comes with a few caveats, the first of which being that I can only talk about the books I’ve actually read. Black Library publishes somewhere in the region of 40 novels each year, of which I’ve read 14; that’s slightly more than last year, but still nothing like all of them. I’m sure I’ve missed out loads of great titles simply because I haven’t got around to reading them.

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RAPID FIRE: Steven B Fischer Talks Witchbringer

Hello and welcome to this Track of Words Author Interview, where today I’m very happy to welcome back Steven B. Fischer to talk about his brilliant new Warhammer 40,000 novel Witchbringer. Steve and I chatted recently for an Author Spotlight interview and it was super interesting (you can check that out here), and the little glimpse we got into Witchbringer was more than enough for me to want to chat about the novel in more detail. With that in mind, in this interview Steve gives a great overview of what to expect from Witchbringer, including what it was like exploring the Scholastica Psykana and the nature of being a psyker in the Imperial Guard, keeping character conflict at the heart of the novel, looking for light in the middle of a grimdark universe, and loads more. Oh, and the relative merits of psychic powers in the real world!

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AUTHOR INTERVIEW: Mike Brooks Talks The God-King Chronicles (and a Busy 2022)

Hello and welcome to this Track of Words Author Interview, where today I’m welcoming Mike Brooks back to the site to chat about his epic fantasy trilogy The God-King Chronicles, which is now complete with the recent release of book three, The Godbreaker. It seemed like the perfect time to look back on the trilogy as a whole, what readers can get out of it, what inspired these stories and the world in which they’re set, and how Mike feels now that it’s all done. But that’s not all! It’s been a busy year for Mike in terms of book releases, so once we finished chatting about The God-King Chronicles we moved onto discussing several of Mike’s Black Library novels that have been published this year, featuring Chaos Space Marines, Orks and…more Chaos Space Marines.

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Short and Sweet: October 2022

Hello and welcome to the first in a new series of articles that I’m tentatively calling Short and Sweet, in which I’m going to write up a few quick, informal thoughts and observations about some of the SFF books that I’ve recently read, but which I’m not planning on reviewing more thoroughly. I’ve basically pinched this idea from a friend (check out Fabienne’s ‘Review Roundup’ posts on Libri Draconis), and I’m hoping it will work for me too as a way of still talking about books for which I don’t have the time or headspace to write full, in-depth reviews. The plan is for this to be an irregular series rather than committing to a specific frequency, so to begin with at least I’ll try to write one of these posts maybe once a month, or perhaps a bit less than that, depending on what I read.

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