Hello and welcome to my Track of Words Monthly Roundup post for July 2023, back to its normal place at the end of the month (rather than several days into the next month, like last time). After a hectic June, my July has been considerably quieter – I’ve maintained my usual rhythm of posting on ToW but I’ve slowed down a little with reading, and really found myself pulling back from spending time online (by which I mean on social media). I don’t mind that sort of ebb and flow though, and I’m sure things will even out in time. As usual, for this post I’ve got a recap of the month’s new (and updated) articles and reviews, followed by some updates about what I’ve been up to, and anything interesting that’s caught my eye.
July’s Posts
Another month of hitting my two-post-per-week goal feels good. This post you’re reading makes nine for the month, with a decent mix I think. No interviews this month, but still lots of content provided by authors, including my first ‘Behind the Scene’ post that I’m super pleased with!
Monthly Roundup – June 2023 – as I mentioned earlier, I didn’t quite get last month’s roundup post ready in time, so it ended up carrying over to July. Not the end of the world. If you missed it, it was very much like this post, except June was crazy busy so I talked a bit about my 40th birthday celebrations and so on.
QUICK REVIEW: Altar of Maws by Peter Fehervari – this was my first short story review of 2023 (which came as a surprise when I realised), and a rare Black Library review at that. I’m a huge fan of Fehervari’s work though, as you may well know, so I was always going to talk about this one. It’s another great story, albeit perhaps slightly safer than his usual writing, and maybe a good place to start for someone new to the Dark Coil.
Signal to Noise by Silvia Moreno-Garcia – I completed my project of reviewing every Moreno-Garcia novel by going back to the beginning, and her debut novel. This one is a coming of age story split between the late 80s and late 2000s, about a trio of teenagers who learn how to cast spells by listening to vinyl records, and the price they paid – in terms of friendship and family – for their magic. I loved it.
Short and Sweet – Aconyte Edition – I didn’t manage one of these review roundups in June, so for July I thought I’d do something a bit different and concentrate on a trio of books from the same publisher. I’d had these three Aconyte novels on the shelf for ages so it was about time I finally got to them – a pair of Arkham Horror titles and a Marvel: Legends of Asgard novel. One of them didn’t quite hit the mark for me as well as the other two, but overall another handful of brilliant Aconyte releases.
Spotlight On Silvia Moreno-Garcia – with my Signal to Noise review marking the end of my read-through of Moreno-Garcia novels, I thought it would be fun to look at her catalogue as a whole. It’s not easy to pick a single book of hers to start with, so I looked at a suggested reading order by grouping them into loose genres – for each one I included the synopsis, a snippet from my review, a few additional thoughts and a link through to my review. If you fancy making a start on her books, or you’re not sure where to go next, this will help!
Spotlight On James Swallow’s Original Fiction – if you’re mostly familiar with James’ work in IPs like 40k, Star Trek and Splinter Cell, you might not know that he’s also written a stack of brilliant original thrillers. As part of this ongoing series I asked James for a few words about what to expect from his original work, so check this out to find out more about his Marc Dane series and his two standalone thrillers.
QUICK REVIEW: The Cure by Guy Haley – given everything I’ve been talking about in terms of BL authors’ original fiction, it only seemed appropriate for me to review Haley’s latest original short story, which was recently published in Grimdark Magazine. It’s an intriguing little story that blends fantasy and SF together in a tale of unfortunate mercenaries on a dangerous contract, and I really enjoyed it.
Behind The Scene: Excerpt From Storming Heaven by Miles Cameron – the sequel to the brilliant Against All Gods (which I loved), Storming Heaven is book 2 in Cameron’s The Age of Bronze series. As part of the blog tour to celebrate its release (out now from Gollancz) I’m delighted to have the chance to publish this exclusive excerpt, with additional notes from Cameron himself both setting the scene for the events in the excerpt, and discussing the historical influences on some of the characters.
[UPDATED] A Traveller’s Guide to Peter Fehervari’s Dark Coil – having reviewed Altar of Maws it made sense to go back and update my guide to the Dark Coil, and it just so happened that Peter reached out with an updated version of his suggested reading order. Perfect timing! The graphics are a little trickier to update so they don’t have the latest stories on them (yet?), but everything else is now fully up to date.
My July
Given that June was a bit more hectic than I expected, and certainly more so than I’m used to, it was quite nice to have a somewhat quieter month in July. Very little travelling (just a long weekend in Manchester with my family at the end of the month), no crazy surprises, just a nice relaxing few weeks! As you can see from the recap above I still kept reasonably busy on the writing front, but otherwise the month was dominated by one particular thing, which I didn’t think I’d be able to talk about. Until, that is, it was officially announced the day I started writing this post. And the news is…
I’m a juror for this year’s British Fantasy Awards, specifically for the Best Newcomer award – which is exciting! Over the years I’ve written the occasional review for the British Fantasy Society, but this is the first time I’ve got any more involved than that, but a while back I saw the call for jurors and figured I’d give it a go. I can’t say too much about the process or the experience up to this point, but the five of us on the jury have been hard at work already, and the shortlist of nominations is now available to see on the British Fantasy Society website. I think it’s an amazing shortlist, and in fact all of the awards look like they have brilliant shortlists. Keep your eyes peeled for an announcement of the winners in due course, but until then I guess I’ve got some reading to do!
I said July was dominated by the BFAs, but I did also find time for something else a little unusual, in that I was invited by indie author Phil Parker to take part in his ‘Meet the Blogger’ interview series over on his website. My interview is up on his site now, so have a read if you’re interested in why I started blogging, what’s important to me in a review, what keeps me writing reviews, what kind of character I would be in a fantasy novel, and loads more. It was fascinating to be on the other side of the interview this time, writing answers rather than questions, and I had a lot of fun working out what I wanted to say. Thanks Phil!
Reading Update
July was another 10-book month, same as June, taking me up to 82 books read for the year to date. It’s been an interesting month for reading, very much focused on SFF with far fewer excursions into other genres than usual. In fact of the 10 books, only one – LJ Ross’ Impostor – wasn’t at least tangentially speculative. That wasn’t a conscious choice, just how things worked out. Same as last month, here are a few quick observations about July’s reading:
- The 10 books break down into four audiobooks, three physical books and three ebooks
- I chose five books for reviewing (albeit mostly in ‘Short and Sweet’ roundups) with the other five being purely for fun
- Three of the five ‘just for fun’ books were rereads, all of which in audio: Rivers of London by Ben Aaronovitch, Martha Wells’ Rogue Protocol (I love Murderbot!) and Against All Gods by Miles Cameron (in preparation for book 2 – Storming Heaven)
- For three months running (May – July) I’ve read one Black Library book – keeping my eye in, but I think I’ve finally kicked the habit of reading far too much Warhammer
Cool Book Stuff and SFF Book News
I usually break this section up into two, to talk about fun book-related activities that I got up to and then interesting SFF-related news I spotted during the month. Sadly I didn’t get to any book events in July, and as I wasn’t around on Twitter very much I didn’t pick up on too much in the way of news, so I thought I’d combine both sections here and quickly talk about a few snippets that are worth mentioning.
Starting off with book news, I spotted a few intriguing cover reveals in July, and I’m going to be looking out for these as and when they’re published.
The Truth of the Aleke by Moses Ose Utomi – yet another beautiful novella cover from Tordotcom, this time for the sequel to a book I absolutely loved earlier this year. The Lies of the Ajungo was a fabulous blend of parable and fantasy, which I actually enjoyed so much I reviewed it twice – once for Track of Words and once for Grimdark Magazine. And just look at the cover art for the sequel (albeit a sequel set 500 years later)! Can’t wait for March 2024.
What Board Games Mean to Me edited by Donna Gregory – Aconyte Books recently published Everybody Wins by James Wallis, a fantastic book charting the history of the board game industry’s most famous award, and reading that really got me interested in playing more board games. As such, this new book collecting personal stories of people’s experiences with board games sounds right up my street! Especially as I recognise a lot of the names on the contributor list, from Gav Thorpe to Edoardo Albert. It’s due out in November 2023.
Empire Falling by Robbie MacNiven – the start of a new series set in the world of Twilight Imperium, billed as Twilight Wars, this promises to be a great read for space opera fans. I’m a bit behind on my reading in this setting, but what I’ve read so far has been excellent, and MacNiven is very much a safe pair of hands for this sort of story. This one is due out initially (as an ebook/US paperback) in December 2023, with the UK paperback following in February 2024.
Speaking of Aconyte, the Scribe Award nominations were recently announced with no fewer than seven Aconyte releases on the shortlists. And not only that, but three winners! Tristan Palmgren’s Squirrel Girl: Universe took the top spot in the Best Young Adult/Middle Grade category, while James Swallow’s fantastic Splinter Cell novel Firewall won both Best Original Novel – General and Best Audio categories (the latter in its BBC audio incarnation, adapted by Paul Cornell). Massive congratulations to all the winners and nominees! If you’re not familiar with the Scribe Awards by the way, they celebrate “excellence in licensed tie-in works based on TV shows, movies, and games”. You can read more about them here.
Other Recommendations
To finish off, here are a couple of quick recommendations of non-SFF books that have caught my interest recently.
Fiction: Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt – what’s not to love about a book featuring (and sometimes from the perspective of) a giant Pacific octopus named Marcellus? I stumbled upon this book by accident, but fell in love with the character of Marcellus, and absolutely adored the wider story of characters coming to terms with grief, and drawing strength from friends and family. Lovely stuff.
Non-fiction: The Soul of an Octopus by Sy Montgomery – I came across this in the acknowledgements section of Remarkably Bright Creatures, and immediately went out and picked it up. If you’re at all interested in cephalopods, their place in the natural world, and the wonderful levels of intelligence shown by octopuses, then I strongly recommend this book. I haven’t finished it yet, but it’s as gripping and entertaining as any non-fiction book I’ve read for a long time.
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If you’re still reading this, thanks for sticking with me! I think that’s a good point at which to end this – hopefully there’s been something interesting in there for you. If you’ve got any comments or questions, please let me know in the comments below or over on Twitter.
In the meantime, I hope you have a great August – happy reading!
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