Author Archives: Michael

Silver Nitrate – Silvia Moreno-Garcia

Mexican horror movies, golden age cinema and Nazi occultism combine to great effect in Silver Nitrate, another fantastic novel from prolific, genre-hopping author Silvia Moreno-Garcia. In 90s Mexico City, horror movie-aficionado Montserrat is a sound engineer fighting to keep her place in the male-dominated industry, and Tristán is a washed-up soap actor struggling to find work in the wake of a tragic accident. When the two friends meet once-famous horror movie director Abel Urueta, it doesn’t take much for them to agree to help him complete an unfinished film of his, the ‘lost’ movie that essentially ended – and maybe cursed – his career. As they learn more about the origins of the film and its occult subject matter, and the other parties originally involved in it, they find themselves caught up in a dangerous new world where film and ritual combine.

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Ascension – Nicholas Binge

With Ascension – published by Harper Voyager – Nicholas Binge has gone big and delivered an epic, cinematic experience, a speculative thriller blending big ideas and intense personal stakes. Told in epistolary format by way of somewhat disjointed letters written by the protagonist – Harold Tunmore – to his niece Harriet, it’s the tale of a man both losing his mind and finding himself. A renowned physicist, among other things, Harold is recruited by a shadowy organisation to assist with a secretive scientific project: a vast, impossible mountain has appeared out of nowhere and a group of brilliant minds are tasked with understanding what it is, how it can possibly exist, and what its implications might be. As they scale its towering sides in search of answers, it exerts an inexorable pull on each of them, testing them in ways they couldn’t expect and placing them in danger they couldn’t imagine.

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Tim van Lipzig Talks The Horus Heresy Omnibus Project

“The Horus Heresy book series is truly epic, but its massive number of stories can be overwhelming to traverse.” This is the opening sentence on a fascinating new website called ‘The Horus Heresy Omnibus Project’, and rarely have truer words been written. I read most of the 60+ Heresy books as and when each one was published, but for readers new to the series I can only imagine how daunting it must feel to try and understand what to read and in which order. That’s where unofficial, fan-driven resources come in though, and in my opinion they don’t come any better than the Horus Heresy Omnibus Project, written by Tim van Lipzig, who’s kindly agreed to tell us more about this great new site.

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Have You Decided On Your Question – Lindsey Croal

Out now from Shortwave Publishing, Lindsey Croal’s novelette (somewhere between a short story and a novella) Have You Decided On Your Question plays out a Sliding Doors-esque ‘What If’ scenario to a darkly logical conclusion. In a not-so distant future Edinburgh, Zoe reluctantly agrees to visit AltRealTech – or ART – for a ‘personalised therapeutic experience’, a technological simulation that allows her to revisit a moment from her past and experience what might have been. Initially suspicious of her housemate’s assurance that it will help her out of the slump she’s currently in, that first session soon snowballs into an obsession with the life and love she could have had, leading Zoe down a dark and dangerous path.

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Monthly Roundup – March 2023

Hello and welcome to my Monthly Roundup for March 2023 here on Track of Words. It’s been a slow month for me personally, and this post you’re reading is only the sixth thing I’ve published in all of March – not since April 2022 have I posted so few times in a month. I’ll talk a little bit later on about why I think things have been so slow, but in short I simply haven’t had the energy, headspace or motivation for working on the site over the last few weeks. Or at least, to get things actually finished. I do have a few pieces in various states of completion so hopefully I’ll have more to talk about in April. I’m still struggling for motivation even as I write this though, so I think I’ll keep things pretty short for this instalment.

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Short and Sweet – March 2023

Hello and welcome to my Short and Sweet review roundup for March 2023, here on Track of Words. I’ve picked out another three books to talk about this month, and I suspect I’ll be hard pressed in coming months to find another set with such a wide range – there’s a 650-page Warhammer novel that’s only actually half a book, a 130-page dystopian novella (I guess) about a spry 100+ year-old man in a future Japan, and an anthology of Star Wars short stories from no fewer than 40 authors! As always, these are books that are well worth talking 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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Velvet Was the Night – Silvia Moreno-Garcia

Set in Mexico City in the 70s, Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s historical noir Velvet Was the Night – her seventh novel, released in 2021 – is tale of two very different people struggling for identity in a city wracked by political turmoil. In the wake of disrupted protests and violence on the streets, tensions in Mexico City are running high. When Maite, an unhappy secretary who spends her free time reading romantic comics and collecting records (and occasionally stealing little trinkets from her neighbours), agrees to feed her neighbour’s cat for a few days, little does she realise the peril she’ll soon be in, or what it will do to her. Dangerous men are looking for her neighbour, Leonora, and one of them – a Hawk named Elvis, who prefers music to violence – finds himself drawn to Maite even as he struggles to understand his role, and who he wants to be.

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Dragonfire – James Swallow

The follow-up to 2022’s Firewall, James Swallow’s Dragonfire is his second novel in Aconyte Book’s Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell range of high-tech thrillers, and another gripping, action-packed page turner. Set after the events of both Firewall and the game Ghost Recon: Wildlands (specifically the ‘Operation Watchman’ mission, according to the author’s note), it sees Sam Fisher sent into North Korea on a typically high-risk mission to prevent a dangerous weapon from falling into the wrong hands, only for the mission to go badly wrong leaving Sam captured by ruthless enemies and disavowed by his own people. Ignoring orders from a Fourth Echelon wracked by political manoeuvring, Sam’s daughter Sarah risks her own life to bring him back, and between them the two Fishers start to unveil a plot that threatens to destabilise the global status quo.

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Untamed Shore – Silvia Moreno-Garcia

Originally released in 2020 on a small press (Agora Books), Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s fifth novel now has a much-deserved wider publication (in the UK via Jo Fletcher Books), giving more readers the opportunity to enjoy this dark, slow-burn noir set in Baja California. Viridiana is a dreamer, determined to find her way out of her dull life in Desengaño and into something brighter, worried that if she doesn’t then she’ll find herself swallowed up by the tedium of her family and small-town life. When she begins working for a trio of wealthy American tourists, she’s quickly swept up in the glamour and romance of their lives, enchanted by the possibilities that life with them might offer. When one of the Americans dies though, Viridiana finds herself tangled up in a dangerous game that she’s not sure she’s prepared for, and forced to choose who she really wants to be.

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RAPID FIRE: Dan Abnett Talks The End and the Death Volume 1

Hello and welcome to this Rapid Fire author interview, where I’m delighted to be joined by the brilliant Dan Abnett to discuss The End and the Death Volume 1, the first instalment of the final Siege of Terra novel from Black Library. It’s been a long time coming – Horus Rising, the first Horus Heresy novel, was published in 2006, then the Siege of Terra opened with The Solar War in 2019. Book 8 of the Siege is actually going to be multiple volumes, beginning with this one, but the end is almost upon us, so I felt like I really ought to speak to Dan about this momentous novel. Whether you’ve read it already or you’re looking forward to making a start, I’m sure you’re as excited as I am about the end of the Siege.

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