Author Archives: Michael

QUICK REVIEW: Snow White, Green Mantle – Jude Reid

Available in issue 32 of Grimdark Magazine, Jude Reid’s short story Snow White, Green Mantle is a sharp, bloody tale of desperation and survival in a world turned upside down. In a gloomy, run-down village on the edge of the woods, hunter Fionn is hired to do what the headman can’t, to take his daughter into the forest and slit her throat. She doesn’t relish the job but in a life always lived on the move, the prospect of earning a warm bed for the night is enough to get her to agree to it. Once in the woods, however, she soon learns that there’s more to the headman’s daughter than she realised, and the creatures who live away from the feeble light of humanity – the Othermen, who have reclaimed the world for themselves – want the girl for their own reasons.

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Firewall – James Swallow

Not content to delight readers with just his own original thrillers like Airside and the fantastic Marc Dane series, James Swallow continues to demonstrate his prowess with this genre in the tense, action-packed, utterly un-put-downable Firewall, his first Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell novel from Aconyte Books. Taking place in 2015, it sees Sam Fisher – black-ops expert and veteran of the secretive ‘Fourth Echelon’ anti-terrorist group – tasked with hunting down a deadly assassin, a fearsome opponent from Sam’s past long thought to be dead. An added complication is that Sam’s partner for the mission is his daughter Sarah, newly accepted into Fourth Echelon, father and daughter each trying to come to terms with the other’s role. Before long though, they’re caught up in a broader mystery involving a terrifying digital weapon named Gordian Sword, created by billionaire tech entrepreneur Brody Teague, with a potential impact beyond any trouble a single assassin could make.

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Lazarus – Sarah Cawkwell

Set in the alternative 19th century American Old West of the Wild West Exodus tabletop game, Sarah Cawkwell’s Lazarus is an action-packed tale of gunslinging lawmen, soldiers, spirit magic and horrifying technological experimentation. In this Dystopian Age blending steam power and hyper-advanced technology, Major Willa Shaw of the Union of Federated States is dispatched to the arid lands of Arizona to investigate the destruction of a young mining town named Provenance. Along the way she’s unhappily reunited with a figure from her past in the shape of Deputy Doc Holliday, the two of them forced together by circumstance as they piece together a puzzle involving questions over Provenance’s fate, horrifying human/machine constructs, and a dangerous new narcotic called Lazarus. The trail of death and destruction they follow leads inevitably to the threat of newfound conflict, and the unhinged genius of Lady Annabelle Hamilton.

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QUICK REVIEW: The Bahrain Underground Bazaar – Nadia Afifi

First published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, and most recently included in the Lavie Tidhar-edited anthology The Best of World SF Volume 2, Nadia Afifi’s fascinating short story The Bahrain Underground Bazaar is a powerful tale of an elderly woman coming to terms with a terminal illness in the modern, digital world. Understandably scared, and worried about being a burden on her family, Zahra visits the ‘virtual immersion chambers’ of the Underground Bazaar where she practices for her own passing by virtually experiencing the deaths of others. When one particular visit raises more questions than it answers, Zahra finds herself compelled to try and understand the life of the woman whose end she experienced, hoping to find some clarity in what remains of her own life.

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SFF Community Spotlight: Nick Borrelli from Out of This World SFF

Hello and welcome to this SFF Community Spotlight interview on Track of Words, where today I’m joined by the excellent Nick Borrelli from Out of This World SFF for a chat about the life of an SFF blogger and reviewer. If this is the first of these interviews you’ve come across, the idea is that they give me an opportunity to talk to and promote the work of some of the passionate, dedicated people who contribute towards the online SFF book community and help make it the thriving space that it is right now. Nick is a great reviewer and one of the most supportive, enthusiastic members of the community I know, and I’m keen to celebrate the brilliant work he does!

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Short and Sweet: November 2022

Hello and welcome to this instalment of Short and Sweet, my series of mini review roundups where I look back at SFF books I’ve recently read but haven’t had the time and/or headspace to review individually. Last time (back in October 2022) I kicked this series off with a hefty six books to talk about, but this time I’m going with a slightly more manageable four (well, more like three and a half really). These include a reread of a fantastic Murderbot book, a Warhammer Crime novel I’d been meaning to read for ages, the latest Horus Heresy Primarchs novel, and the next book in a series I’m gradually making my way through.

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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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Monthly Roundup – October 2022

Hello and welcome to October’s Monthly Roundup post here on Track of Words. Each month I write this opening paragraph for my roundup post and boggle at how quickly time is passing – we’ve only two months left in 2022! It’s going to be Christmas before we know it. Looking backwards instead of forwards for the time being however, October has passed in a bit of a blur, starting off a bit slowly but ramping up as the weeks have gone on. I’d say it’s been a middling month for me in terms of productivity, but I’ve got plenty to talk about here. As always I’ll kick things off with a recap of what I’ve been posting these last few weeks, then talk a bit more generally towards the end.

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SFF Community Spotlight: Shazzie From Reader@Work & Fantasy Book Critic

Hello and welcome to the first SFF Community Spotlight interview here on Track of Words, where today I’m chatting to the brilliant Shazzie from Reader@Work and the Fantasy Book Critic team. The idea behind these interviews is to talk to some of the fantastic people who help make the online SFF book community such a fun, thriving space, to find out more about them and to celebrate all the great work they do. I’m planning on talking to bloggers, reviewers, podcasters, and hopefully publishing professionals too. For this first instalment I wanted to kick things off by talking to a really positive, passionate reviewer, and I couldn’t think of anyone better than Shazzie, who writes great reviews, is a fantastic advocate for authors, and is just an all-round enthusiastic presence online.

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Witches Unleashed – Carrie Harris

Ghost Rider teams up with a coven of witches to take on Lucifer himself in Carrie Harris’ Marvel prose novel Witches Unleashed, part of Aconyte Books’ Marvel: Untold range. When he escaped from Hell, Johnny Blaze – the Ghost Rider – unintentionally freed Lucifer’s soul too, broken into 666 fragments, and ever since he’s been hunting them down and returning them to Hell. With only a few fragments remaining, Johnny seeks out the LeFay sisters – not actually sisters, but rather sorceress Jennifer Kale, mystic Topaz and half-demon Satana Hellstrom – for help, as one of the final fragments has possessed the body of another Kale. With the powers of a witch at his disposal, Johnny and the witches have no choice but to work together to stop Lucifer before he can complete whatever evil plan he’s concocting.

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