Welcome to this Track of Words Author Interview, where today I’m talking to the fantastic Gabriela Houston about her debut novel The Second Bell, which is out now from Angry Robot Books! If you’re on the lookout for a fantasy fairytale inspired by dark Slavic mythology, this could well be the book for you, so read on to find out more about this story and its characters, its themes and inspirations. To begin with, here’s the publisher’s synopsis:
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Robbie MacNiven’s First Team is the second instalment of Aconyte Books’ Marvel: Xavier’s Institute series of X-Men prose novels, and it perfectly blends the powerful darkness of a world in which young mutants are surrounded by hate and oppression, with a warm sense of friendship and family. Compared with many of his peers at the Xavier Institute, Anole – otherwise known as Victor Borkowski – knows that he’s had a remarkably comfortable life for a mutant. When his parents are threatened by the anti-mutant extremist group known as the Purifiers, however, he gets first-hand experience of the hatred that many mutants suffer under, and finds himself relying upon his found family at the Institute – particularly close friends Cipher and Greymalkin – for support in his mission to track down and stop the Purifiers.
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Gary Kloster joins the illustrious ranks of Black Library authors who have written about Gotrek Gurnisson in Age of Sigmar with The Perfect Assassin, a tale that focuses not on the surly Slayer but on his companion, the aelf Maleneth. The unlikely pair find themselves in the city of Losten in grim Ulgu, but while Gotrek happily drinks a tavern dry of beer, Maleneth relieves her boredom in bloodier fashion. When she’s tasked by one of the city’s nobles with finding and killing a mysterious assassin stalking the streets, at first she’s barely interested, until a sighting of the assassin’s unusual powers piques her curiosity.
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Book one in S.A. Tholin’s Primaterre series, Iron Truth is a bold, expansive science fiction adventure packed full of strong characters, breathless action and looming cosmic horror, all within a beautifully crafted and believable setting. Botanist Joy Somerset leaves Mars on a colony ship bound for a new life on a quiet, unpolluted planet, only to wake from cryo-sleep to find herself in a bleak future, trapped on dust-shrouded Cato. Meanwhile Commander Cassimer of the Primaterre banneretcy leads his squad to Cato in search of a missing ship, their mission quickly complicated by the planet’s inimical weather. In Joy’s eyes, the Primaterre soldiers offer hope of a way off-planet, but she has a lot to learn about the new world she finds herself in. To distant, closed-off Cassimer, Joy is just a means to an end, until over time she becomes more than that – a source of strength, and something to hold onto when his world is turned upside down.
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The annual Black Library Celebration has been running since 2018, an event which in the words of Warhammer Community offers a chance to “celebrate your passion for the fiction of the Warhammer universes”. It’s a great idea in principle, using Games Workshop stores (when they’re not all shut due to Covid) and the Warhammer Community site to bring the Black Library community together – readers, authors, and everyone involved in the community. Every year, however, I find myself disappointed that instead of actually celebrating the breadth of storytelling on offer across BL fiction or the incredible work that goes into writing these stories, this event is basically just an opportunity to release a bunch of new 40k books all on the same day, along with a new Games Workshop miniature of a BL character.
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Welcome to my Monthly Roundup for February. 2021 continues to be a bizarre year, but February seemed to fly past at speed and I can’t quite believe it’s March already! Over the last two months my Track of Words output has settled down to roughly four posts per week (give or take) which I think is about right, and February certainly felt busy in terms of writing but not crazily so. On the reading front, I got through a dozen books over the course of the month – I’ll talk a little bit later about some of the highlights from those books, but spending time reading and listening to audiobooks has really helped me stay sane of late! I hope you all had as good a February as possible under the circumstances…
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If you’re familiar with Warhammer Age of Sigmar then you’ll probably know that in the game at least, the various armies are grouped loosely into four Grand Alliances – Chaos, Death, Destruction and Order – each containing a range of different factions and races, not all of which always see eye to eye. Recently I got to wondering about how this concept is represented in Black Library fiction, and whether I could think of one standout book for each Grand Alliance – one thing led to another, and the end result is this article. I’ve picked out four Age of Sigmar books that I’ve really enjoyed, and I’ll talk a bit about why each one is – in my opinion – the best place to start (so far) with its Grand Alliance.
The (unexpected) fourth book in Dan Abnett’s classic Eisenhorn trilogy, The Magos is an unusual book for a few reasons. Firstly, while it’s a (relatively short) novel in its own right it’s presented in a hefty volume with the full title of The Magos & the Definitive Casebook of Gregor Eisenhorn, alongside a dozen of Dan Abnett’s short stories which sit alongside his Eisenhorn, Ravenor and Bequin trilogies. More on these later. Secondly, it’s definitely part of the Eisenhorn series yet it’s a very different kind of story to Xenos, Malleus and Hereticus, told as it is in third person from the viewpoint of magos biologis Valentin Drusher, rather than in Eisenhorn’s own first person perspective. Thirdly, while it was published after Pariah, it works as an effective prequel to that novel, providing a natural evolution of Eisenhorn’s character between the end of Hereticus and the start of the Bequin trilogy.
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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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Hello and welcome to the latest guest post here on Track of Words, where today I’ve got the fantastic Robbie MacNiven on board to talk about the characters and one of the main themes in his new X-Men novel First Team. The second instalment in the Marvel: Xavier’s Institute series from Aconyte Books, First Team is due to be published in global ebook and US paperback on the 2nd March, with the UK paperback following on the 15th April. To start things off, check out the cool cover art for First Team – by the talented Anastasia Bulgakova – and then take a look at the book’s synopsis.
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