Category Archives: Reviews

The Unmaking Of June Farrow – Adrienne Young (Fabienne Schwizer Guest Review)

Hello and welcome to this Track of Words guest review, where today my good friend and fellow reviewer Fabienne Schwizer is here to talk about The Unmaking of June Farrow by Adrienne Young – out now from Quercus. An “atmospheric mystery” exploring themes of family, guilt, time travel and murder, this sounds great! Over to Fab to tell us more…

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Gundog by Gary Whitta – Jude Reid Guest Review

Hello and welcome to this Track of Words Guest Review, in which the excellent Jude Reid (author of, among other things, the recent Black Library novel Creed: Ashes of Cadia) takes a look at Gundog by Gary Whitta – out now from Inkshares and also available in podcast form. I hadn’t come across this before, but I’m intrigued by the idea of a novel released as both a serialised podcast and a regular book – and it sounds fantastic! I’m delighted to feature Jude on the site, and hope you enjoy this guest review as much as I did.

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Tiffany Aching’s Guide to Being A Witch – Rhianna Pratchett and Gabrielle Kent

Eight years after the publication of Terry Pratchett’s final Discworld novel, Rhianna Pratchett (daughter of Sir Terry) and Gabrielle Kent bring us Tiffany Aching’s Guide to Being A Witch, a brilliantly written and beautifully presented companion piece to not just the five Tiffany Aching novels but the Discworld series as a whole. Presented as an in-universe book written by Tiffany herself, it offers a wealth of advice and insight for anyone interested in the life of a witch, all based on Tiffany’s experience…along with some (mostly) useful comments from other notable witches (and Rob Anybody). Accompanying the text is a plethora of gorgeous illustrations from Paul Kidby, and the end result is a fabulous book that covers everything from what magic really is to the importance of not actually using it, and from witchy attire and abodes to some of the many and varied perils of being a witch.

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Short and Sweet – November 2023

Hello and welcome to my Short and Sweet review roundup for November 2023, where as usual I’ve picked out a trio of books that I’ve recently read to talk a little about, in lieu of my usual longer reviews. For this month’s roundup I’ve gone for books with quite a range of page counts, from a novella all the way up to a 750+ page doorstopper! Across these three books you’ve got magic, demons, demigods, transhuman soldiers, immortal hunters, wizarding bureaucracy, mystical prophecies and loads more. There’s plenty to enjoy in all of them, although if I’m honest none of them entirely worked for me, personally.

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The Wishing Game – Meg Shaffer

The debut novel from Meg Shaffer, The Wishing Game blends adult and children’s fiction in a warm, delightful tale of hope, heartache, family and the importance of remembering what it was like to be a child. When reclusive children’s author Jack Masterson resumes writing after years away, the eccentric writer announces an unusual competition, inviting four adults to return to his home on Clock Island, where they once visited as children. The prize? The one and only copy of his latest, long-awaited book, to do with as they please. For Lucy Hart, winning the competition would mean more than just the opportunity to read the new Clock Island book – it would give her the one thing she truly wants: a chance to adopt seven year-old orphan Christopher.

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Creed: Ashes of Cadia – Jude Reid

Jude Reid’s debut novel for Black Library, Creed: Ashes of Cadia introduces readers to the character of Lord Castellan Ursula Creed, in a story about the burden of legacy and questions of Cadian identity. Pulled away from her current campaign by the returned Primarch Guilliman himself, Ursula is entrusted with a daring mission to return to what’s left of her homeworld and retrieve a weapon purportedly left behind by her father, Ursarkar E. Creed, before the Fall of Cadia. She knows it’s a propaganda exercise as much as anything, but she has her reasons for accepting it. Far from a glorious return home though, this proves to be a clumsy, chaotic mission driven – to Ursula’s mind – by all the wrong reasons, and plagued by disaster right from the off.

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Short and Sweet – October 2023

Hello and welcome to my Short and Sweet review roundup for October 2023, here on Track of Words. As usual I’ve got another trio of brief reviews for you, this time looking at three horror-tinged titles – I didn’t do this consciously, but seeing as it’s October it’s actually quite appropriate to go down the spooky route! These include an Age of Sigmar novel from Black Library, a straight-up horror novella from Titan Books, and a darkly unsettling novella from Tordotcom, all of which I’d been meaning to read for ages. So read on to find out a bit more about these three books, and what I thought.

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SPOILER REVIEW: Kasrkin – Edoardo Albert

Edoardo Albert’s first Black Library novel tackled the sinister, almost inhuman Carcharadons, but with his second novel, Kasrkin, he returns to telling stories about regular human soldiers in wild, harsh environments (like short stories Last Flight or Green and Grey). It follows a single squad of Kasrkin – the elites of the Cadian elite – delving into a vast desert in search of a downed Valkyrie and the general it was transporting, attempting to retrieve their target before the forces of the T’au Empire find him. Led by the veteran Captain Obeysekera and accompanied by an inexperienced but politically-connected Commissar, the Kasrkin are challenged as much by the desert as by their enemies, although it’s not long before they realise that Dasht i-Kevar holds a terrible secret beneath its burning sands.

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QUICK REVIEW: The Regression Test – Wole Talabi

First published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction in 2017, Wole Talabi’s short story The Regression Test is a deceptively dark tale exploring human involvement with artificial intelligence. In an ugly corporate conference room, Titilope Ajimobi takes part in a regression test designed to ascertain whether an AI has deviated too far from the original human source of its thought patterns. As the person who knew the human subject best, it’s her role to pose a series of questions that will determine whether the AI is still recognisable – as her mother, who’s been dead the last 40 years.

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Short and Sweet – September 2023

Hello and welcome to this Short and Sweet review roundup for September 2023, in which I’m taking a quick look at another three books that I’ve read (or listened to) recently. This time I’ve gone for quite the mixture of genres and styles, including a female-driven historical fantasy novel, a Star Wars audiobook that delves deep into the Dark Side, and a science fiction novel which sets a locked-room murder mystery on an isolated space ship. So read on to find out more, and if you’ve read any of these books yourself then do let me know what you thought of them too!

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