Category Archives: Article

Sci-fi in a Fantasy World – Kate Dylan Guest Post

Hello and welcome to this Track of Words guest post, where I’m delighted to welcome author Kate Dylan with a fascinating article exploring some of the differences between science fiction and fantasy, the ways in which some stories work better as SF than F, and what those differences might mean for both writers and readers. If you’ve ever pondered questions like what the difference is between science and magic, or between a tech company and a coven of witches, or how an eight year-old child would end up with a computer implanted in her brain, then this article is going to be of interest!

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Monthly Roundup – May 2022

Hello and welcome to my Monthly Roundup post for May 2022, which is a bit more positive than last month’s after a slightly more productive few weeks. It wasn’t so long ago that publishing eight new posts in a month would have felt like a very lean month, but after slowing down to only five in April I’m actually quite pleased with May’s output – not to mention the five existing Black Library articles that I updated as well (more on those later). As usual I’ll do a quick recap of May’s new posts – as well as the updated articles – and then move onto a general update for the month, where I’ll talk a bit about what I’ve been reading and just give an overview of how things have been going in general.

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Opinions: Plagiarising Book Reviews is Weird

So there I am, idly browsing Twitter, when I see an author happily tweeting some positive reviews of his latest book, delighted to know that readers have been digging it. “Cool,” I think, “I enjoyed that one. let’s see what other people are saying about it.” I flick through screenshots of Audible reviews, then stop, puzzled. “Am I going mad?” I wonder. I keep scrolling. “Hey, thanks for sharing my review,” one Tweeter gushes in the replies. Scratching my head, I open Goodreads and check the review I wrote a few days earlier. I flip back to Twitter, and yep. That’s my review, copied word for word into Audible by someone else, who’s brazenly taking credit for it.

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Monthly Roundup – April 2022

Hello and welcome to my Monthly Roundup post for April 2022, which this month is going to be more of a reading roundup than usual…given that I only published five posts, the lowest number I’ve managed since way back in March 2016. Since there isn’t much to talk about in terms of what I’ve been writing, this will probably be quite a quick post, as even in my usual ‘General Update’ section I don’t really have too much to include. Perhaps I’ll find more to write about what I’ve been reading recently – we’ll see! In the meantime though, I’ll start off as usual with a quick (in this case very quick) recap of the posts I did manage to write and publish last month.

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Track of Words Reviews: What to Expect

Over the years here on Track of Words I’ve written over 1,100 reviews and counting, and for a long time I’ve been meaning to put together a quick article to talk about what you can expect if you check out one or more of my reviews. At the time of writing this I’ve also just posted my first deliberately shorter book review (which I’ve called ‘In Brief’, as the start of a new type of review), which reminded me that I really ought to clarify what you can expect from the different types of reviews too. So what I’ll do here is give a quick overview of my general style of writing and the things you can expect to see or not see in my reviews, then break down the different review types as well. Hopefully this will be useful!

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Monthly Roundup – March 2022

Hello and welcome to my Monthly Roundup post for March 2022, here on Track of Words. As always, this article gives me an opportunity to look back at what I posted in the preceding month, with links to each post if you’d like to check any of them out, and also to talk a little bit about how the month went as a whole. It’s been a strange few weeks for me, during which I’ve read a lot more than I expected to – despite spending almost no time listening to audiobooks – and written way more reviews than normal, but also struggled badly to find time or enthusiasm for putting together interviews, writing articles, or planning ahead. It’s certainly not been the sort of month I expected it to be.

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Opinions: Black Library Limited Editions – Options, Not FOMO

In this fascinating blog post about his monstrously successful Kickstarter, SFF author Brandon Sanderson makes a great point about the importance of giving readers a choice of formats and price points. It’s something I’ve been thinking about for a while regarding Black Library’s ‘Limited Edition’ books, but I hadn’t been able to put my finger on exactly what I wanted to say until I read this blog post. You see, I fundamentally think that premium editions of books are a good thing, as they provide choice – which is always worth having. The problem I have is with BL’s bizarrely inconsistent approach to how and when to release premium editions. So let’s talk about how the point of limited editions should be to provide options to suit customers’ wants and needs, not to encourage FOMO or penalise readers who can’t afford high prices.

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Monthly Roundup – February 2022

Hello and welcome to another Monthly Roundup post here on Track of Words, where today I’m going to take a look back through everything I posted in February, and talk a bit about how the month went as a whole. I slowed down a little bit further in February, with just nine new posts and one new site page, but as I’ll talk about later on I think I’ve maybe found a new rhythm for working on the site so perhaps this is going to be the new norm. We’ll see! As usual though, I’m quite happy with what I did get written, and I’ve had a pretty good week when it comes to reading.

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Opinions: On the Black Library Celebration 2022

Another year, another mildly disappointing Black Library Celebration, an annual event which should provide an opportunity to get existing BL readers hyped and encourage new fans to try out some great storytelling, and which should celebrate Black Library fiction as something valuable and enjoyable in its own right. Instead, it inevitably ends up as a safe exercise in box-ticking that does the bare minimum but really only serves to remind readers like me – who aren’t especially interested in the miniatures or the games – that we’re not an audience segment which Games Workshop really cares about. Ok, that’s a bit melodramatic – but if you look at what was available to buy this year and what the coverage of the Celebration entailed…it’s also kinda true.

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Warhammer Horror – The Range So Far

Since its launch in 2019, Black Library’s Warhammer Horror imprint has grown in fits and starts into quite a considerable range spanning novels (and one novella), audio dramas and short stories across both the Warhammer 40,000 and Warhammer Age of Sigmar settings. Having already published something similar for Warhammer Crime, I thought it was about time I put together an article gathering all of the Warhammer Horror range in one place with the publisher’s synopsis for each title along with links to my reviews and author interviews where available. As the range continues to grow, I’ll try to keep this updated so that it remains an accurate and useful hub for anyone interested in Black Library’s horror-focused offering.

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