Category Archives: Article

May 2020 – Taking a Quick Break

In the month just gone I read twelve books and published sixteen posts here on Track of Words, on top of the usual day job and general real-world life. That feels great, but thinking back to how things felt at the time I’m amazed I managed to be so productive. I know I’m not the only one finding things tough at the moment – it’s a very strange time in so many respects – but while I consider myself pretty fortunate in a lot of ways, I’ve been feeling increasingly tired and worn out. With that in mind, I’m going to take a quick break from thinking about Track of Words – but first I thought I’d give a little update about why, and what I’m going to be doing.

TL;DR – I’m tired and I need a bit of time to myself, so I’m going to take a week (probably) to just read and relax and not think about writing reviews or blog posts (but I’ll probably still be on Twitter).

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Monthly Highlights – April 2020

It’s time again for another Monthly Highlights post, my regular look back at what I’ve been reading (and listening to) over the last few weeks. I’m sticking with the format I started last month, which involves a fairly quick look at each and every book I read in April – a couple of those were audiobooks, but most of them were in prose format. Once again I’ve excluded short stories, but with no fewer than twelve books to talk about there’s plenty to cover without extending to other formats (and it’s long enough as it is)! I’ve listed these in the order in which I read them, with links to reviews and author interviews where appropriate.

Without further ado, let’s get straight to the first book…

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Monthly Highlights – March 2020

Welcome to March’s Monthly Highlights post here on Track of Words, in which I’m looking back at what I’ve been reading over the last few weeks. I’ve been playing around with the format of these posts recently, and I’m going to change things up again this time around. I’ve done a lot of reading this month but my brain hasn’t been in the best of states (as I’m sure many of you can understand, with the weird state of the world right now)…and to be honest, still isn’t. With that in mind, rather than talking about a few books in more detail, this time around I’ll give a quick overview of all the books I’ve read recently. It won’t be in-depth, but hopefully I can give you a flavour of each one.

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Monthly Highlights – February 2020

Welcome to February’s Monthly Highlights post here on Track of Words, where I look back at last month’s reading activities and book-related news. I’m a bit (by which I mean very) behind this time around, as I’m writing this in the middle of March, but the end of February was a busy time so I hope you’ll forgive me the tardiness just this once! Considering the lateness, I’m going to keep things fairly short and sweet (for me) and just pick out three great reads from last month – a novel, an anthology and a short story. Interestingly, all three of the authors of the stories I’ve gone for are known by their initials…I didn’t plan for this, I promise!

Anyway, let’s get straight onto the great reads…

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Where to start with Black Library: Blackstone Fortress

With literally hundreds of Black Library books, short stories and audio dramas available, and new stories being released every week, it can be hard to know where to start, whether you’re brand new to Warhammer or you want to find out more about certain series, factions or characters. That’s where my series of Where to Start With Black Library articles comes in, as I try to demystify the process of getting into Warhammer fiction, suggesting some great stories that you could start with and talking about why they would make good entry points. In this article I’m looking at Blackstone Fortress, a sub-setting within Warhammer 40,000 which is relatively new but has already featured in some great stories.

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Monthly Highlights – January 2020

Welcome to my first Monthly Highlights article of 2020, looking back at my reading highlights and book-related news for the first month of a brand new decade! It’s been a great month, I’ve had a blast reading eight books (and counting), and I’m trying something a little bit different this time around, with a mixture of my usual highlights posts and the weekly roundups I used to write. As well as picking out the usual highlight, I’m also going to talk more widely about what I’ve been reading and what’s been going on in general. Maybe I should call this a Monthly Roundup instead…perhaps next time, but for now let’s crack on with a little bit about the book I’ve enjoyed the most this month.

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Support Track of Words (If You Can)

I’ve been planning on writing this post for a while, but a reminder about my upcoming hosting/domain fees has brought it to the forefront of my mind. I’ve been running Track of Words for over six years now, and I’ve finally reached the point where I feel like I need to start asking readers of the site if they – you – are able to help support Track of Words. To that end, I’ve added a new page to the site, called (appropriately enough) Support Track of Words. I wanted to take a moment in this article to explain what I’m asking and why.

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Where to Start With Black Library: Sisters of Battle

Welcome to the first in a new series of Where to Start With Black Library articles on Track of Words, in which I’m going to try and demystify the process of getting into reading Warhammer fiction. With literally hundreds of Black Library books, short stories and audio dramas available, and new stories being released every week, it can be hard to know where to start, whether you’re brand new to Warhammer or you want to find out more about certain series, factions or characters. Hopefully I can help with that!

In this article I’m going to look at the Sisters of Battle, one of my favourite Warhammer 40,000 factions, and offer up some suggestions of great stories you might want to check out. The best place to start with these stories will depend on various factors, far too many for me to cover succinctly, so I’m going to suggest a few different lengths and mediums to give you options to choose from. Where possible I’ll stick to stories I’ve read and enjoyed myself, and link out to reviews where they’re available.

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Black Library Pre-Order Tracker

It can be hard to keep track of upcoming Black Library releases – there’s the occasional Warhammer Community article looking at previews/reveals; and the wider book trade, with websites like Amazon often updated with some information well in advance of books being published (although these are extremely unreliable). The Coming Soon page on Warhammer Community is long gone. Wouldn’t it be great if there was ONE place you could check which consolidated all of that information, and clearly laid it out to help you plan ahead and decide what to buy and when? Well as it happens, I’ve put together a spreadsheet containing all of the information I can find. I’ve embedded it into this article, and I keep it as up to date as possible, so check back any time to see what’s coming up.

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Yearly Roundup – 2020 Goals

Welcome to the third and (probably) final part of my Yearly Roundup for 2019. After covering 2019 in Numbers and my 2019 Highlights, this time I’m flipping things around and looking ahead to the rest of 2020 to talk a bit about what I’m hoping to achieve this year with Track of Words. I’m not planning on drastically changing anything – it’s still going to be the usual mix of spoiler-free and relatively short reviews, author interviews and occasional blog posts/other articles. I don’t just want to deliver more of (exactly) the same, however, so the idea is to pick up where I left off in 2019 and continue to branch out a little, covering a wider range of authors and stories in terms of both reviews and interviews.

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