Category Archives: Article

Yearly Roundup – 2019 Highlights

For the second of my Yearly Roundup articles for the year just gone – after the first one, which looked at 2019 in numbers – I’m taking a look at some of my highlights from the last twelve months. It’s been another busy year, that’s for sure, but a year which has brought with it a couple more interesting milestones, some really great interactions with readers and writers in the science fiction and fantasy community, and an awful lot of tremendously entertaining reading. With that in mind, I’ll talk about some of my personal highlights from running Track of Words before looking at the year in Black Library, and then some of the best stories I read over the course of the year.

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Yearly Roundup – 2019 in Numbers

A whole new year is ahead of us – a whole new decade, in fact – and so it’s time for me to write my usual roundup of the year just gone. Roundups, in fact, as this year I’m going to break things down into a few shorter posts rather than the usual HUGE roundup I tend to end up with. In this article I’ll take my usual look back at the year just gone via some numbers pulled from my Track of Words stats, and talk a little bit about which reviews, interviews and blog posts were the most popular in 2019. Keep an eye out for future articles looking at some of my personal highlights from the last twelve months, and then thinking ahead to what I’m hoping for in 2020.

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Monthly Highlights – December 2019

Not only have we reached the end of December, but we’ve come to the very end of 2019! I’ve talked recently about my personal favourite Black Library novels of the year, in my January to June and July to December articles as well as a post on the Warhammer Community site, but in this article I’m taking my usual look back at what I’ve been reading over the last few weeks. December is always an interesting month for me as it brings with it the Black Library Advent Calendar – 24 new short stories/audios – and I try to cram in as much reading as I possibly can before the end of the year.

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What Do You Want To See on Track of Words?

As 2019 comes to a close I’m increasingly looking ahead to what I can do with Track of Words over the next year and onwards. I’ve been running this site for six years now, growing it from nothing (I hadn’t written a book review for about 15 years!) to the point it’s at now, with – I think – a pretty wide range of reviews and articles across over 1300 posts. I don’t want to rest on my laurels, however, so in this article I’m asking for your thoughts on what you would like to see on Track of Words in the future.

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Black Library Advent Calendar 2019 – Recap

Another year’s Black Library Advent Calendar series is over, after nearly a month’s worth of brand new short stories, audio dramas and digital-only novels. As is now tradition, I’ve been writing daily reviews for each story as they’re released (excluding the novels – I don’t read that quickly), and you can find all of the links for those reviews right here. In this article, however, I’m taking a look back at the series as a whole to reflect on what’s been released, and talk about how individual stories connect to existing series…and maybe suggest what might be coming in the future.

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The Best Black Library Novels of 2019: July to December

I do like a good ‘best-of’ list, even though they’re tricky to put together! I was recently asked by the Warhammer Community team to write a ‘best Black Library novels of 2019’ article, which was fun (you can find that here), while back in July here on Track of Words I published a series of articles looking back at the first six months of 2019 and highlighting my favourite BL novels, short stories, audio dramas and anthologies that published up to then. It’s almost the end of the year now, so it’s time to do the same thing for the second half of 2019 – July to December. In this article I’m going to focus solely on the novels which stood out to me as the best reads.

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Black Library Advent Calendar 2019

As usual, now that we’re into December (somehow – where has 2019 gone?) Black Library are starting to release loads of new short fiction as part of their latest Advent Calendar series. Between the 1st and 24th of December, we’re going to see one new short story or audio drama every day, and as is my tradition I’ll be writing a review of each one to go along with it. This year the series is split evenly between short stories and audio dramas, along with two brand new novels getting digital-only premieres on Christmas Day and Boxing Day.

In this article I’m going to provide a roundup of what information has been made public so far regarding these stories, consolidating the details provided by Warhammer Community along with what’s available elsewhere online (i.e. Amazon) and giving you everything you need in one place. Each day I’ll update the information below with the name and description for the latest story, as well as a link to my review. For now, here’s a quick run through of how the stories are split out, based on the information Black Library have provided so far:

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Monthly Highlights – November 2019

Somehow it’s the end of November already, which means it’s time for me to take a look back at what I’ve been reading for the last few weeks in another Monthly Highlights roundup. It’s been a phenomenal month packed full of brilliant books, so narrowing things down has been tricky – I could happily have included several more novels, not to mention short stories and audio dramas. In the end I settled on two novels and a few novellas, while I’ll also talk very briefly about the Black Library Weekender which took place earlier in the month.

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Where to Find a Little Humour in Black Library Fiction

Reading Nate Crowley’s fantastic 40k novella Severed I was reminded that Warhammer fiction isn’t generally known for its humour. The clue is in the title, really (WARhammer), and certainly Warhammer 40,000 is renowned for being properly dark. The commonly-used term grimdark comes from a core tenet of 40k, after all – “in the grim darkness of the far future there is only war”. In amongst the grim, the dark and the downright nasty, however, I think there’s room for a bit of humour now and then, and certain authors – Nate included – seem to have the knack for adding a little (or a lot, in some cases) of levity into some ot their Warhammer stories.

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The Black Library Weekender 2019 – Roundup

The 2019 Black Library Weekender – the sixth such event, held at the Belfry Hotel in Nottingham – has come and gone, and I’m gradually getting back to normality, a little lighter in the wallet but filled with energy and excitement off the back of a great couple of days. In this article I’m going to try and give an overview of how the event felt (to me) and why I enjoyed it so much, including a few highlights of the seminars I made it to and some comments on the upcoming titles announced at the end of the event. There’s lots to cover, so if you’re only interested in certain areas feel free to click the links below and head straight to a particular section.

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