Books That Burn

Greetings and welcome to Reviews That Burn: Series Reviews, part of Books That Burn. Series Reviews discuss at least three books in a series and cover the overarching themes and development of the story across several books. This review is for The Brothers Sinister by Courtney Milan. Full Text Here   TITLES DISCUSSED The Governess Affair (2012) The Duchess War (2012) A Kiss for Midwinter (2012) Th...

This month we’re discussing “Swordheart” by T King Fisher. We recorded this long enough ago that the sequel hadn't been announced yet, but, as of Fall 2025, DAGGERBOUND has a projected release date in August 2026. If we refer to SWORDHEART as a stand-alone book in the recording, that's why. PUBLISHER: Argyll Productions YEAR: 2018 LENGTH: 426 pages AGE: Adult GENRE: Fantasy, Romance RECOMMENDED: H...

Greetings and welcome to Reviews That Burn: Series Reviews, part of Books That Burn. Series Reviews discuss at least three books in a series and cover the overarching themes and development of the story across several books. Full Text Here Powerful noble families known as the beat-of-fours, answerable only to a ruler and the mysterious, godlike fae, scheme and squabble amongst themselves, and go t...

Greetings and welcome to Reviews That Burn: Series Reviews, part of Books That Burn. Series Reviews discuss at least three books in a series and cover the overarching themes and development of the story across several books. I'd like to thank longtime Patron Case Aiken, who receives a monthly shoutout. Full Text Here   This series is sexually explicit, and the review contains low-detail descriptio...

Greetings and welcome to a Reviews That Burn blog post by Robin, part of Books That Burn. I'd like to thank longtime Patron Case Aiken, who receives a monthly shoutout. Full Text Here  I have a few updates for everyone! They're all good things and have been a long time coming. ----- Reviews That Burn is a review blog which accompanies the Books That Burn podcast. Books That Burn is a member of the...

Greetings and welcome to a Reviews That Burn blog post by Robin, part of Books That Burn. I'd like to thank longtime Patron Case Aiken, who receives a monthly shoutout. I've joined the Creator Accountability Network (CAN) as a provisionally credentialed creator! The provisional period is three months long, and at the end of that time I'll be fully credentialed if nothing disqualifying comes to lig...

Greetings and welcome to Reviews That Burn: Series Reviews, part of Books That Burn. Series Reviews discuss at least three books in a series and cover the overarching themes and development of the story across several books. I'd like to thank longtime Patron Case Aiken, who receives a monthly shoutout. This episode discusses The Kingston Cycle by C. L. Polk.  Full Text Here    In an original world...

Greetings and welcome to Reviews That Burn: Series Reviews, part of Books That Burn. Series Reviews discuss at least three books in a series and cover the overarching themes and development of the story across several books. I'd like to thank longtime Patron Case Aiken, who receives a monthly shoutout, as well as returning patron Chris Alvarado. Full Text Here Teeth: The Complete Meal by Chele Coo...

Series Reviews discuss at least three books in a series and cover the overarching themes and development of the story across several books. Thank you to Patron Case Aiken who receives a monthly shoutout. Full Text Here Eugenides, the queen’s thief, can steal anything—or so he says. When his boasting lands him in prison and the king’s magus invites him on a quest to steal a legendary object, he’s i...

I love The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas. I have read the unabridged version more than once, and my most recent reread was in 2023. At that time, I wrote a couple of brief essays which I posted on Tumblr, one of which was about a canonically queer character and the other discussed a character who is often left out of the various adaptations. I present for you these essays with expansion...

Hello Patrons and general audience members! Welcome to another Books That Burn essay by Robin. Thank you to Case Aiken, who receives a monthly Patron shoutout. [Full Transcript Available Here] This is the fifth and final entry in a five-part essay series discussing two long-running book series by queer authors: October Daye by Seanan McGuire, and Inheritance by A.K. Faulkner. I chose these series...

Hello Patrons and general audience members! Welcome to a two-part reading of some Books That Burn essays by Robin. Thank you to Case Aiken, who receives a monthly Patron shoutout. These two essays are both about my thoughts on generative AI, but neither was long enough to be an episode on its own. As a reviewer of books, I'm very concerned with the news and societal reception of the resource-guzzl...

Hello Patrons and general audience members! Welcome to another Books That Burn essay by Robin. Thank you to Case Aiken, who receives a monthly Patron shoutout. [Full Text Available Here] This is the fourth in a five-part essay series discussing two long-running book series by queer authors: October Daye by Seanan McGuire, and Inheritance by A.K. Faulkner. I chose these series because I love them b...

Hello Patrons and general audience members! Welcome to another Books That Burn essay by Robin. Thank you to Case Aiken, who receives a monthly Patron shoutout. [Full Text Available Here] This is the third in a five-part essay series discussing two long-running book series by queer authors: October Daye by Seanan McGuire, and Inheritance by A.K. Faulkner. I chose these series because I love them bo...

Hello Patrons and general audience members! Welcome to another Books That Burn essay by Robin. Thank you to Case Aiken, who receives a monthly Patron shoutout. [Full Text Available Here] This is the second in a five-part essay series discussing two long-running book series by queer authors: October Daye by Seanan McGuire, and Inheritance by A.K. Faulkner. I chose these series because I love them b...

Hello Patrons and general audience members! Welcome to another Books That Burn essay by Robin. Thank you to Case Aiken, who receives a monthly Patron shoutout. [Full Transcript Available Here] This is the first in a five-part essay series discussing two long-running book series by queer authors: October Daye by Seanan McGuire, and Inheritance by A.K. Faulkner. I chose these series because I love t...

Hello and welcome to Books That Burn with another book essay from Robin! Thank you to Case Aiken, who receives a monthly Patron shoutout. This essay discusses (and moderately spoils) the following works by Alexis Hall:   ROSALINE PALMER TAKES THE CAKE (2021) 10 THINGS THAT NEVER HAPPENED (2023) GLITTERLAND (2013) WAITING FOR THE FLOOD (2024 edition) FOR REAL (2015) A LADY FOR A DUKE (2022) BOYFRIE...

Welcome to another book essay from Robin! Thank you to Case Aiken, who receives a monthly Patron shoutout. This was originally going to be an essay comparing The Hunger Games series to the Uglies quartet, but I ended up with so much to say about each series on their own that instead this discusses just The Hunger Games trilogy and the role of its prequel, "The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes".  Thi...

Welcome to another book essay from Robin! Thank you Case Aiken, who receives a monthly Patron shoutout. ----- This essay contains spoilers for SHADES AND SILVER by Dax Murray.  Many attempts at gender allegories in fantasy (or sci-fi) fall apart because they try to replicate binary gender in an attempt at gender essentialism in different trappings. SHADES AND SILVER deftly avoids this by starting...

Sometime in the first year of my review blog, I developed a checklist which I use when reviewing sequels. It helps me qualitatively describe how they are composed, and how they interact with the surrounding books in their respective series. More recently, I added a much shorter checklist for describing the first book in a series. Full Episode Text on Reviews That Burn Works Cited Ancrum, K. The We...

Greetings! Welcome to Books That Burn. I'm Robin, welcome to another book essay about something that was too big of a thought to fit into a normal review, specifically: Why Immortal Longings by Chloe Gong is not like The Hunger Games. Please feel free to send us suggestions for future essays. Before I get started, I'd like to thank our Patron who gets a monthly shoutout, Case Aiken. The support of...

Greetings! Welcome to Books That Burn. I'm Robin, and this is the first essay I've specifically written for the podcast, to be made available first to Patrons, then to the main feed and on Reviews That Burn. Please feel free to send us suggestions for future essays. Before I get started, I'd like to thank our Patron who gets a monthly shoutout, Case Aiken. The support of our Patrons makes this pod...

*This essay contains moderate spoilers for the first sixteen October Daye books, major spoilers for SLEEP NO MORE and THE INNOCENT SLEEP , and minor spoilers for Babylon 5 (S3 E4 "Passing Through Gethsemane"). Link to the original essay. INTRO (00:36) When reading SLEEP NO MORE and THE INNOCENT SLEEP by Seanan McGuire (the newest October Daye books), I was struck by similarities in the ethical fra...

To tide you over between regular episodes, Robin reads their blog post from April 2023 . ----- This is a follow-up to my review of "Feed Them Silence" by Lee Mandelo , involving some thoughts that are too personal to make sense in the review as they swiftly veer away from the text specifically and instead into a broader meta-conversation of books like this which I have read previously, assumed cor...

To tide you over between regular episodes, Robin reads their blog post from July 2022 with thoughts on the book "Singularity". You can find the original post here . The spoiler-free book review is here .