Books That Burn
A book review podcast where we discuss how authors treat and traumatize their characters. Part of the Certain Point of View network.
Episodes
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 and alteration, because I keep ret...
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 because I love them both, they were...
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-guzzling plagiarism machine, especially ...
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.
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 both, they were intended from the st...
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.
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 both, they were intended from the sta...
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.
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 both, they were intended from the st...
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 them both, they were intended from 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:
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ROSALINE PALMER TAKES THE CAKE (2021)
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10 THINGS THAT NEVER HAPPENED (2023)
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GLITTERLAND (2013)
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WAITING FOR THE FLOOD (2024 edition)
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FOR REAL (2015)
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A LADY FOR A DUKE (2022)
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BOYFRIEND MATERIAL (2020)
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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".
This contains major spoilers for “The ...
Welcome to another book essay from Robin! Thank you Case Aiken, who receives a monthly Patron shoutout.
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This essay contains spoilers for SHADES AND SILVER by Dax Murray.
Many attempts at gender allegories i...
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 CitedAncrum, K. The Weight o...
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 our Patrons makes this podcast (an...
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 podcast (and blog) possible, and we're...
*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").
INTRO (00:36)
To tide you over between regular episodes, Robin reads their blog post from April 2023.
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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 spec...
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.
Please enjoy Robin reading their blog post with some thoughts on ensemble heist stories in fiction. If you'd prefer to read it instead, you can find it here. Refer below for books of the types discussed.
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Unplanned:
- THE ART OF SAVING THE WORLD by Corinne Duyvis - Parallel worlds subversion of the "big damn hero" Technically this group is unplanned and they don't already know each other, but on the other hand the group is t...
This episode we’re discussing “The Ghost Bride” by Yangsze Choo, where a young woman is engaged to marry a ghost, and it turns out he's more of a meddler than she expected from the dead.
This episode we’re discussing “War Girls” by Tochi Onyebuchi, a story of two sisters whose lives are ravaged by war.
Topic 1: Dehumanization. Begins at (1:35), CW for ableism, colorism, colonization, child abuse, medical content, body horror, war, slavery, child death, death.
Topic 2...
This episode we’re discussing BATTLE ROYALE by Koushun Takami. This is the second of two episodes, this one deals with two characters who were damaged in different ways before the story begins.
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