Welcome to the Books That Burn Fortnightly Roundup! Releasing every two weeks (one week early for Patrons. I'm Robin, I handle the written communications for the podcast, which includes books reviews, posting transcripts, social media, and things like this newsletter! My co-host, Nicole, handles our audio editing and makes the monthly livestreams go smoothly. Our transcriptionist, Heather, makes the transcripts for all our episodes and bonus content. Since this is the first edition of the newsletter, all our transcripts are "new", so please head over to Transcripts That Burn in order to browse our currently available episode transcripts.
Upcoming events: The monthly livestream is on the last Saturday of every month, which means this month it's on June 26th at 6PM Pacific / 8PM Central / 9PM Eastern. You can watch it on Twitch or Youtube. We'll play Jackbox games with friends and guests and answer your questions.
The first half of June has been an interesting one for our book reviews. First there's an adult fantasy novella, STONE AND STEEL by Eboni Dunbar. I like the beginning but the ending felt a bit rushed and overall I felt pretty neutral about it. If there's ever a novel-length version I'd be interested in reading it, I think the story needed more room for the amount of detail it was trying to fit in. I took a stab at reading a YA contemporary book with HARLEY IN THE SKY by Akemi Dawn Bowman, but my brain noped out. It's probably a great book, just not for me.
Next was a great YA contemporary fantasy retelling of Peter Pan, LOST IN THE NEVER WOODS by Aiden Thomas. It's not my favorite Peter Pan retelling (that spot currently belongs to PETER DARLING by Austin Chant), but it's great YA and I can tell I would have loved it even more when I was still a teenager.