At eight hundred pages, divided into sixteen fifty-page episodes, this series reads like a novelized TV show, which has its strengths and its weaknesses.The episodes largely reflect a standard TV episode structure, introducing a victim, followed by the team’s actions in solving the case. The pacing reflected television in moving along swiftly, and providing plot arcs that resolve, for the most part, by the episode’s end. But the novelization feel shows in how briefly characters are sketched in,

4.5/5 STARS“‘How bad can it be? I’ve never seen a demon attack on the news.’‘People disappear all the time. All over the world…Lost legions. Lost cities. Have you ever heard of the town of Colebridge, New York?’‘No.’‘Exactly.’” About : NYPD detective Sally Brooks walks into her apartment one day to find that her techie younger brother, Perry, has come for a surprise visit—needing her help, as usual. This time Perry’s brought a strange book with him, the source of his latest troubles. Things ju...

I'm a sucker for stories about secret histories and secret worlds hiding behind our mundane reality, so this was right in my wheelhouse. This tome about magic books and the Vatican team tasked to retrieve them is great fun from start to finish.The fact that this was written by four different authors each taking turns in serial format and yet it hangs together in terms of tone and style is a kind of magic all its own. After a while I could kind of see slightly different styles here and there (Laf...

A large part Wheel of Time with a dash of the Chronicles of Narnia and a smidgen of Harry Potter. That's my best description for what turned out to be a very engaging book. The central story-line revolves around the Vatican and their (supposed) efforts to control the influence of magic in the world. Beyond that, I can't say much without giving away key parts of the book. If you loved any of the above mentioned series, you'll probably enjoy this one as well.

3.5-4ish. This really gains its momentum about halfway through, though most of the episodes are a lot of fun. I can only imagine season two will be even better and really build on what they've already established. Full video review: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ouS8e...

I listened to the original audio from SerialBox for this. I have a pretty bad record with audiobooks, but this worked really well for me! I really enjoyed the narration from Xe Sands. I thought she did a really great job with conveying emotion through the season, and I truly enjoyed listening to her, which is not something I can always say about the audiobooks I've listened to before. I will say, I picked this as an attempt to try out Max Gladstone, only to find out that the majority of it is ac...

3.5 stars. Good paranormal suspense about a secret organization funded by the Vatican who travel the world confiscating dangerous magical texts. This was originally released serially - I would've hated to read it that way. I also think the serial thing contributed to this book's heft (800 pages) - it could definitely stand to be trimmed down a bit.

Bookburners The Complete Season One... Bookburners is a serial about a detective named Sal Brooks who joins a secret Vatican Black-Ops Squad after her brother gets possessed by demons after handling an ancient text that houses dark magic and demons. The squad is tasked with retrieving these books and securing them in their archives before more demons are spread through the world. I wasn't sure what to expect going in to this but I knew the serial was about books so I couldn't pass it up. I'm gla...

I received a copy of this book from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. The Bookburners series was originally published online as a serial to which you can subscribe. They are now on Season 2. Each serial is written by one of four co-writers, and I guess the concept is kind of like a TV show with different writers.While Bookburners is certainly a catchy title, it's a bit misleading when you think about how you normally perceive something like destroying a book. It turns out that there ar...

A priest, a cop, a hacker, an archivist and a kung-fu fighter walk into a library...Seriously, that's the premise and I ate. it. up. This series is so much fun and I need other people to read it so I can geek out with them. Sal Brooks is the newest member of the Bookburners (but don't call them that to their faces), a black ops team run out of the Vatican with the mission to find and collect (or destroy) magic books that have the power to hurt regular people. It's a little X-Files, a little Welc...

Book Burners is an urban fantasy series about a five-person team that works to recover dangerous magical artifacts and lock them away beneath the Vatican. The brainchild of Max Gladstone, author of the fabulous Craft series, it is one of the main titles for Serial Box, an online publisher/distributor that "brings everything that’s awesome about TV (easily digestible episodes, team written, new content every week) to what was already cool about books," selling the weekly installments for a small

There is nothing new and too many cliches in here.This book was written in order to promote a new publisher and (ideally) to pay the authors. None of that is bad, but there should be a different answer to the question “Why was this book written?”. There is nothing new or innovative here, the stories follow the episodic character of the cheap TV-shows copying more successful other shows.The book could have profited from more stringent control, leaving the single authors more room to expand. Inste...

4 of 5 stars at The BiblioSanctum https://bibliosanctum.com/2017/02/02/...Bookburners initially landed on my radar around a year and a half ago when it was first announced as the launching project by Serial Box, a publisher with an ambitious new idea to deliver their stories in a weekly serialized medium. The plan was that “Season One” will be a 16-episode run, written by a team of authors made up of Max Gladstone, Margaret Dunlap, Mur Lafferty, and Brian Francis Slattery. Though at the time I w...

This book is loooooong, but if you're into action-packed dark fantasy it's worth your time. It was originally written serially and released with a subscription box, so the story is broken up into easily digestible bits that are easy to remember if you want to take a little break in between, so if you find a physical copy of this book don't let it intimidate you. It's not as big and scary as it looks.As for the story, it's kind of like those Librarian movies with Noah Wyle, or National Treasure.

I have to say that I really enjoyed this HUGE 800-page book, written in serial form, with 16 50-page episodes. 4.5 stars. And I have to say it rates up there with the classic of this genre, Stephen King's The Green Mile.The basic premise is a team of five people from different backgrounds are part of a Vatican team dedicated to fighting demons and capturing dangerous books to be kept safe in the Vatican library. The main character, Sally (Sal) Brooks is a NYC cop, who meets the team when they co...

I enjoyed this a LOT. Found family/team stories, written compellingly, are always fun to read. I had thought the whole vatican/sealing demons/monster of the week storyline would get boring, but these authors know what they're doing. There are overall plots, characters beats, exotic locales, and lots of discussion of purpose. Plus, ride or die teammates (for most part). Read this one in chunks of ebook during work, and have the next lined up on audible. Solid Urban Fantasy.

Sal Brooks is a Manhattan cop, used to all sorts of trouble, especially when it comes from her younger brother, Perry. So when he comes to her door late one night under suspicious circumstances, Sal knows he's done something stupid. Unfortunately, it's not the usual trouble she's grown accustomed to; Perry has become possessed by a demon called the Hand and disappears. Right on Perry's heels are the Bookburners, a motley group consisting of a priest named Menchu, a hacker named Liam, and an almo...

Well, that was fun. This was originally written as a weekly serial and laid out as if it were a television show, albeit written in traditional story format rather than as a script. Four authors undertook to write 16 "episodes" comprised of 5-6 chapters per episode, with each author writing their own episodes. You'd think the result would make for a jarring transition of writing styles when moving from one author's episode to another's but it really didn't. It all flowed rather well. The story de...

So, it’s the book version of Warehouse 13, mixed up with a bit of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and written like a tv-series, with monster-of-the-week chapters, a mythology and seasonal arc. At first it doesn’t work, but then, at the middle of the “season” it does. And isn’t that exactly how a lot of tv-series work too?

I have a new obsession and no regrets. Articulate review may or may not followAAAAAAHUpdate: I found some words! Full review