It's finally happening - Cyrus and Sarah have finally read The Traitor Baru Cormorant by Seth Dickinson! Turns out they loved it, but isn't that always the way with books you've been putting off? Baru Cormorant is a twisty turny hard fantasy novel about the devastation of empire, with fabulous worldbuilding, fantastic characters, and also it's kinda gay. We love to see it. Topics of discussion include the belief structures behind imperialism, the joy of an unreliable narrator, and what the fuck a 'murre' is.

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Did you know it's really hard to write jokes about books with central themes of racism? Cyrus and Sarah find this out while covering Pachinko by Min Jin Lee, an epic historical fiction novel about the the 20th century Korean experience of Japan. Our intrepid readers, who were sooo sleepy this week, cover personal experiences with identity, the Korean horror movie Exhuma (which totally whips), dead relatives, and the mythologizing of the family narrative. Did I mention they're sooo sleepy?

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Are we in the cultural zeitgeist yet? This week, Cyrus and Sarah cover Sunrise on the Reaping AND The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes by Suzanne Collins, the two latest Hunger Games novels, both of which are prequels to the original trilogy. Did our intrepid readers kind of forget how brutal these books can get? Yeah a little bit. But if we've learned anything from the Animorphs episodes, Cyrus and Sarah love it when teenagers experience inconceivable horrors. Also discussed are the comings and goings of tiny animals in our house, the fallout of the book-reading challenge thunderdome, and Cyrus forgetting that marsupials are, in fact, mammals. May the odds be ever in your favor! Is this anything?

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RESULTS ARE IN, FOLKS. In the past month, Sarah and Cyrus made a bet to see who could read the most books out of their combined TBR piles. Sarah is a super fast reader with one day a week to functionally dedicate to churning through books; Cyrus is an absolute competitive maniac who would rather destroy their body and mind rather than lose. The stakes: either financial ruin for Cyrus, or automotive ruin for Sarah. Two men enter; one man leaves (with their dignity, at least).

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Back at it again in the Animorphs mines. This time, we're reading books 28 through 32, a group that contains vitally important plot, thoughtful and moving character moments, and also whatever is happening in book 28. Cyrus professes their undying love for Marco's self-aware ruthlessness. Sarah understands the world better through children's literature. We both get increasingly nervous about our upcoming reading death pact.

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Okay, maybe it's not a death pact. More of a "financially ruinous" pact for Cyrus specifically. But with the stakes on the table, they're more than willing to dive in. And with how annoying Cyrus is in this episode, Sarah is happy to crush them beneath capitalism's bootheel.

But this is mostly, theoretically, not an episode about engaging in potentially friendship-ending contests of reading might. Mostly it's about the cool books we've read, the cool books we want to read, and the fact that Cyrus utterly eviscerated Sarah in a word count competition and will never let her forget it.

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This week on Cracked Spines, we are discussing Animorphs books 23 through 27, a chunk that includes one of the best books of the series so far and also Cassie lying to strangers about androids while inside a Spencer's Gifts. The series contains multitude and, as we get into this middle stretch, filler. Join us as we watch young teens grapple with intergalactic war, cross-species dating, and the Space Devil.

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Our favorite horror writer is back at it again! This week we read Witchcraft for Wayward Girls by Grady Hendrix, a truly harrowing mixture of pregnancy horror, social horror, and eels. In this episode, as you can probably imagine, we talk a lot about abortion rights, fucked up pregnancy stuff, and infanticide. Like honestly probably way too much discussion of infanticide, oopsie, sorry about that. Proceed with caution accordingly.

More pregnancy/motherhood/baby horror recs:

• Nestlings by Nat Cassidy
• Immaculate (2024)
• The First Omen (2024)
• Huesera: The Bone Woman (2022) (Note from Cyrus: I forgot to mention this one on the episode but IT'S SO GOOD PLEASE WATCH IT. One of the rare movies that actually made me scream aloud)

And lastly, if you want to read/listen to Cyrus's story mentioned at the end of this episode, it's not about pregnancy but it is very much horror: Hemorrhage on Pseudopod.org (not .com as we say on the podcast, I'm a fool)

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