A Meal of Thorns

For the very first episode, host Jake Casella Brookins talks to Dan Hartland, critic and reviews editor, about China Miéville's novel THE SCAR, the genre of the New Weird, and many related works and ideas.

Credits:

• Guest: Dan Hartland
• Title: The Scar by China Miéville
• Music by Giselle Gabrielle Garcia
• Artwork by Rob Patterson
• Opening poem by Bhartṛhari, translated by John Brough

Links & works referenced:

• Strange Horizons reviews
• Dan’s Snap! Criticism series
• Cahokia Jazz by Francis Spufford
• Dan’s review of Cahokia Jazz at Strange Horizons
• Him by Geoff Ryman
• The Practice, the Horizon, and the Chain by Sofia Samatar
• Casella’s review of PHC at the Chicago Review of Books
• The West Passage by Jared Pechaček
• Perdido Street Station and Iron Council by China Miéville
• Embassytown and The City and the City by China Miéville
• Pirate Enlightenment, or the Real Libertalia by David Graeber
• “Epic Pooh” by Michael Moorcock (pdf)
• “The Open Boat” by Stephen Crane (pdf)
• The Year of Our War by Steph Swainston
• Justina Robson
• The Wall by Gautam Bhatia
• The Etched City by K.J. Bishop
• “Infernal Transmutation: Remembering K.J. Bishop’s The Etched City” by J.R. Bolt @ Typebar
• Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time series
• Terry Brooks’ Shannara series
• Ursula Le Guin’s fantasy
• Kelly Link
• Carmen Maria Machado
• Graham Harman’s idea of overmining
• Cormac McCarthy
• This Is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar & Max Gladstone
• Casella’s bit about baseline genre familiarity in his ARB essay on TIHYLTTW.
• The Saint of Bright Doors by Vajra Chandrasekera
• Christopher Priest

Contact

• RSS feed | Spotify | Apple Podcasts | +lots of other platforms (let us know if it’s not on your favorite)
• You can follow A Meal of Thorns on Twitter and Bluesky.
• Email us at [email protected].

Support the Show!

• You can support the podcast (and the Ancillary Review of Books) by joining our Patreon. For $5 and up, you get access to ARB’s exclusive monthly newsletter, our Discord community, and more to come.
• Interested in purchasing a book we mentioned on the show? Check the show notes for Bookshop links; we get a cut if you buy them through our Bookshop!
• It seems small, but it really does help: like and share our posts! Leave a comment or review wherever you find us. The internet’s kind of broken, but that kind of thing really does help people hear about the work we’re doing.