The Magnus Protocol Reviews: “Taking Notes”
“Taking Notes” was one of the hardest episodes to listen to, and not for a scary reason. “Making Adjustments” made me squirm. This simply irritated during sections of its runtime.
Category: Podcasts
The Magnus Protocol Reviews: “Putting Down Roots”
“Putting Down Roots” is firmly a middle-of-the-road episode of The Magnus Protocol—if I use the benchmarks of the previous series as a reference point. No big plot moments obviously occur, and the horror story likely isn’t introducing any returning characters.
The Magnus Protocol Reviews: “Making Adjustments”
“Making Adjustments” serves as a hard swerve from the first episode, moving the series back into more familiar anthology waters. I’m writing these as I listen, avoiding spoilers, so I knew I would get predictions wrong, but I still didn’t expect to have my first article contradicted this heavily.
The Magnus Protocol Reviews: “First Shift”
It’s time. Two episodes of The Magnus Protocol have now been released, and if you know anything about me as a media person, you probably know my favorite horror franchise is The Magnus Archives. I’ve been eagerly awaiting this spin-off series for so long.
Limetown: Should’ve Been A One-Shot?
Limetown is a podcast that follows a young woman attempting to discover the truth about the disappearance of the people of Limetown. She has a particular drive to do so because one of her family members was there in Limetown, and his body was never found.
The Call of the Flame: An Interesting Premise
The Call of the Flame initially worried me that it would be a repeat of my usual concerns with Epic Fantasy. In my very recent review of The Legacy Saga, I talked about how stories in this genre can lack strong inciting incidents or story hooks because it’s too busy with worldbuilding. And several times, The Call of the Flame almost fell right into the same trap but miraculously continued to pull back and keep things understandable.
It Came From The Archives! “The Storage Papers: As Scary As The Magnus Archives?”
Before listening to The Storage Papers, I never thought a podcast could scare me as much as The Magnus Archives. That the mind-melting, the dark-is-dangerous thrill it gave me was the peak of horror storytelling.
5 Reasons Fiction Podcasts Are Amazing
If you’ve been reading some of the more recent reviews, then you know we’ve pivoted to basically only looking at podcasts and books until the Hollywood strike finishes. And, while I have reviewed podcasts previously, I really dived into the medium over the past month or so. This has given me a much better feel for this medium of storytelling. It opened my eyes to the variance and breadth that’s available with audio-only narratives.
The Legacy Saga: Generic Epic Fantasy
The Legacy Saga taught me an interesting lesson about tropes, genre conventions, and storytelling methods that I simply cannot enjoy. In the grand scheme, there’s nothing terribly wrong with The Legacy Saga, no glaring sin, but it was a slog to listen to for any amount of time. The minor issues stack up quickly, and what could’ve been a fun experience turned into a malaise.
Campfire Radio Theater Might Be Too Scary
Campfire Radio Theater is an anthology horror series tied to no apparent central themes, no reoccurring characters, and as a bit of foreshadowing: not a consistent approach to storytelling. I picked the episodes semi-randomly, going mostly off if the title or premise seemed interesting.
Civilized: Improv Sci-Fi Fun
Civilized is a first for me as a reviewer: it’s an improvisational podcast. Meaning the actors are just playing off each other. And as such, I can’t really judge it on its plot progression. Narrative, themes, writing quality: all out the window. There really isn’t even a storyline to speak of yet, just a premise.
Alba Salix, Royal Physician: Tons Of Fantasy Fun
Alba Salix, Royal Physician is such a departure from most podcasts I’ve come across in my career as a critic. It’s basically a cartoon but in an audio-only format. Each of the first three episodes is an isolated, silly situation with very little seeding for any future plots. It’s episodic, is what I’m saying—the point is to be a fun distraction and to make you laugh.
“So many people get shived!” – Merril
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