Genies, gardeners and a barge of souls, read aloud.
Sean Hamilton writes the stories on Burning Glass Podcast and reads them aloud, moving from a doomed expedition into a genie's temple to a quiet tale about regret. Season 4, The Barge of Souls, keeps an anthology's bones but tells one continuous story, and the author urges starting at its first episode.
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Burning Glass Podcast is a fiction anthology with a single voice behind it: Sean Hamilton writes the stories and reads them aloud. The prose is thick with physical detail, from bluish-purple spiraling weeds and the smell of wood smoke to a row of candles lit in front of a cabin window. The range is wide. 'Eleven Eleven (Halloween Special)' is framed as twelve journal entries recovered by the fishing trawler Colette in the Baltic Sea, and they record an expedition of thirteen that climbs down into a cavern and blunders into the temple of a genie. The deaths are violent, and the diarist's terror sits right on the page. Far quieter is 'And Things Never Occurred', introduced as the first of the Burning Glass B-Sides: pieces written over the years that were cut or never fit into a season, offered in what the author calls a shorter, more casual format. That one was written in 2016, and the author describes it as a story about regret; its imagery includes a crumbling tower of serpents and a man frozen in an old rocking chair in Albatross' cabin. Season 4, The Barge of Souls, works differently. The author describes it as still an anthology in some ways but also a single story set in a single world, with each episode building on the last, and asks that it be heard from episode one. Its world takes in the Bargeville, Parul's Bazaar at a four-way fork in the river, and a smugglers' organization called Zadzodol's Chorus that escorts Saorans and Karshkins to safe lands. Its people range from Damankos, a mage burning scrolls against hordes of undeath, to Anselm, an old gardener, and Galene, whose flowers, Anselm says, no one else could cultivate. Their farewell, with its request for amber lilies, shows the gentler side of the writing. The season ends on a two-part finale, 'Let Them See, Lest We Forget' and 'Mainspring'. Season 4 episodes are paired with commissioned artwork, and the text and art are posted on burningglasspodcast.com for anyone who wants to read along. The spoken introductions are worth noticing too. They are loose and friendly, full of thanks to the artists by name, and they sit in sharp contrast with the ornate fiction that follows. Another episode, 'Chapter One', steps outside the anthology to preview the opening of Displacer, which the author calls a debut novel. It follows a character named Soma surveying a glade by readout, and it ends with Coradlus remarking that beautiful trees can be invasive and choke the life from everything they touch. The author also mentions a Patreon, with a fifth of its earnings going to the Baltimore Harm Reduction Coalition, and a Ko-Fi for one-time support. Since The Barge of Souls is meant to be heard in order, a newcomer after something that stands on its own may prefer a B-Side, which the author presents as individual pieces. Either way, the pleasure is hearing dense genre fiction delivered by the person who wrote it.
Made for: Suits a listener who enjoys dark fantasy and horror read aloud by the person who wrote it, and who is willing to follow The Barge of Souls in order from its first episode.
What sets it apart: Ornate, image-heavy genre prose comes paired with the author's own reading and loose, friendly introductions that credit artists by name. Season 4 adds commissioned artwork and read-along text online.
Burning Glass is a short fiction anthology project written and read by Baltimore native Sean Hamilton. The goal is to deliver easily consumable, fictional vignettes to take your mind off of the disaster that is the modern world. Hopefully, it serves its purpose.
A gardener's flowers and an undead siege share a world; you'll need room for tenderness and terror.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A vivid landing-party story finds an alien forest already under threat.
Displacer begins with a landing party stepping into a world that feels shaped by damage before anyone fully understands it. Captain Tyrus Hughes, navigator Phineas Scorbrandt, Soma, and medic Bridge move from scans and descent into a glade where breathable air and strange…
A dust-choked finale where battlefield magic gives way to shattered glass and a mysterious gardener.
Mainspring closes Burning Glass Season 4 with a charged fight outside Wolf, where dust, bone, and violent magic crowd the field. Veshtal remnants break from the forest as Damankos chants through the assault, lifted inside a pillar of air while grey energy rips into the horde.
Anselm finds fragile refuge in Parul's Bazaar as the Barge of Souls turns toward battle.
Anselm's arrival at Parul's Bazaar gives this first part of the finale a grounded turn. The town is a mercantile refuge where the river splits four ways, ships blur into houses, and Saoran and Karshkin can share sanctuary.
A garden draws the Barge's history into the quiet terms of aging love.
Who Remembers a Gardener? roots the future of the Barge of Souls in a garden tended by Anselm and Galene, where age turns ordinary care into a question of what can be passed on.
A tense fantasy crossing turns mercy, prisoners, and a burning monastery into signs of a wider war.
The Four Virtues follows Irfan's caravan toward the Cup of Benediction, turning a guarded gate, a wary monk, and an abbey's uncertain future into a tense passage through a world edging closer to war.
A cavern rescue pushes Rivka into command as the God's Pearl's hidden history points toward war.
Nightly Harvest shapes a cavern emergency into a quiet test of leadership. Rivka begins with the ordinary work of chipping a plump orange coaling from the floor and calling for Louie, the cart runner, but Reban's wounded arrival quickly turns Osterhold fearful and still.
Fatal fiction between sliding doors.
Serialized pulp radio drama: Red Panda battles android-army supervillain Captain Clockwork in 1930s Toronto.
Burning Glass Podcast opens Chapter One of Displacer, a debut novel preview centered on the first landing at Zero M6 Sentinel.
Burning Glass Podcast’s Halloween special follows a 13-person expedition into a temple buried beneath a cavern.
Burning Glass Podcast's Season 4 finale, "Mainspring," opens with the Veshtal remnants flooding Wolf while Iryash, Tummo Koresk, and Tummo Beru answer with golems, claws, and sword work.
["Burning Glass Podcast's \"Let Them See, Lest We Forget\" opens with Irfan getting shut down by Calbris and the Tumokrasis council over Vestal and the God's Pearl.", "A hooded Cobbler then produces letters and says he has dirt on almost every council member, offering blackmail to force war preparations or topple the council outright.", "Anselm reaches Parul's Bazaar, reunites with Selouis from the Malentia War, and watches two celestial beings cross the sky toward the Central Kingdom.", "Gorodanda later receives Osterhold survivors in Wolf, where Iriash and 24 golems hold off remnants and chariots until fresh reinforcements arrive from the treeline."]
Burning Glass Podcast's Season 4 episode 'Who Remembers a Gardener?' pits Anselm's quiet garden life on Lord Kalfir's estate against war memory and an estate alarm.
Burning Glass Podcast's "The Four Virtues" follows Irfan, Drieke, and six Moiraspida escorting fourteen prisoners to the Cup of Benediction on the edge of the Central Kingdom.
Burning Glass Podcast episode “Nightly Harvest” follows Rivka and the harvesters of Osterhold as they collect 26 coalings, more than twice their previous record.
Burning Glass Season 4 episode five, "Nothing Dies Here," follows Tanneth, a new messenger running between the city of Elk and its Karskkin sister city Wolf at the base of the mountain.
The host introduces Season 4 of a fantasy fiction anthology, explaining its serialized nature and collaboration with artists.