Review of The Burn Line by Jonathan Sims
(Since I was live reacting as I read, thought I’d post my review here.)
Thank you to NetGalley for a free digital copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
I want to preface this review with the fact that I was expecting to like this book! I really enjoyed the Magnus Archives and Thirteen Storeys, and though the Magnus Protocol makes worldbuilding decisions I dislike, it’s still pretty good in terms of characters and short story concepts. I went into this in good faith.
I did not like The Burn Line.
The book gets off to what some have called a “slow start,” primarily because it commits what I like to think of as the cardinal sin of multi-POV books: it tells the same period of time from each character’s perspective. Not only that, it does very little to differentiate each character’s plot in that time frame. We are told facts about the character, they go to work/home, they are stalked by a creature at night. I asked myself when part 2 began if that entire section could be cut and woven in more naturally, and the answer was YES. I read fantasy. I know what a slow start feels like. This was a story construction blunder.
I am hoping this next point gets better after another round of edits, but the weak prose was so pervasive throughout this book that I can’t not mention it. This book tended to say the exact same idea 2 (sometimes 3) times before moving on. I think this stems from the narrative voice of the book, which feels like it knows the truth and is just imparting it on the reader. (I am admittedly biased against this sort of narration style because every person I’ve known who speaks like this IRL I have not liked.) There’s little room here for reader misunderstanding, creative interpretation, or imagination.
It also leads to a lot of Telling, not Showing. It’s a heatwave, but there’s no visceral descriptions of characters sweating, working to cool down their bodies, checking their necks for heat stroke symptoms, etc. They’re all paranoid from a monster stalking them, but that shows up as the narrator telling us the character felt paranoid or like they were being watched. (This is even more frustrating to me specifically because I know Sims can write paranoia well. He wrote the Magnus Archives, where paranoia and voyeurism is a key focus.) The one notable exception I can think of to this “told paranoia” has a sentence immediately afterwards making it clear to the reader (by telling) that the character was checking things out of a sense of paranoia and worry.
The telling extends to the characters as well. I know lots of facts about the cast of characters and their relationships, but there’s so much telling and so much handholding that I just don’t connect to them. I would like to; they seem cool. I just don’t. This voice issue also makes it feel like I’m one step back from the action at all times, which kills the narrative tension.
This book just does not trust the audience. It’s baffling, because while the horror concept is cool, it’s not overly unique. (I have heard leftist podcasters joke about what feels like the central joke of this book multiple times. Heck, this sort of class commentary was better and more subtly done in previous stories BY THIS VERY AUTHOR.) It’s fine to retread covered narratives, as long as a story covers for that with some combination of deep characters or more visceral-feeling horror. This book does not manage that.
The Burn Line unfortunately fails on all fronts for me. I would have dnf’d this by page 50 had I not been reviewing it for NetGalley. I’m giving it 2 stars because it is at least decidedly not bigoted. That is all I can really say it does well.
Okay, I did get a laugh at that one bit near the end.
