Welcome to Cracked Spines, where every book is an orc lesbian regency romance novel, that’s our thing now. In terms of the emerging OLRR genre, Charlotte Rogan’s The Lifeboat tragically fails the Shagrat test (in that no two orcs never speak to each other about something other than eating flesh); however, seeing as it is a novel about a bunch of women trapped in an over-capacity life boat and reflecting on God, Survival, and The Sea, it passes pretty much every other test your podcast hosts could care about.

Two shipwrecks, one island, God’s little social experiment. In 1864, two separate vessels wrecked on two separate sides of Auckland Island. One group of survivors built a house, started night classes, and served four-course meals of sea lion. The other was down for cannibalism pretty much from the get-go. This week we read Island of the Lost by Joan Druett, the true story of one of the most fascinating maritime disasters in history, and a parable of why being super into crafts will probably save your life one day.

This week, we tackle the father of shipwreck narratives, Robinson Crusoe, and boy! Oh boy! Whatever your expectations for this book were, scale them down. Then make them a little lower. Discussion points include: the centrality of the slave trade to the plot of this novel, Robinson Crusoe’s one moment of acceptance of other cultures, and why God keeps punishing him. Featuring a side trip into the novel Foe by J. M. Coetzee and the life and times of Robinson Crusoe’s inspiration, Alexander Selkirk who is MUCH COOLER THAN CRUSOE. BY A LOT. HEY @ DANIEL DAFOE, YOUR NOVEL DIDN’T NEED A NEW PROTAGONIST YA DINGUS.

We’re launching our unit on shipwrecks by dipping our toes into the fundamentals of mermaid economics, the sensuality of man’s hubris about the sea, and the Titanic’s ill-fated journey to traverse the Northwest Passage. No, we’re not doing a book on or even slightly related to The Terror. Probably. Shout out to Ross Bugden for the use of their Shanty-tastic musical theme!

“We can’t keep talking about Javert,” we say, and then talk about nothing else for 30 minutes. That’s right, it’s another Les Mis episode. We know, we’re sorry. Sarah flew across the country so we could drive across the state and finally, for the first time, see the live production. Featuring the all-new take that Marius is good actually and the classic take that Jean Valjean is the hottest character in literary existence, especially when you put him in leather pants.

What does it mean to be a woman? Well firstly, how big are your flesh-shredding mandibles? This week, your hosts read Sisters of the Revolution: A Feminist Speculative Fiction Anthology edited by Ann and Jeff Vandermeer, and dig into questions of gender, violence, oppression, and proboscises.

We do not drink…wine. Unless the wine is extremely cheap and mixed with orange juice. Amelia and Sarah were briefly together in the same state and used that time to watch television, suffer mightily from the common cold, and slowly chug one (1) drink each. This week detours into Netflix’s Castlevania, starring Richard Armitage at his sloppiest, Dracula and Lisa’s accidental lovechild, villains of wildly different scheming capacities, and ISAAC who Amelia has decided is the most important character in the history of characterization. (Sarah’s more partial to Hector, but that’s because she likes her men like she likes her coffee: pathetically weak.) Ft. a special apology for not knowing dick about shit, which is the usual case for us, but Sarah felt particularly bad about it this time.

Did rice crops create the most prolific maneater in recorded human history? Your hosts delve in to the story of the Champawat tiger, a creature which terrorized Indian and Nepalese villages for a period of ten years, evading large-scale efforts to hunt it down and ultimately killing an estimate of 436 people. Featuring the factors which make a maneater, a real-life musical instrument straight out of Hannibal, Amelia dunking on the British Empire, and Sarah dunking on Amelia for taking 10 minutes in the middle of the episode to look up a statistic.

This week, Sarah and Amelia discuss Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman, and spend A Lot of time agonizing over the high highs and the very low lows of revisiting old favorites. Amelia reveals herself as the ultimate mold queen. Sarah grapples with her love for this book in the face of the plethora of YIKES YIKES YIKES moments and then accidentally talks her way into a queer theory revelation. Here’s the quote she was trying to remember. No, she’s still not sure why she finds it so meaningful.

“Nothin’ wrong with witchfinding. I’d like to be a witchfinder. It’s just, well, you’ve got to take it in turns. Today we’ll go out witchfinding, an’ tomorrow we could hide, an’ it’d be the witches’ turn to find US. ”

And on the Seventh Day, a new episode appeared. This week your hosts watch the new Good Omens TV series and kick around their favorite Crowley and Aziraphale fancasts: namely, Philip Quast as both. Also featuring the struggle of going back to media you loved as a kid, the extremely cursed abandoned Good Omens script, and the notebook in which Sarah documented both her religious awakening and her all-consuming lust for Carth Onasi. Martin Luther was also somehow involved.