Exactly What It Says on the Tin. Started by long-time science fiction fan Luke Burrage in January 2008, the podcast reviews various novels and prose by a wide variety of authors from the whole sci-fi genre. Occasionally, the podcast reviews fantasy titles as well, or does a Crossover with other similar podcasts and review sites (most notably Geek Nights).
The SFBRP provides examples of :[]
- Bunny Ears Lawyer : Luke is a Kent-born British professional juggler living in Berlin... who also happens to be an life-long avid fan of sci-fi.
- Caustic Critic : A subversion, since Luke is more than willing to judge a book on its own merits and highlight the good or original parts of it. But if a book is exceptionally badly written or convoluted, he plays this trope straight.
- Catch Phrase :
- Genre Savvy : And how...
- Let's See You Do Better : Averted, since Luke himself writes sci-fi in his free time and has already published two novels set in a Next Sunday AD setting.
- Motor Mouth : Luke sure knows how to rant enthusiastically about the previous novel he read. He even directly lampshades this numerous times in his reviews.
- A March 2009 review of his podcast by SFX Magazine even referred to him as such, literally :
"Four stars out of five. The set-up is as no-frills as the title - Berlin-based SF fan Luke Burrage reads a sci-fi book, and then talks about it - but while some literary podcasts can be dreary, Burrage is an enthusiastic motormouth with an infectious love of the genre. His tastes are varied, and even if you don't agree with all of his opinions, they're still fun to listen to." |
- Rape as Backstory: References it used badly during his pretty critical review of the first Honor Harrington novel. As he further explains, shoe-horning a rape into a female character's past is really not an ideal way of earning sympathy for said character (he considers it cheap and trite). He had the same opinion on the even poorer executed rape backstory of the female protagonist from Robert J. Sawyer's Hominids.
- Reviews Are the Gospel : Averted. Luke had expressed his dislike for this type of approach several times already. He frequently reminds everyone about reviews being a subjective thing, not Serious Business.
- Sequelitis : He refers to it as "Sequel Fatique".
- The Mean Brit : A complete inversion, since he's generally jovial and cheerful even when reviewing poorly written books.
- Who Writes This Crap? / Fridge Logic : A common outcry against some less than stellar novels he's reviewed.