Burn of the Everflame, by Penn Cole | Free Audiobook
How Penn Cole ends a war she spent three books building
Emarion is at war and losing on two sides at once. Ophiucae is bringing an army of mortals down from the north with one aim, to clear the Descended off the continent entirely. The Guardians of the Everflame, away to the south, have spent generations getting ready for a rebellion and have decided this is the generation that gets to have one. Lumnos lies between them.
Which is how the Crowns end up around one table. Rulers who spent three books circling each other for advantage now have to agree on something quickly, with a mortal army moving and their own people ready to turn. Diem Bellator is at the center of it, still recognizably the healer she was when this started, now carrying a bloodline nobody in that room can afford to ignore. Luther Corbois is beside her with a claim on Lumnos and a secret that could break the alliance before it forms.
That secret is the trap the whole saga has been setting. The bond between Diem and Luther was never going to be a reward handed out at the end, and Penn Cole has been clear for three books about what a heart does when it loses its mate. Everything Emarion has left now rests on whether those two survive each other, and Cole spends the closing stretch making that as expensive as she can.
The Kindred's Curse Saga ends here, and Podium is sending it out with seven narrators instead of one. Amanda Dolan carried the first two books alone and shared the third with Will M. Watt. For the finale she has five more voices behind her, Bahni Turpin among them, across thirty four hours and forty five minutes. The audio arrives on release day rather than trailing months behind, which is not how this series has been handled before and tells you what Podium expects from it.
Cole has kept two wars running and refused to let either resolve early. Ophiucae is coming down from the north with mortals who want the Descended gone, the Guardians of the Everflame are rising in the south, and Lumnos has to hold an alliance together between people who have given each other every reason to walk away. Advance reviewers have been consistent about what works here: the growth in characters they have followed since Spark, and Cole's refusal to write anyone in this conflict as simply wrong. Even Ophiucae arrives with reasons you can follow to their end.
The criticism has been just as consistent, and it is the one that matters when you are committing thirty four hours. Several of them found that the finale explains where the earlier books showed, with long stretches of characters accounting for the plot instead of living inside it. Choices made in the climax have split opinion badly. Some of the dialogue in the closing chapters lands younger than the rest of the saga. If book three won you over on momentum, this one spends a good deal more of its length settling accounts.
It is heavy in ways worth knowing before you start. The finale keeps none of its deaths offstage, gives grief room to be ugly, and goes at war and genocide directly, with burn injuries described in detail and a pregnancy that matters to the plot. The last quarter runs one loss into the next with very little recovery time between them, which advance reviewers found devastating in the way they had hoped for and, for a few, simply relentless. Cole publishes her own content notes and they are worth a look if any of that is a problem for you.
On the narration I am holding my verdict until the release is actually in my ears, because seven voices is a different proposition from one and this cast is new to the series. What I can tell you is that Dolan has anchored this saga from the first book and she is still here, and that one advance listener flagged the same character names coming out differently from different narrators, which is the standard cost of a full cast production and worth knowing if that sort of thing pulls you out. If you are arriving without the earlier books, start at Spark of the Everflame, because none of this lands cold, and Heat of the Everflame is the one that sets up almost everything the finale has to pay off.
Burn of the Everflame, by Penn Cole closes the Kindred's Curse Saga with Emarion fighting on two sides and the Crowns of Lumnos pushed into an alliance none of them wants. Diem Bellator and Luther Corbois carry a secret that could cost them everything they have built, and the saga has already told us what the bond between them will do if it breaks.
You can start it on a free trial, cancellable whenever you like. Narrated by Amanda Dolan, Will M. Watt, Bahni Turpin, Tim Campbell, Katherine Littrell, Kieran Regan and Keval Shah, it runs 34 hours and 45 minutes, the longest entry in the series and its only full cast production.
Cancel the trial and Burn of the Everflame stays yours. The trial also opens the rest of the catalogue, including the three earlier books if you want to catch up before the finale. Emarion is burning. Go and hear how it ends.
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