The Burn Line
From the dark and twisted mind behind the podcast sensation The Magnus Archives comes a suffocating, socially charged nightmare that reveals how fear festers in the cracks of everyday life…
Beneath the streets of London, it hungers…
It's the hottest summer on record and the city is suffering. Prices are high, pay is low. And on one fateful morning five travelers find themselves trapped in a tube car deep in the London Underground.
It will change their lives forever.
By the time they leave the train they will be bound together as witnesses to a single horrific event. Something terrible, irreversible, and monstrous. Something hungry.
But they can't remember what it is.
On their own, they each begin to experience strange dissociative events. Time gets lost. Friends disappear. Something stalks them in the shadows. They make an unlikely team, but to remember what they encountered that day on the train, they will have to work together. Because now it's up to them to understand what horror they saw – and stop it in its tracks before it drags everyone else down below.
- Pages
- 428
- First published
- July 9, 2026
- Language
- English
- Edition
- Ebook
Narrators (3)
▾
Jude Owusu, Kay Eluvian, Jonathan Sims
1 audiobook edition · 11 hr 54 min · en
More editions
▾
Pick a cover to preview.
Shelved by 1 Litcadian
Reviews
Started July 26, 2026 · Finished July 29, 2026
Thank you to NetGalley and Poisoned Pen Press for this eARC in exchange for an honest review! ——— I think this book excels in its world-building of an oppressively hot London, as well as in its overall building of suspense and unease. These characters are trauma-bonded by something truly horrific in its inability to be understood. Most of their motivations are clear, and their group conflicts are natural-feeling considering how different they all are. However, what I think falls flat is that some things remain vague even to the end with no real resolution. It definitely leaves it open to further expansion into this universe, easiest done I feel through a companion novella. I also felt its pacing lagged at times, offering unneeded tangents that were less relevant to the plot than just added to place this story within a specific period of time: post-COVID, around Queen Elizabeth II’s passing. Overall, I still enjoyed this book. I think the creatures and everything about how they move, eat, and more had truly disgusting descriptions that I appreciated. I loved how diverse the cast was and the way they interacted with one another. And I would definitely read more from this author.