The Novel Analyst Podcast

Jed Herne takes a specific approach on The Novel Analyst Podcast: he reads a book, breaks down what makes it work (or not), and explains what writers can steal from it. It's literary analysis with a craft-first purpose, and the focus lands squarely on fantasy and speculative fiction — think Brandon Sanderson's Mistborn series, Joe Abercrombie's grimdark novels, and similar genre fiction. Herne is a fantasy author himself (The Thunder Heist, Fires of the Dead, Across the Broken Stars), so the analysis comes from a practitioner's perspective. He'll pull apart how Sanderson structures a magic system reveal, or how Abercrombie handles ensemble casts, and translate those observations into techniques you can use in your own work. Some episodes are deep-dive solo analyses running up to an hour and a half, while others are shorter author interviews. The podcast has 72 episodes and a 4.7-star rating from 10 reviews. Here's the important caveat: the show hasn't released new episodes since August 2020. Herne appears to have shifted his podcasting energy to another show, The Fantasy Writing Show. So this is effectively an archived resource rather than an active podcast. That said, the archive still holds real value. If you write fantasy or speculative fiction and want to hear someone methodically analyze the craft decisions in books you've probably already read, these episodes function almost like a reading group led by a working novelist. Just go in knowing you're browsing a library, not following a live broadcast.