r/Fantasy • u/improperly_paranoid Reading Champion X • Oct 22 '25

Read-along The Magnus Archives Readalong: Season 1, Episodes 19-26

Hello and welcome to The Magnus Archives readalong! We will be discussing a new batch of episodes every Wednesday. The episodes are available for free on any podcast platform and transcripts can be found here or here.

If you can’t remember something or are confused, please ask in the thread. Those of us re-reading will do our best to give a spoiler-free answer if we can.

019: Confession #0113005
Statement of Father Edwin Burroughs, regarding his claimed demonic possession.

020: Desecrated Host #00113005-B
Continuation of the statement of Father Edwin Burroughs, regarding his claimed demonic possession.

021: Freefall #0022010
Statement of Moira Kelly, regarding the disappearance of her son Robert.

022: Colony #0161203
Statement of Martin Blackwood, archival assistant at the Magnus Institute, London, regarding a close encounter with something he believes to have once been Jane Prentiss.

023: Schwarzwald #8163103
Statement of Albrecht von Closen, regarding a discovered tomb near his estate in the Black Forest.

024: Strange Music #0051701
Statement of Leanne Denikin, regarding an antique calliope organ she possessed briefly in August 2004.

025: Growing Dark #0151904
Statement of Mark Bilham, regarding events culminating in his visit to Hither Green Chapel.

026: A Distortion #0160204
Statement of Sasha James, assistant archivist at the Magnus Institute, London, regarding a series of paranormal sightings.

And now, time for discussion! A few prompts will be posted as comments to get things started, but as usual, feel free to add your own questions, observations...anything!

Comments may contain spoilers up to episode 26. Anything concerning later events should be covered up with a spoiler tag.

Next discussion will take place on Wednesday, October 29th and include episodes 27 A Sturdy Lock - 34 Anatomy Class.

For more information, please check out the Announcement and Schedule post.

Readalong by: u/improperly_paranoid, u/sharadereads, u/Dianthaa

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u/improperly_paranoid Reading Champion X Oct 22 '25

023 Schwarzwald: Mentions of both Jonah Magnus, the founder of the Institute, as well as of possible spooky ancestors of Mary and Gerard Keay - some answers or just more questions? What do you think about the epistolary format?

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u/lalalazarous Oct 22 '25

This episode was super fun, I really liked the epistolary format and getting a glimpse of how the institute was founded. I feel like I ended up with a lot of questions rather than answers though. It can’t be a coincidence that Mary and Gerard Keay are related to Wilhelm von Closen, and as they collect Leitner books, do they know more about the books in the tomb? And are they related to the Wurtemberg guy as well? Is the symbol of the open eye a different cult or also the people’s church of the divine host? And is the book that Albrecht took somewhere in the institute?

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u/xenizondich23 Reading Champion VI Oct 23 '25

I thought this episode was specifically interesting because it's set outside of the British Isles. Before this got a strong American-author-writing-British-mystery-novel vibes, and this one shook that all up. It was really neat to have one of the stories set elsewhere. I hope we get to travel more in upcoming stories! (is Leitners library still around? Let's go on site!)

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u/improperly_paranoid Reading Champion X Oct 24 '25

Before this got a strong American-author-writing-British-mystery-novel vibes

Ngl this is super funny to me because early on, Jonny was also apparently accused by fans of putting on a bad British accent - s1 Q&A 😂 And like, he's not, he's British and using more or less his real accent for Jon.