Lit Witches: A Fantasy Book Podcast
Wolves or men with wings? 'Dire Bound' by Sable Sorensen and our addiction to romantasy
30 Mar 2026
Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
Chapter 1: What is 'Dire Bound' about and who wrote it?
This podcast is recorded and produced on Cammeraygal country. We acknowledge the traditional custodians and the first storytellers of this land and pay our respects to elders past and present.
I mean, do I say shadow daddy? Is that fine? It's kind of that.
We can say the shadow daddy effect. We can definitely say that.
You kind of try to expect it. I'm almost, like, excited. Like, I'm looking forward to maybe reading something one day where they'll throw me a plot twist and it'll be, you know, the blonde. The blonde. Yeah. Will it ever be the blondes again? I mean, Izzy hopes so.
He's the only blonde. The only blonde for you.
The only blonde in my heart.
Jace. Yeah. As soon as love interest is blonde, you're like, oh, it's not going to work.
As soon as Damon Salvatore came into my life, I was like, oh, well. Yeah. Hello, and a very warm welcome to Lit Witches, the podcast for fantasy readers, writers, and all things in between. I'm your host, Adelaide Jensen, and today I'm joined by Izzy Wero and Sinead Oosthuizen. We'll be talking about Diabound by Sable Sorensen and the explosion of Romantasy.
Before we get too into our discussion, I wanted to start with a little icebreaker. Who was our very first book crush?
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Chapter 2: Who were our first book crushes and how did they influence us?
So let's get into it. How did we feel about Direbound? Oh, my goodness.
I look to you. I know. We're going to be like, who's going first? Honestly, I was just like, yes, the fourth wing comparison is completely accurate. I also just feel like it's this amazing mishmash of all of the kind of YA fantasy tropes that we, as we were talking about, grew up reading. Cassie Clare, you know, Leigh Bardugo, Sarah J Maas, the early and the late years.
I think it's just got that kind of addictive quality with all of these fun tropes and like themes, but kind of packaged up in a different way. So I'm excited to talk about it more.
That was so articulate and perfect. I'm just going to say, yeah, I really enjoyed it. It was so, it was such an easy, addictive read. And yeah, so trope heavy that like, it was just like coming home. I was like, oh yes, we love, we love, we love.
Keep going. Just being so comforting about that. I'm coming into a book and being like, here are all the tropes I love. I can already see where part of this is going. And obviously the pacing part of it. And that addictive fast read is very much part of this genre.
Absolutely. I mean, it's what, it's about a 500 or 600 page book as most of them are, but it did not feel like that.
No, I lift it up and show people and they're like, whoa. And I'm like, I know. We lift books. We don't lift weights. Although we can do both.
We can. This is how we train to read Alchemist. You have to go to the gym first so that you can lift the book. You've got to work your way up. So obviously part of the romanticist genre is you're now crossing fantasy or whatever it is in with romance, which has a much more rigid set of rules around what can happen in the plot, the expectations of the romance and the tropes.
And often they explore things like first love, found family, trauma. What do those kind of tropes do for you? What do you love about it?
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Chapter 3: What are the main themes and tropes in 'Dire Bound'?
It's like, give me a reason. Yeah, if you meet someone and now you're best friends.
It's like, show me the bonding.
Show me the heist.
The Six of Crows kind of, you know. Exactly. There needs to be some sort of trauma that you go through together.
Yes.
Which does, in fact, happen in this book, right? She's thrown, like, Merrin is thrown into these trials and then does immediately kind of come upon these twins who form a very fragile relationship but do help each other in this way where these bonds are formed quite early on. But it's not too easy.
Yeah, no. I mean, it's literally life and death for a while. And it did feel like that whole scaling the wall part was terrifying. Yeah. It's incredibly high stakes right from the beginning.
Right from the beginning. I loved that.
Yeah.
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Chapter 4: How does 'Dire Bound' compare to other popular romantasy novels?
As soon as Damon Salvatore came into my life, I was like, oh, well. Was Dale, was his name Dale? Dane? Dane. Was he blonde? I don't know if he was, but he was like light brown maybe.
Is that why none of us liked him?
But also the touching of the face. Oh, yeah.
Boundaries. Very problematic. And I think that's how they signal that sometimes is the change in love interest is there's like red. or there's, like, something problematic. But I didn't get that initially. And so I was like, oh, this is interesting.
This is interesting.
I did wonder.
I was like, how is she going to switch this? Or they, sorry.
There was something that I don't know. There was some sort of unsettling feeling that I had in the beginning. I think it was to do with, like, his availability where he was saying, like, I can only see you, like, once every two weeks.
Very suspicious.
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Chapter 5: What role do love triangles play in 'Dire Bound'?
Yeah.
I was very – because I'm not really a wolf girl. I'm more of a vampire girl. So I was just very like – oh my gosh, no, I need to be more for the wolves in this book.
So it's an adjustment for me. Yeah, I was going to say, definitely, because I feel like even in books where you have evil vampires, you always have your good ones that you root for. Like I was immediately thinking of, well, Vampire Diaries, of course, but then Vampire Academy, where you can have your strigoi, which are kind of evil. And they reminded me a lot of the siphons.
So true.
Yeah, because it's so easy to draw a binary. with vampires, right, and be like, but they're going against their instincts. They are. They kill people out of note. And, hey, like this could be something that is explored in future books.
I think the one thing I wanted a bit more of was that outside world because obviously this entire novel is very much like the internal her dealing with the trials, learning about, you know,
her life and you know trying to get to her sister but she's not it's taking place in a very closed space and I guess it is also a bit of a classic of the genre that's always the first book is that and then it expands out into the world because I wanted a little bit more of where is the enemy and give me a little bit more on why I'm we're facing this outside oppression because I'm not feeling the the total uh impetus of that yet yeah yeah yeah but I think that'll come
Hopefully. With next book. Maybe there will be a good vampire.
I'm holding out hope.
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Chapter 6: How does the concept of bonded creatures work in the story?
Well, all right. Well, let's wrap up our chat about Diaban now. Do you feel like you've gotten everything out of your system?
We're wrapping up the chat about Diaban? Yeah. I've got so much more we can say. Can we talk about how icky the king was? Oh, yeah. He was so icky. I love that you were serious, like, no, I have more. I was like, no.
That's also a bit of a classic, though, right? Because to cast them as evil, they have to be some sort of predator. And it's like, how could Lee be so good if his dad is like that? Oh, I should have known.
But then the thing is, sometimes the prince is good if his dad is like that. Like Dorian. That's why I thought there would be a redemption, but no.
No. No.
But the king was icky. I was confused as to why because, I mean, the direwolves and their leader seemed so powerful. It was the sword, wasn't it? I was like why was he holding such power over them when they could probably rip his head off if needed? Not that we condone violence but in our books we do. We do, yeah.
And just the dress and the room, both being from Stark, I was like, I knew it. Like, of course Lee didn't get you a room. And she's like, oh, it leads straight to his. This is what he wants. I was like, no, he doesn't. Of course it's Stark. You were so much better at guessing. Lee doesn't care about you. I just knew it. I don't know.
There was something about it. The vibes were off. But then did it redeem itself by how it subverted your expectation?
Oh, of course. Yeah.
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