S08.33: Ian Mackenzie is DTF: The Madness of Lord Ian Mackenzie

Fated Mates - Romance Books for Novel People

Fated Mates

Books, Society & Culture, Arts, Documentary

4.9 • 967 Ratings

🗓️ 6 May 2026

⏱️ 97 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

We’re deep diving into one of our favorite historicals from the 00s today — Jennifer Ashley’s The Madness of Lord Ian Mackenzie. It’s a great follow up to our Paris episode last week, but we also talk about how Ashley really wrote the heck out of this book. We talk about widows, about sex in historicals, about autism rep in historicals, romance families, and the way this series electrified us as readers. This book is a straight up banger.

If you’re interested in learning more about the AH2 Historical Trailblazer Kickstarter, featuring beautiful, hardcover special editions of Lord of Scoundrels, Indigo, The Magpie Lord, Butterfly Swords and Dreaming of You, head over to the Kickstarter page and sign up for updates!

If you’d like to continue the conversation about The Madness of Lord Ian Mackenzie or any of Jennifer Ashley’s other books, please come join the Fated Mates Discord, which is accessible to our Patreon subscribers. By joining the Patreon, you meet other Fated Mates listeners and get an extra monthly episode from us. Support us and learn more at fatedmates.net/patreon.

Our next read along is Seven Days in June by Tia Williams. Get it at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Apple Books, wherever you get your books, or with your monthly subscription to Kindle Unlimited.

Notes

Check out the AH2 kickstarter, partnering with Fated Mates and Julia Whelan’s Audiobrary. It goes live next week!
Dua Lipa met her fiance Callum Turner because they both were reading the same book, Trust by Hernan Diaz. Dua Lipa’s book club is called Service 95.
You, too, might enjoy reading Dungeon Crawler Carl. Or Reacher. Or Murderbot. Jen is thinking of going to bedazzle a copy of Dungeon Crawler Carl, but is that too silly?
Dorchester Publishing was a house that published mostly mass market paperbacks, and it shuttered shortly after the publishing of The Madness of Lord Ian MacKenzie. The editor of the book, Leah Hultenschmidt, is now at Forever.
There’s a new-ish translation of The Odyssey by Emily Wilson that you might like. Xenia is the ancient Greek word for hospitality, and Wilson talks a about how the word comes from the root xenos, meaning both stranger and friend. Maybe if we were all a little more open to those we don’t know, things would be different.

The Rest

For even more info about this episode, and to explore everything Fated Mates has to offer, visit: https://fatedmates.net/episodes/2026/5/4/0833-the-madness-of-lord-ian-mackenzie
If you wish you had six more days in a week of people talking about romance, may we suggest joining our Patreon? Aside from an additional episode every month you get access to our Discord, where other romance readers are talking about books they love (and many other things!) all the time. It’s so fun! Learn more about the Patreon and go join those cool people who love romance as much as you do at patreon.com/fatedmates.
Beyond your favorite podcast app, you can find us on Instagram, Threads, Blue Sky, Tumblr, and probably some other places, too, if you look hard enough.
If you've never listened to our Stop Book Banning episode, there's no better time than now.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Well, a deep dive. We haven't done a deep dive in a long time.
0:04.1	I know. I'm very excited. Wait, I have actually.
0:06.6	Well, I guess we did ice blood at barbarians, but I mean, but I think that was a while ago. I mean, you know, time has no meaning anymore. Right. Exactly. Okay. I do want to, okay, I have some like fun stats to share with you, Sarah. So a couple of months ago, and I have, like, been saving this in my inbox and
0:22.8	always have been like, oh, I should like share this. And then today is finally the day. I
0:27.0	remember to actually do it as we're recording. I got an email from a, like a woman essentially
0:33.1	who like is a publicist and she like, she has like a bunch of information about bumble the
0:39.4	dating app and i was like okay this is like really interesting and what it says is so she shared
0:45.1	this with me and i was like yeah this is really fun i should talk about this on the podcast so
0:48.9	basically it says that according to bumble's findings 61% of Gen Z and millennial daters agree that they are looking for a partner who shares their love of reading.
1:01.6	And I think this was partly inspired by...
1:04.0	Did you say 61%?
1:07.0	Wow.
1:08.0	And apparently this is, like, part of this was like driven by, you know, dual Lipa is a big reader.
1:15.0	And she and her met her partner, this guy she's going to marry, I guess, while they were reading the same book, which is really cute.
1:21.3	That's cute.
1:22.3	I know.
1:22.8	So I think like one of the things that's really interesting is like right so there's all this
1:28.7	information that like 72% now me and all these are dating apps maybe this is aspirational I believe
1:35.1	you know I understand that but I still found this charming right that 72% of bumble users say it's fun to geek out over a book with who they date, that they are more likely to swipe right if the person mentions a love of reading in their profile.
1:54.4	Sure.
1:54.9	Well, there are less chances of you being a dirtbag.
1:59.6	Sure.
	...

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