Part lesbian revenge fantasy, part hallucinogenic fever dream - this book is exactly what I needed. Metal From Heaven is a coming of age tale filled with blood, s*x, and sedition. Tamsyn Muir fans: you’re going to want to move this to the top of your TBR!

Marney Honeycutt is a lustertouched child. She is allergic to the ichorite metal her parents work with in a luster factory - metal she can also sense and manipulate. When the factory goes on strike to request medical help for their lustertouched children, they are massacred by their employer. Marney vows to one day destroy the man who ordered her family killed. She runs away, joins a cabal of irreverent outlaws, and meets dissidents determined to one day topple governments. But it’s a cruel world led by tyrants and psychopaths, and they do not relinquish power.

Marney hides her pain and anger under tattoos and bravado. If you loved Gideon in Gideon the Ninth, you will love Marney. Clarke’s prose and writing style will appeal to fans of Harrow the Ninth, which also means it will not work for everyone. Marney hallucinates when near ichorite, so you have to interpret parts of the plot through her delirium. Clarke assumes you can pick up world building through context. Very little is explained.

I’ve been reading a lot of fantasy-light books lately, and it was SO nice to finally sink my teeth into something this layered and complex. I loved everything about this book.

Strap in because Metal From Heaven by August Clarke is one dark, mean, but spirited fantasy novel that takes a swing at capitalism and lands its fists.

Marney Honeycutt just watched everyone she knew get cut down in the streets of Ignavia City. Industry Yann Chauncey heard the workers cry out for better conditions and to have their “lustre touched” condition researched. He answered the only way he knew how, with death and violence. Marney is the only survivor, and happens to be lustre touched herself, making her escape on a train outside the city with the help of bandit women calling themselves the Choir. A decade later Marney is known as the “Whip Spider,” and has the opportunity for revenge. Chauncey’s daughter is looking for a suitor, and Marney will pretend to be an aristocrat just to get a shot at Chauncey. But will she do it before a war that will change everything?

Metal From Heaven snuck up on me. I was enthralled by the idea, but since I had no expectations from Clarke, I was worried it would fall into a cookie cutter “romantasy” with trappings of industrial worker action. While the bombastic start chipped away at my cold heart, it wasn’t until Marney was pulled into the sway of the Choir that I began to be swallowed by Clarke’s narrative. Her entry into the life of crime, becoming one of the most notorious brigands in the industrialized world was seductive, though harsh. Clarke pulled down my defenses with ease and panache, to the point that I forgot they even existed. It helped that most of the story leads up to the synopsis, building up Marney and the many men and women of the Choir and its allies.

It also didn’t hurt that Clarke is just a damn good writer. I don’t know what’s in the sauce these days, but I’ve read quite a few books this year from newer writers who have amazing prose. Clarke gets you to really feel how Marney feels through the story. Her cynical view, but deep abiding love for the women she fights with and for. The gritty world in which they exist ventilates off the page like smokestacks without a filter. A second person perspective was employed to incredible effect, giving Marney a real voice, and implicating the reader within her life, and the world she lives in. It really pays off in big ways as the story continues, and Clarke absolutely destroyed me with its implications. The slow burn of its use, the perfectly timed and inconsistent reminders that Marney is talking to you, and where it ultimately leads, left me speechless. I want to hug Clarke for it.

The worldbuilding is complex and rich, though it may leave some confused. Clarke employs a vagueness to a lot of the cultural worldbuilding. I don’t mean this in the sense of they wave their hands and it’s just “that’s how it works.” It’s more that they approach it from the character’s perspective in their own world. The religions and cultures that intertwine have their surfaces scratched in a way that someone who kind of knows the tenets would. It makes navigating their differences an interesting problem, and forces Marney to truly read her opponent’s and friends on a deeper level. It avoids generalizations and plays with the idea that these systems and beliefs have changed over time and influenced each other. Marney clearly understands her own religion and the ties that bind her to it, but has a spectrum of knowledge around the others, depending on her closeness to those who practice. It feels fresh and exciting having to navigate the world and understand how it would make one’s head spin. The various faiths and cultures are also described deliciously with Marney’s calculating attention to detail too. As the reader, you feel like you’re inside her head as she decides her next move.

That’s not to forget the gender and sex politics that grow between every crack in the book. They pop through in beautiful and gritty ways. They feel lived in, explored, and fluid. I don’t know if they used historical vocabulary or invented their own (rudimentary searches yielded nothing), but it really drew me in. I’m a sucker for these kinds of things because I was raised a particular way, despite the lack of religion in my life. But watching Marney come into herself, have relations with other women, and navigate her friendships was as delightful as it was heartbreaking. I also really adored that it didn’t feel like it “got in the way,” in the sense that Marney was able to have room for her romantic, sexual, and political interests. They didn’t confuse each other. They weren’t clean-cut either, but neither of them hampered the progress of the story in a way that one could expect in a story billed as a sapphic revenge romance. Again it wasn’t pretty, but it really pulled me in to see it so up front. Also, easily some of the most exhilarating sex scenes I’ve read in a while.

But Clarke doesn’t just stop their worldbuilding there. After all, their world is on the cusp of an industrial revolution. Industry Yann Chauncey wants to be the sole provider of Ichorite and the progress it promises, and boy, does Clarke indulge the reader here. I will preface this by saying I am a certain type of freak. I love seeing someone build a system, describe it, and set it into motion. I want the details, the academic understanding coated with a venomous loathing for its processes, and by god did Clarke deliver for me. Your mileage may vary, but if you want an intimate fictional look at how land possession, industrial processes, capital accumulation, and the rigidness of landed aristocracy all clash together, then Metal From Heaven is for you. The dance that the Choir and its allies have to perform in order to maintain their secret while preparing for a war they know is coming is captivating. They take their enemies seriously, plan accordingly and don’t take any half-measures. These aren’t plans made by children in the vague hope that something will work out. They are prepared to slap the lion in the face with their bare hands and keep fighting after it’s awakened. And it works so well because Clarke has built a material world in which these different ideologies and ways of living exist. There are no maps, but you can feel the geography, feel the resources that are being described, and know the elites who won’t give them up to some upstart. It made my heart sing to read the descriptions Clarke gives of this world, and the kind of progress that Chauncey and his protege are planning to rip from the ground and the hands of their workers.

Those things would make a good book on their own, and I’d be satisfied, but Clarke had to go and write an excellent character in Marney Honeycutt. Characters for me are usually just a good vehicle for the story, allowing me to delve through the themes an author wants to present. But on rare occasions, I really latch onto a character, and Marney is one of them. She’s badass, smart, notorious to her enemies, and reliable amongst friends, but most of all, she is truly devoted. She does it for her loved ones and the promise of the hereafter. Every obstacle is just another chance to rededicate herself to the cause. It is both some far-off idea that she will never obtain, but also just within grasp if she reaches far enough. Her own well-being is a chip to be played, not one to hold onto dearly. It’s inspirational and heroic in a very specific sense, even though it’s portrayed as what one does.

The last thing I want to mention, even though I could wax on and on about this book, is Clarke absolutely delivers on the ending. I want to talk about it so badly, but it’s something to behold. Clarke uses everything they have set up through the rest of the book to tell a truly unique ending. A beautiful conclusion that is borne through suffering and perseverance. It’s something to aspire to.

Metal From Heaven is one of my top books of the year. It’s well-paced, filled with character, world, emotion, grit, sex, pulp, and the promise that there is work to be done, just not the work you’re told to do. It’s deliciously written front to back and owns its premise. The acknowledgments were a real treat, and Clarke wears their influences with pride. Pick this up. It’s brutal, but it punches up while showing you there is still a fight worth winning.

Rating: Metal From Heaven – Divine.
-Alex

I ended up buying the book due to formatting issues in the ARC

My original, gut-feel review stated "I am entirely too stupid for this book" and I stand by it. But I am also sapphic and was utterly intrigued by the premise of this book and the promise of lesbianism, WHICH!! It was totally delivered on! Without there even being a romance!

This will be entirely subjective to everyone but personally I couldn't stop reading this. Even when I was confused I trusted the process and kept reading. Even when I definitely thought some things were a bit hard to believe and a little too convenient, I was too far to stop. There's definitely stuff I can pinpoint as being what made this drop a star for me, but it was still a memorable reading experience.

This book is very much not for me. The prose is so flowery that it is borderline incomprehensible. I was also so bored. The story started to pick up around the 50% mark, but by that point I’d already checked out. It just took way too long to get the story going. I don’t necessarily think the first half really even counts as setup. I have no idea what the point was. I think it was just world building and nothing else. Also, this is a personal preference thing, but this book is very… salacious, I suppose? There isn’t really that much sex, but every time Marney sees a woman, she starts thinking about how much she wants to have sex with her. It just felt excessive. While I can read books with a lot of sexual content in them, I don’t particularly enjoy it. But I can normally stick it out because I enjoy the plot or characters. But the plot in this story took too long to get started and I didn’t really care for any of the characters. If you are hesitant on whether you want to read this book, I recommend reading a couple chapters to see if you like the writing style. If you like the overly flowery prose, I think you’ll enjoy it. If not, your better off just dnf-ing it.

A chaotic sketch of a novel, "Metal from Heaven" is probably not like anything you've read this year. Clarke has created a feast for the senses, but the work as a whole is at times nearly incomprehensible. Our narrator, Marney was born with a genetic mutation that often leaves her in a hallucinogenic state, and readers must stumble through the hazy narrative right along with her.

There is a lot of good and interesting meat here, but I don't know that the struggle was worth the reward.

I enjoyed the story this book told, but felt simultaneously overwhelmed by the level of detail in descriptions and underwhelmed by the depth of character development in all characters but the central few. I kept wanting a list of all the main characters and how they were related to one another in the bandit group and in high society. Eventually, I figured it out, but the similarity in strength and boldness of characters made it difficult to differentiate.

The ending made me go back a reread the beginning of the book all over again. It truly helped resolve the story in a perfectly fictional and magical way, since the resolution that book's core theme demanded has yet to be handled well in a realistic way. This ended up reading like an elaborate fable.

I am thankful to Net Galley and the opportunity to read this book.

4.5 stars rounded up.

This book had one of the oddest writing styles and prose that I've ever had the pleasure of reading. It's definitely something that won't work for everyone. I'd even argue that only a small percentage of readers might be into this.

I gotta say though, as part of that tiny niche, I thoroughly enjoyed this book. I loved the story so much that I bought a signed and personalized copy from Seminary Co-op Bookstore in Chicago.

Even with its unnecessarily difficult to comprehend prose, the in media res beginning that threw me off my feet, and the entirely new worldbuilding (with its different words for familiar terms and concepts, such as "crawlies" for sapphics/wlw), I had a great time going on this anti-imperial adventure with Marney and co.

While this might officially be compared to the Locked Tomb series, I'd say it's more like Vajra Chandrasekera's novels and short stories. As much as I love the Locked Tomb from the depts of my cold, dark heart, I don't really think it's the right comparison since Metal from Heaven approaches its themes (power structures, queer identities, etc.) in a slightly more grounded manner while the Locked Tomb uses a more whimsical approach.

Despite its quirks and oddities, this is a classic tale of community building and revolution, mixed with class consciousness and queerness. If you love those types of fantasy novels, then give this a try.

Thank you to Erewhon Books and NetGalley for this arc.

Metal from Heaven was a brutal story about revenge and justice and revolution. I loved the found family aspects and the action packed sequences! I was looking for a book outside what is typical in the sci-fi/fantasy genre, and this delivered! It helped get me out of a huge reading slump. The writing was different, the world was visceral, and the characters were relatable. I would recommend this to anyone looking for something different to keep them engaged and hungry for more. This was a book I kept saying "Just one more chapter" well into the morning hours.

Excellent book, loved it! Looking forward to more from this author! Apologies for the lateness of my review

This was a beautifully bonkers fever dream of a book. If you read the blurb and thought 'this is absolutely for me' like I did, then I promise you will not be disappointed. I was drawn to it for the comparison to Gideon the Ninth and the Princess Bride, which Clarke has clearly drawn inspiration from (I'll adore any book with a 'dramatis personae') However, they have masterfully composed that inspiration into something entirely fresh, an invocation to sordid politics, industrial revolution, myth, faith, and sapphic highwaymen.

Out of all the ARCs I've received this year, Metal from Heaven by August Clarke is my winner. I knew it was going to be special when I requested it but it absolutely exceeded all my expectations.

The publisher described it as "a bloody lesbian revenge tale and political fantasy set in a glittering world transformed by industrial change – and simmering class warfare" and I was hooked just based on that description. If I had to simplify my impressions, I'd say a mix of Hunger Games and Frostpunk vibes but make it very very queer and more complex.

This book has probably my favorite political and religious systems that I've encountered in a fantasy and I hope the author later writes more novels set in this world because the lore is just amazing. I also want to praise Metal from Heaven as a parable: this is how you tell an anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist tale without it being didactic and preachy.

I also enjoyed that it was structured a bit like an old-fashioned Bildungsroman that starts with the protagonist's childhood and takes you through their whole life and the events that formed them into the person they are.

It's interesting from a genre aspect, too. I'd generally say it's a fantasy but there aren't that many fantastical elements, except for a big one that's kind of the essence of the whole story. There are hints of sci-fi but those are only revealed very late in the book, and the vibes reminded me of steampunk but it's not exactly that either. Additionally, it's very philosophical (especially the ending) and it's a leftist revenge story through and through, there's just so much rightful anger. It will definitely make you want to rise up against the ruling class and seize the means of production ✊🏻

And just a fun tidbit to illustrate how inventive and cool this world is: one of the languages mentioned in the book has a class-based 'truth' tense and 'hearsay' tense so the way someone talks will decide how much weight what they say has. What someone from a lower class says is automatically hearsay and someone from a higher class will automatically be believed 🤯

Thank you NetGalley and Erewhon Books for the ARC, it was a magical experience 💜

I'd not read anything by this author before, and was intrigued by the premise, so in I dove... and after a few pages, was honestly wondering what I'd gotten myself into.

When I say I haven't read anything like this before, I mean literally that. The prose here is SO purple! It's dense, thick with metaphor and almost tactile in its sensuality. This is both a good and a bad thing.

At first, I wasn't sure I'd make it through. Then the tone clicked with me and pages began to speed past as I became caught up in the adventure and fully invested in Marney's mission: to avenge her family and discover just what is going on with the mysterious metal at the heart of this society, ichorite.

The first half of the book is a fantastic coming-of-age adventure, with pirates and train-robberies, strange magic and self-discovery. Then it takes a sharp turn into a strange fantasy Jane Austen tale about catching the hand of an heiress! Yes, it makes sense it context, but it was rather jarring.

I appreciated very much how Marney is coded autistic in many ways, as reflected in the writing style. Her honesty is beautiful to read, her experiences told exactly as she feels them, and her confusion as the book goes on is absolutely natural - Society is a strange place, and politics is not her thing at all.

But as we get to the conclusion... things seemed to fall apart.

I guessed the twist, I admit, although that didn't spoil things for me; it was interesting to see how Marney dealt with the sudden discovery (no spoilers!).

While the final segment is... unique (!) and again, makes sense in context, I felt as if I'd suddenly been shoved out of the story. Everything became so experiential and verbose that it was hard to keep track. If this was a movie, it'd be the end of 'Dr Strange', full of light, colours and sounds to convey the myriad feelings happening all at once. It's A Lot. I didn't feel entirely satisfied with the ending, either.

Upshot: this is a good book. If you can get into it and past the difficult writing style, you'll likely enjoy. I can see a fair few readers being turned off by that, though, so it's a definite case of 'your mileage may vary.' I'm certainly interested to see what August Clarke does next, particularly how their writing evolves (as it no doubt will).

I'd also appreciate more information on the world itself. Place names, histories and characters were thrown about with abandon, and I had no map to refer to. Sometimes there's information-dumps but a little more setup would've been nice.

Oh, and yes: it's VERY queer.

Metal from Heaven es uno de los lanzamientos más importantes del año para Erewhon Books, que ha lanzado una campaña de marketing acorde a sus planes. Y es que la novela de August Clarke tiene muchas bazas para ser un bombazo, aunque conmigo haya fallado totalmente.


Metal from Heaven es una novela excesiva, que trata muchos temas de importancia pero que precisamente por su grandiosidad se pierde a veces en su propia complejidad, con una prosa que tampoco hace nada fácil la lectura, ya que la protagonista se dirige en numerosas ocasiones a un tú que muere al principio del libro y el propio relato está fracturado y tergiversado por la enfermedad que sufre.

En el comienzo de la novela seguiremos los pasos de Marney, que trabaja en una mina de ichorite, el metal caído del cielo que está propulsando la revolución industrial en su mundo. Poco importa que para su uso sea necesaria la explotación de personas, que las alergias al mineral sean terribles y que la muerte aceche en la mina, cuando hay pingües beneficios a la vista. Podríamos pensar que estamos ante una crítica al capitalismo más descarnado pero no es solo eso, ya que Marney se embarcará en una carrera desesperada para conseguir vengarse del dueño de la mina y Malvado por antonomasia de la historia.

Se nota también cierto aire de western en esta segunda parte de la historia, con asaltos a trenes en vez de diligencias y la vida de los forajidos expuesta en toda su crudeza. El influjo del tema de la familia encontrada también se palpa en todas las escenas desde que acogen a Marney tras su huida de la mina. También hay una diversidad religiosa que aunque Clarke pretende clarificar y resulta bastante atractiva, no llega a fructificar en ningún momento.

Las escenas de sexo son explícitas y duras, como reflejo de la dominación que existe en el mundo. Mucho sexo lésbico, con constantes referencias a arneses y demás parafernalia que puede hacer sentir incómodo a algunos lectores. No obstante, creo que no es ni de lejos lo más representativo de esta extensa novela.

Me hubiera gustado que se hubieran centrado algo más en la lucha de clases, que sin duda la hay, pero creo que August Clarke ha querido abarcar tanto en una sola novela que no acaba de ser una obra fluida, si no una amalgama de temas, la escoria que queda en el crisol cuando se lleva a cabo la fundición. Y eso sin llegar a hablar del final de la novela, que no creo que esté mal definido si lo calificamos como lisérgico, descendiendo directamente en el terreno del weird.

En definitiva es un libro muy difícil de describir, al que es mejor llegar con la mente abierta y las expectativas quizá no muy elevadas, para entrar en el juego que nos plantea August Clarke. Para mí, no ha funcionado, pero he visto muchas reseñas elogiosas, así que quizá el problema sea mío.

I was hospitalised that’s why I unfortunately couldn’t finish reading this book. But what I was able to read was alright. I just don’t know if I’ll buy it myself to finish reading it.

A confusing, conflicting, and gripping book that had me thinking about it days after I finished. For fans of Gideon the Ninth, anti-capitalist revolutionaries, and queerness.

I’m sorry but I had to DNF the book after some time. The narration made it hard for me to fully enjoy the book and I thought it would be a little different than what I’m used to. Unfortunately, I couldn’t focus on the story. The world building information was thrown at the reader a little too lightly, as well.

This was a deliciously evocative story with so much illustrative imagery and fierce queerness. I want to live in this world and join the choir as a bandit. It's so good and I highly recommend if you love good world building and boundless, unapologetic queerness.

Told in first person, Metal from Heaven is a record of the life of Marney Honeycutt. Orphan, bandit, murderer, seducer, lover but never beloved, friend, lustertouched, and survivor. She survived the murder of her family at the order of the factory owner; she became a recognized member of the Choir — a bandit group romping merrily across the world — and there learned to turn her gift of magic from an accident to a skill. She fell in love with a girl who loved someone else. She learned to fight, to smoke, to drink … but all of it, every bit of it, was just Marney biding her time until she could kill Yann I. Chauncey, the man who had her family put to death, and in so doing, killed the person Marney loved most in the world.

And now Chauncey will die.

This book, when I finished it, had me go “huh.” Not in a bad way, not in a good way. It was more an acknowledgement that the book was over. There’s noting vast and grand about the ending, no big culmination of events or character work, no cliffhanger, and I had no anger at the ending. Honestly, I really wish the book would have been either worse or better, or left me with some reaction I could easily use to structure a review around. Instead, it’s a book of almosts, and I hate that. I feel infected with Marney’s placid acquiescence.

Marney, as a character, isn’t really there for much of the book. The writing is so heavy on style, so enamored with its conceit that the characters never develop beyond being names and pretty faces, with brief identifiers like this one smokes, this one’s mean, this one smiles. Even Marney herself feels like nothing more than a collection of statements and a drifting emptiness of apathy and resignation. She talks of vengeance, but that’s all it is, with little action. Instead, the plot is a whirling, chaotic stream of ideas and Marney feels like a leaf drifting from one moment to the next, never bothering to pay more than a cursory attention to anything, inured against any and all feeling. She — and the book — are a directionless stream of consciousness. It’s frustrating because Marney drifts by so many interesting things! This is a world where people ride boars instead of horses, keep otters instead of dogs; there are several religions that I would have loved to have seen more of, countries on the verge of war, an industrial age threatening to destroy the world, magic and politics and rich cultures, and Marney doesn’t seem to give a shit about any of it. Reading between the lines at the hints dropped by other characters adds a certain mystery to things, making me want more of the world.

Marney is gay — or a crawly, as they call them here, linking homosexuality with something disgusting and unpleasant — and loves women. And this is a world rich in women. Bandits, prostitutes, a noble class where a woman can be a Baron and not a Baroness, where two women (or men) can wed. One culture has five gender roles: Male penetrator, male penetrate-ee, female penetrator, female penatrate-ee, and those who do neither. Marney dresses in a masculine fashion of braces (suspenders) and trousers, while others wear slinky dresses or lush gowns, but this isn’t just a queernormative world; this is a subculture in the greater world, which is marvelous. The ideas on gender and sexuality were very well done, as is Marney’s own sexuality. She loves women, loves giving them pleasure, but doesn’t want to be touched. She doesn’t want to feel physical release in that way. It’s something she’s unsettled by, something she’s never wanted. And it’s interesting, and something I would have like to have seen explored, the idea that sexuality isn’t just about sex, but about the person and the emotions and desires they both feel and don’t. But that’s just a moment in the story.

There’s a wedding plot, where Marney has to pretend to be someone else to win Chauncey’s daughter as a bride, hinting at the plot showing up again, and a cast of interesting and difficult people are introduced. But Marney’s off in her thoughts again, leaving the motives, personalities, and politics of everyone else off page. All Marney does is think about “you,” her lost love, and herself, and it’s an entire book of almost 450 pages of this drifty, aimless, leisurely stream of consciousness. And it goes on and on and on and on and then the book’s over. The writing is good. While I dislike the style, I can’t deny that it was consistent, but it is also so very monotonous. Every now and then something would show up — a religion, some politics, some commentary — and I would be caught, only for it to become an insubstantial nothing. It felt like the book had something it wanted to say, but because the author leaned so heavily on the style, and so heavily on this idea of Marney and her madness, it wasn’t able to do more than raise a point, glance at an idea, or ask a question before it was back into Marney’s thoughts.

This book isn’t for me. I don’t mind the lack of plot, because the world building is so strong, but that’s all the book has. It feels like disjointed scraps of truly interesting world building with no connective thread, a story with no plot, and a character with no agency. This book is the author’s debut, and I will be curious to see what else they write.

This kind of reminded me of Red Rising at first, but I will say the story was so much more interesting for me than Red was. The characters had such depth and the world was so rich and well thought out. Fantastic!

Absolutely outstanding even if at times it was incredibly hard to get into or understand due to the complexity of the prose. I thought I knew where the book was going at first and was absolutely shocked at the ending, though I wouldn’t say it didn’t fit or didn’t make sense. Masterful and unapologetically queer.