I DNF'ed this book at about 33%. For a book that's almost 450 pages that's over 150 pages read, and eventually I just couldn't do it. This is a standalone but based on the pacing you would think it's a series. I also know that this is an ARC but I found myself having to read passages over and over because they didn't make any sense. I was also just so confused about...so many things. The idea of this one was a cool one, but it was just a big miss for me. Don't let that stop you from picking it up though, because I know there are several people who have really enjoyed it!

Highlights
~the strangest metal you’ve ever met
~unexpected otters
~the life of a highwaywoman is the life
~service-top MC ftw
~I’m an anarchist now and I’m not sorry

Metal From Heaven grabs you by the throat with the very first line, and doesn’t let go until long after the last.

I still have bruises. I am scarred where this book touched me; I am branded.

And I am so, so good with that.

Metal From Heaven is a feral, phantasmagoric fantasy with bloody knuckles and otherworldly oil between its teeth, an anarchist bacchanal as sharp as it is gorgeous, hot pink and vicious. It’s almost impossibly vivid, every detail jewelled and gleaming, every line a decadent feast, electric and crackling. It’s an iridescent lightning strike, and you’ll find clarke’s prose seared like Lichtenberg figures across your skin before it’s done.

My blood was thick and vibrant. Cut me and find grenadine. Cut me and find white hot light.

The blurb has the plot covered pretty well: Marney’s family and community are all murdered for a peaceful work strike by Chauncey, the man who discovered and discovered how to utilise ichorite, a weird metal that can be used for almost anything. He didn’t care about his workers; they protested; he had them killed. Marney falls in with bandits; grows up; and eventually masquerades as a noble to get close to Chauncey’s daughter, with the goal of killing Chauncey. And – because where would the story be if they didn’t? – things get complicated.

>I understood that we had a future of incomprehensible beauty. I just lacked the words for it then.<

But even before we get to the plot, the structure of Metal From Heaven is already unusual. The opening lines are spoken from the end of the story;

>Know I adore you. Look out over the glow. The cities sundered, their machines inverted, mountains split and prairies blazing, that long foreseen Hereafter crowning fast.<

What’s a Hereafter? Who is adored? What’s happening?

What’s happening is Marney telling her story. To us, but not really us. To one person in particular.

Marney survives her family’s massacre, and a single moment of careless, casual kindness – a stranger, not just feeding her, but feeding her the kind of dessert she’s never beheld before – hooks her fate in with that of the Choir: anarchist communists who steal from the rich to support their own hidden community in the far-off Fingerbluffs. They are Hereafterists (does that ring a bell?), working towards paradise on earth (the Hereafter) with every breath, defiantly discarding the constrictions of religion, gender, sexuality, and anything else that seeks to restrain them.

And it’s absolutely beautiful.

>We leaned off our lurchers and gave luxurious silks and fine jewels to everyone who gathered to watch us pass, and the crooked teeth they showed us were beautiful, and the air was perfumed with marmalade and tobacco flowers, and Harlow and Sisphe and I reclined on the cliffs like natural princes, eating fruit and sunning ourselves, adorned with scrapes and bruises.<

We’re supposed to be hypnotised by the Fingerbluffs, and I don’t know how anyone could fail to be: it’s a dream, a Kubla Khan of a place where everyone is free to be who they want; where children wear jewels and buying-and-selling is just for fun. But like Kubla Khan, it dissolves like candyfloss when you try to hold it. clarke never zooms in to show us the complicated, messy bits that come with giving society the finger – and this doesn’t feel like clarke being forgetful; it reads as very deliberate. We’re supposed to raise our eyebrows at Marney’s blithe assurance that the Hereafter will be perfect, even though she can’t articulate what that means, never mind how it could be manifested. I’m pretty confident that we’re meant to give a head-tilt at the fact that the Fingerbluffs couldn’t exist without capitalism living next door to steal from – how are the Fingerbluffs going to support themselves in a world with no more rich?

Unclear.

But I can be sure that it’s deliberate because clarke never drops the ball with his worldbuilding. In Metal From Heaven, he’s created a rich world so fully-realised you’ll forget it’s fictional, dazzlingly embroidered with history, competing religions, fashions, gender roles, political structures – nothing has been forgotten, and yet the worldbuilding is never overwhelming. The placement of small, unique details – prayer-pearls, the Bleed, lip-rings, tattoos – infuses the book with the vivid impression of a vast and complicated world, without having to show us every bit of it. Things are close enough to be familiar, with factories and motorcycles and trains, but the tiny elements that remind you that we’re not in our world are like pop rocks candy: glittering and sharp in your mouth, sweet and vital. Battered bread, domesticated otters, blue fruit – dazzling, viscerally convincing, and completely side-stepping any need for info-dumps.

>Two hundred years ago Ignavian revolutionaries had decided it was unjust to have a class-based truth tense and hearsay tense, that is, it was a moral injury for the poor not to be taught truth’s grammar, for everything a working man said to be assumed to be half figment, for the privileged to be the authority on all things.<

Marney herself is a feral tangle of desire and trauma, sharp as broken glass and soft as fur. She’s the kind of fearless whose courage comes from having already written herself off, and good gods she is fucked-up. The biggest critique I have of the Hereafterists is that none of them saw baby!Marney desperately needed healing – but then, just about everyone else among the Hereafterists is broken, too, so maybe there was no one whole enough to help her. Either way, Marney is a fascinating main character; oddly passive in some ways, fervent in her beliefs but uninterested in the nitty-gritty of them, quick to self-sacrifice, uneasy with her body and gender, vicious, rabid. She’s only a few steps above illiterate, which is interesting in a genre where leads are usually supernaturally special; she’s a wild thing who loves softness and luxury and femininity; who wants to make people happy as much as she wants to murder her family’s murderer; who has no pride at all. I adore her.

>It was a disjuncture in the meat of me. A bone-deep fear. That fear was hungry, it wanted, I wanted, I lusted and was satisfied. Just not with hands on me. It sometimes seemed to me I had a cuntless cockless body. I was nothing but output and appetite, I gave, my pleasure lived in my knuckles and my nail beds and the leather belts around my hips. My clit was my tongue. My slit was my throat.<

So what’s this book about? Yes, we know the plot, the plot is in the blurb, but what is it about?

Metal From Heaven is gender-fuckery and untamed queerness, labour politics and workers’ rights, anti-capitalist and gloriously anarchist. What the fuck is femininity weaves through the story, a bright, hot pink ribbon with razored edges. Pink, pink is everywhere: pink is the colour of gender-fuckery, as we see when Amon paints his face not blue for men or black for women, but pink; pink is what Marney sees when she uses her magic, the world smearing and shining around her. This is political fantasy – fiercely, unabashedly political – where there’s nothing on the menu but the rich, the rich and those who’ll betray everyone else to serve them.

>Our fight was with the above and those below who’d betray their comrades to get higher.<

clarke is writing about violence and freedom and sex and kink, the unceasing fight to make the world better, the belief that it can be better. Hope, and what hope costs. It’s gritty and gorgeous in equal measure, deliriously sensual, sexual; it has no interest in genre conventions at all, doesn’t ignore your expectations so much as never recognises that they’re there in the first place. It’s intoxicating and addictive – I have read my advanced reading copy THREE TIMES now, and I will read it many more times, I don’t see how I could ever be done.

And the prose? I highlighted so many lines and passages that I broke my ereader, and I have a long, long list of sentences I need tattooed on me. I have FEASTED on the prose here and I am FED, my word-hunger has never been so satisfied in my LIFE. I already adored clarke’s writing – hells yes I did, and if you haven’t read the Scapegracers trilogy, you bloody well ought to – but my siblings in Satan, the only way I can put this is, Metal From Heaven is the opposite of a lobotomy.

In more ways than one: yes, I galaxy-brained at the painfully exquisite language, but also: this book radicalised me. I’ve been anti-capitalist for a while now, but hi, yes, I’m convinced, anarchist communism is the way to go. Not because the Hereafterists are perfect, but because clarke fucking convinced me that too many of the tenets I’ve taken for granted are an outrage, an unforgivable violence. And I’m eager to see what other readers think, if anyone else has been convinced, and if so, where do we go from here?

>When few rule the many, they must use force to take what they want, and demonstrate force not just to keep it, but to snuff the fires of contradiction from the collective. People above must do this. This is a quality of being above. Someone must be below, and to be below is to be bereft and suffer.<

How often does a book really blow your mind? Really teach you something new, really make you see the world in a different way? NOT OFTEN. Mostly the books we love already align with our own beliefs and views – yes they do, don’t deny it – but every now and then, one comes along like a taser, and it’s going to hurt but the shock jolts you wide awake.

This book is a taser.

>It was not intuition, it was insanity and faith.<

When you put everything together, plot and worldbuilding and stunning main character and themes and prose–! This BOOK, this book is a nonpareil, a crown jewel, a comet that sears through the skies once in a generation. It is an Event and a miracle and a war-cry, ornate and bloody, decadent and distilled, a glamour bomb reshaping the world. It’s like nothing else you’ve ever read in so many different ways.

I bear my scars from reading it proudly.

>Keep me and save us. Keep me or I’ll kill you. Say you’ll keep me.”

“I’ll keep you.”<

Metal From Heaven doesn’t play nice and doesn’t play fair; this is a book that challenges you, bites you, wants you awake and wild and bleeding light. No review can do it justice; this is one you have to experience.

If you read only one book this year, let it be this one. You will not regret it.

You ever think to yourself while reading a book, “man I can’t wait to read this again?”Or even get a little bit sad that the book isn’t infinite and you can’t read it forever? Metal from Heaven had me feeling both of these to the point I limited how much I read per day to enjoy it longer. I could have stayed in those pages forever and been happy.

From a massacre in the opening scenes you are quickly shoved into a world of class warfare, radical bandits and luster touched victims. A story about resilience, competition, heists and community that made me feel like I was risking my life along side Marney and her gang. The writing and characters are so beautiful and immersive. The description of the book read “Visceral lesbian revenge quest” and that’s what got me hooked. I received this as an ARC and will be recommending it to everyone I know. I love this book so much and I can’t wait to buy a copy when it comes out.

Thank you to NetGalley for an ARC!

DNF @ 50%

I really, really wanted to like this, but unfortunately, this was just not for me.

My biggest gripe is the writing style. I feel like it could either be a hit or miss, and it was a miss for me. It's very metaphorical and dreamlike, with makes everything feel kind of slow? Which isn't a bad thing, but based on what I heard, I was expecting something more fast-paced and action packed, which the first 50% of this was not.

I might try rereading this in the future, if I ever find myself in the mood for it, but for now I have to DNF.

4.5 stars rounded up.

I am stunned by this book, in the best way. I had decent expectations for it and it was better than I thought/anticipated by a mile.

I thoroughly enjoyed the narrative style - I've only read one other book that I can think of where the second-person narration (addressing a "you") was done well. And it worked extremely well for the story being told here.

While I didn't relate to all the struggles in the story (sexuality, gender, and some with religion), I thought that the way they were presented was exceptional.

Furthermore, the descriptions of Marney's reaction to the ichorite - the metal from heaven, as it were - were astounding. I could picture them in my mind so clearly, and could even feel them at some points.

The only reason I hesitate the give it a full 5 stars is it didn't quite hit the emotional response at the end that I felt myself anticipating. That said, I will be reading this book again in the future.

Absolutely fucking insane (affectionate).

Metal from Heaven is a violent, sapphic, revolutionary fever dream. Part Harrow the Ninth (unreliable narrator, hallucinations, copious amounts of leaking bodily fluids), part The Traitor Baru Cormorant (meticulous political fantasy, destroying the colonizers from within), and part The Lies of Locke Lamora (thrilling heists, beloved friendships) yet wholly its own unique experience - it's as though August Clarke blended every element I love and poured it back out even more vibrant and brutal and queer than ever.

I'm desperately hoping this finds its weird niche of fans after it releases on October 22nd.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the eARC.

Where to even start when reviewing a book that I believe is one of the most mind-blowingly written books of this century? How to put it into words that I have never read anything like this?!
Metal From Heaven is stunning in the sense that I would be stunned similarly by some beautiful strange thing falling from the sky onto my head. It turned me inside out.
Revenge. Love. Gutwrenching grief and reckoning. Would give it more than five stars if I could. Highly anticipating more creations from this author.

Thank you NetGalley for another ARC,

Harold, they are lesbians!

Metal from Heaven, by August Clarke, was a wild ride from beginning to end. The plot is complex and the writing is a feverish, dream-like, grimy stream of conscience. This book is not going to be for everyone, let me just get that out of the way; the way the story is told is unique and, in my humble opinion, not made to binge read, you still can, of course(I’m not the boss of you), but I think this particular narrative rewards those who really take their time reading and absorbing what they read.

One of the things that I absolutely loved about Metal from Heaven, was that the cast women were so diverse, and I’m not only talking about their appearances, but also about their personalities. These women were ruthless, and ambitious, clever, angry, violent, caring, compassionate; they felt like real people.

The ending was a dream, a stream of conscience so delicious to read I still think about it.
August Clarke will be on my radar from now on.

It took me a couple times to get into the mindset to start this, but once I got over the hurdle I really enjoyed it!

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for an advanced copy of this book. I want to state upfront that I DNF this book at 40% because there were several elements in my reading experience that did not match my expectations and taste.

First of all, the premise is magnificent: a queer tale of political vengeance, with a found family of strong, badass bandits, all permeated with the melanchonic remembering of a simpler past while the main character evolves and subsided to what the world does to her. But does not fall: she intends to pursue her goal, as stated in the description of the book - but unfortunately I did not get to when the revenge plot really kicked in.

What stopped me from reading was the pacing of the book. It started off strong and seemed to proceed in quite a regular motion, setting the worldbuilding and the atmosphere that more than a fantasy book reminded me of a western tale: the places, the language, the action, it was original and entertaining until the heist element became too preponderant and eclipsed the changes and evolution and insight on the characters and the overall plot.

The idea of a found family made up of rejects, dreamers, anarchists and pirates is incredibly fascinating, and the whole "we're playing as a noble man and need to keep up the facade other than being burglars and thieves" was really enthralling, but it didn't last long.

I think this book would be PERFECT for readers who want a good slap in the face when it comes to immersing themselves in a fictional universe. Me, I'm the kind of reader that likes to be accompanied by the author a little more, without having to get past pages upon pages of environmental description to get to "a" point.

Kudos for the characters, if you're looking for a fascinating found family that will throw you off a train if you dare say too much, this is the perfect read for you!

4.5 stars rounded up LFGGGG this book is batshit fucking awesome. The raging revenge lesbians. The radical class struggles. The labor organizing. The weird ass religions. The many many characters who you want to run away from but also make out with. And such a satisfying creative insane ending!!

This book will absolutely not be for everyone but who cares because it was perfect for me. The writing was propulsive and almost stream of consciousness, with mostly short staccato sentences. I was worried I wouldn't like it but that style actually worked so well for this story telling. There is also a non-zero amount of second person (again, correct choice for this book), but haters be warned. Finally this book is absolutely visceral and will make you want to scream and rage and tear down all of the unjust structures of our society, so you should probably be in a fighting mood going in and just embrace it.

The only reason its 4.5 and not 5 stars is some pacing/worldbuilding problems. In particular the transition from bandit lesbians in the woods to rich psychotic lesbians in a mansion was a bit tough. Right in the middle of the book we are thrown into an entirely new place and forced to quickly learn a new cast of characters, geopolitical dynamics, and history (both interpersonal and actual historical). It was way too much to digest. I really hope this book gets a detailed map, a character list, and maybe even a historical timeline printed at the beginning before it is published.

But don't let that overwhelming worldbuilding dump deter you, if you got through Gideon and Harrow you can definitely do this! The world is actually super interesting, familiar enough while being creative, and the metal/magic/science/religion/politics combo is next level.

Finally have I mentioned that basically every character is a lesbian and they are all uniquely unhinged (in the best way). There's maybe one character I would feel comfortable hanging out with in this book but I sure loved reading about all of them.

Thank you SO MUCH to the gods of advance copies (and kensington publishing) who granted me both a goodreads giveaway and a netgalley ARC in exchange for an honest review.

And a final thank you to CL Clark and Rebecca Roanhorse who are both authors I love who recommended this book on goodreads, which is how I found it! Yay to queer SFF community!

At the beggining I was not quite convinced about the book. I had a hard time getting into the narrative voice as it felt very "stream of conciousness" and was quite dense. I also felt disappointed because the book is a political fantasy yet it felt like there was really no fantasy element to it. As I kept reading I started getting little by little into the rythm of Marney's voice but I was still unconvinced regarding the fantasy elements so I kind of resigned to enjoy other parts of it (the overall delicious queerness, the political intrigue)

Boy oh boy, was I in for a ride.

I won't deny the book is slow. Very slow. But that last 30% of the book was insane. It just kept escalating. It made me nervous, it made me CACKLE, it made me sad, it made me scream in surprise. I feel like that last idk, 100 pages, made me feel every single emotion in existence. And when I reached the ending and realized its ties to the beggining? I just knew I was in need of a second read.

The narrative is exquisite and while it's hard to get through (even more as non native english speaker) it serves its purpose of supporting the plot, especially since it's a first person POV.

**Thank you Kensington Publishing and NetGalley for the arc! All thoughts and opinions are my own.**
Posted to: NetGalley, Goodreads, and The Storygraph
Posted on: 7 October 2024

3.4 (rounded down to 3) out of 5 stars.

I don’t know where to start for this one. I wanted to love it, so so SO badly did I want to enjoy this! Rebecca Roanhorse hadn’t steered me wrong before so I was ready for another banger she reviewed.
It fell short for me and I don’t know why! It was easy going first. You do kinda start off kind of thrown into this world, but I think August Clarke does a splendid job of pulling you through with the main character. I think what got me confused some was the sudden ‘you’ that was mentioned and turned out to be a friend (potentially lover too I think?) of Marney. Once I got it though, it was like nothing.

I think what bugged me was the pacing? It started off with a bang, kind of slows down, and I feel like it alternates between these action scenes and suddenly slower informational bits. The world building was slipped into these slower bits, and I think it just felt like a dump at times? I literally entered a reading slump during one of the slower bits and found myself pushing through until it got a little better, but I just couldn’t bring myself to force-read it anymore.
I say this, but still I don’t think it was a /bad/ read. It just wasn’t for me at the moment. I do want to try and pick it back up again another time because the plot was good. I was here for the lesbians and the worker’s revolt, and I was not left wanting. I think the info bits were just dragging too much, and I was too distracted to fully re-immerse myself after picking it back up from one break already. Lots of people did seem to enjoy this read though, and I can really see why! At the same time, I can also see how it isn’t for everybody as well. It’s definitely an interesting ready, and the writing style wasn’t entirely my favorite, but it’s one I want to come back to. Just for now, I had to DNF because I didn’t see myself picking it back up again and actually finishing it before it released.

Thank you to Net Galley and] Erewhon Books for the ARC. I was really excited to read this because I love sapphic relationships and revenge. At first when I started reading this, I thought the prose was really beautiful. However, it soon got frustrating and I feel like the prose's beauty is at the expense of the story. The prose is really distracting from the plot which makes it hard to get invested in the characters and their journey. Also, this is a matter of taste, but I thought there was way too much description and exposition but not enough plot related stuff in the book.

loved the author's previous trilogy but this book wasn't for me at all. it was heavy, the characters didn't resonate with me and i struggled with the writing quite a bit, i just could not finish it.

I loved the concept of this gloriously gay revenge steampunk fantasy, but absolutely could NOT abide the writing. I was torn between skimming (with the result of not having a clue as to what was going on) and getting bogged down in the utter illogic of certain phrases (with the result of losing the pacing).

Clarke's writing reminds me of Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone's in This Is How You Lose the Time War, which I disliked, so if you appreciated it, you could give this one a go. It's very focused on writing descriptive sentences that have never been written before, and using active voice in short, choppy, or run-on sentences.

At times Clarke seemed to dismiss science for the sake of a phrase they liked. I had to put the book down after I read the sentence:

"The bodies above me went cold."

A quick Google search says that it takes dead bodies about 2 hours to start cooling down, and 12 hours before they feel cool to the touch. The above line is from a massacre scene, where immediately afterwards the murderers approach the pile of bodies to deal with the remaining survivors. Talk about me struggling with the pacing because totally illogical sentences such as these would just stop me in my tracks.

METAL FROM HEAVEN is marketed as being for fans of Gideon the Ninth... which isn't exactly me, per se, but GtN hooked me enough to persevere through its wild narrative. GtN's confusion was also because of things the reader didn't yet know about or comprehend, but that, looking back, make sense. MFH didn't produce the same effect in me. The lines that I stumbled over are merely in the story to be edgy and novel.

Do I think some people will love this? Absolutely. Already it's garnering praise from a whole range of readers. But I'm afraid I'm more of a traditionalist when it comes to narrative style, and this book lost me from the beginning and never reeled me back in.

At the start of this book, the very first sentence drew me in. The style of writing was so intriguing and captivating. I was astonished by how beautiful and delicate I found the writing to be, while still maintaining the powerful, deeper meanings. However, when this writing style was maintained through and not deviated from, I found it to be a bit dense and hard to get through. Outside of this, I quite enjoyed the plot. The characters were really good and well-developed. The only drawback for this book is that it didn't really hold me. It drew me in, got me interested, then did not hold that. After a little bit, it became more so making myself read, rather than finding myself drawn back to picking up the book again.

DNF at 58%. I really wanted to like this book, but unfortunately it's just not for me. Also, I don't understand why it's being compared to The Princess Bride?

Oh my god! hat a book! What a rush! Absolutely killer read. Be Gay Be Do Crime encapsulated! Marney Honeycutt, you will always be immortal to me.

The Class Consciousness. The Means of Production becoming SENTIENT?! Ough, there's so much in this book.

A novel filled with lesbians, chronic illness, and barely any men? A perfect premise for fans of the so-called "Sapphic Trifecta," Muir's The Locked Tomb series, and the ever-growing genre of sapphic fantasy/sci-fi works. Metal from Heaven has such a unique premise and a strong voice that holds steady throughout the novel, it does not shy away from the grittiness and visceral-ness of violence and revolution all while existing within a queer-heavy cast. Its dedication to queerness and the vastness of its existence within the world is notable.

It has such a vast and complex web of characters who are all the worst people you’ve ever met. And I LOVED every second. This isn’t a romance and it’s not a happy story, it’s gritty and violent and that’s what makes it so special.

But the world-building could have been more conscience, in my opinion, there were sections where the transitions between world-building topics were sloppy. Large chunks of text that take up half a chapter, while only being mildly related to the other half, can feel long-winded and out of place. Some sections take longer to process their narrative belonging. But the substance of the world-building and the characters made up for it in my opinion.

And the last few chapters, MWAH Chefs Kiss, it is everything I could have hoped for, I live for unconventional writing styles and it served so deliciously.

Despite areas with some flaws, it’s a solid, violently sexy, read that any Locked Tomb fan should try out.