This book is everything to me. The whole time I was reading it I felt a deep resonance with the words on the page like they were reaching right inside me. This is my new holy book and you’d better believe I will be preaching its word to everyone I know. It is an anticapitalist revenge fantasy with a butch MC, an anarcho-communist bandit gang, and a competition to marry the industrialist tycoon’s daughter. I loved the vivid imagery, the characterization, and the world August has created. And the lesbianism of it all is so immense I could cry.

While this book is perfect *to me*, I can acknowledge there were some elements that weren’t as strong, the pacing for one, and the large cast of characters felt a bit overly ambitious at times and hard to keep up with as a result. I personally think it would have made an amazing duology since the story is split into two halves already, this would allow more time for Marney’s story to develop and more time for us to develop relationships with the large cast of side characters. Still though I appreciate a strong standalone fantasy, I think this would appeal to the obvious fans of the Locked Tomb series, but also fans of The Spear Cuts Through Water and a Memory Called Empire. I will be preordering for sure.

I have never read a book like this one.

Ellis feverdream narrative paints a queer revenge fantasy love story about workers' rights and train robbing and religion and gender and eco-despoilage and erotica and love and hate and and and and and...

This was a great book. loved it. love morally grey lesbians, capitalism critics, and a roller coaster twist!

Metal from Heaven was a very interesting read. I normally go into books that are compared to Gideon the Ninth with a grain of salt, but I think fans of Gideon will like this thanks to the sheer amount of lesbians. And I knew August Clarke wouldn't disappoint me since I've read the whole Scapegracers trilogy by them and loved it. I really liked the characters, and as someone who enjoys reading about political machinations and scheming in my fiction, this was pretty good. I felt like it took a while to get to the actual meat of the book and about 30-40% was set-up, but after that the book had me in its grasp. I also didn't totally understand everything going on with the ichorite, but I don't think you're meant to. It's fantasy plastic with weird powers. The fact that the main character is a butch lesbian is another thing I really appreciate, and she wasn't the only one. It's nice to be able to see myself in books. I'm only giving it four stars because I don't think it's going to stick in my brain or leave as much of a lasting impact as other books I've read, but I still thoroughly enjoyed it and I'm glad I read it!

4/5

in trying to write this review, I find myself coming back to food-y figures of speech. this book's eyes are bigger than its stomach. Clarke has bitten off more than he can chew. the prose styling gave me indigestion. and so on and so forth, all which really amounts to this: I liked the idea more than the executions (and, also, the prose styling gave me indigestion). I worried, at first, that my disagreements with Clarke's narrative choices were just a matter of taste -- I can't overstate how much the writing style (maximalist, florid, evocative of nothing so much as Riverdale) put me off, and I'm shocked that no one else has mentioned it -- but the flaws are, I fear, deeper than that. for the sake of brevity, I would summarize them as follows:
the pacing: slow, then glacial, then abruptly very fast; in other words, uneven
the cast of characters: sprawling, and consequently very uniform
the narrative logic: somewhere between haphazard and totally random
marney dying with like a hundred pages left to go????: holy the last book in the divergent series, batman! (in other words, such a ballsy move that it almost redeemed the whole thing for me -- and it helps that the writing becomes, at that point, ironically much less baroque.)
all that said, I really enjoy some of Clarke's ideas -- I'm underselling it to just say that the world they've created here is sincerely cool and interesting -- and, matters of taste aside, I admire that they don't pull any punches (stylistically or otherwise). I don't think I'm ever going to come around to the way they write, but I do look forward to reading whatever they write next.

Gorgeously written, I am so excited to get a physical copy!
The enemies to lovers trope is beloved, but often poorly executed.
This is an example of how to do it right!

Thank you to NetGalley and Erewhon Books for the ARC.

This was quite the ride, and I enjoyed every second of it. This was a political fantasy but not in the more usual way of court intrigues and betrayal, but in a way that felt significantly fresher and honestly speaking, more relevant.

Our protagonist, Marney, is part of a worker’s family in a sort of early-industrialisation world, and not only does she have to suffer from being a child-worker, but she also has a condition that has befallen many of the children of families that work with the metal that fuels the city’s growing economy: Ichorite. When the workers rise up, demanding the owner of the Ichorite factories and mines, Yann I, Chauncey, takes responsibility for the mysterious illness that has befallen the young child workers, their protest is violently shut down and Marney is the only one left alive, which leads her to attempt to leave the city, at which point our story really starts.

One aspect that I think this book does a fantastic job at getting right in a way I feel like I rarely see in fantasy (though I must admit I am somewhat new to reading fantasy) is that of religions. I feel like fantasy often leaves religion behind in order to expand on magic systems and the like, but the religious systems in this book are extremely well thought-out, feel realistic and comprehendible, and are actually important to the characters, rather than just sort of being there.
There are several religions mentioned in this book, and I really enjoyed the amount of thought that was given to each of their systems of belief.

Another thing I really enjoyed was the representation of lesbianism in this book. It’s evident the author is very knowledgeable on lesbian history and culture, and it was thoroughly enjoyable to see the representation of the variety of different dynamics and identities represented in a fantasy book in a way I feel like I’ve never really seen before, no matter the genre. The topic was handled incredibly well from all angles, showing vibrant lesbian culture without sacrificing the elements of bias and intolerance that inevitably, in my eyes, should be discussed in a sort-of historical fantasy setting.

Also if sex scenes are your kinda thing you will definitely have a REALLY good time with this, but even if you are like me and don’t particularly enjoy them, they aren’t so prevalent you would need to be turned off of this book.

Yet despite all the praise I have for this book there were also some elements that bothered me a bit. I’m glad there was a lot of time skips in the beginning of the book because otherwise things could’ve started feeling a bit tedious, and I’m sure the author was somewhat limited by this being a standalone, but nonetheless I wish there had been a bit more expansion on some themes and especially on how we got from Marney the child to Marney the feared highwayman.

I have also seen this book be described as found family, and while I 100% agree with that statement, I do wish we had gotten a bit more expansion on the way Marney’s community operates and how they live.

I genuinely believe this book could’ve been improved by making it a duology and giving the author more time to expand on his ideas, because I really think they had something to say here and did the absolute best they could within the limitations of a standalone, but especially the ending of the book felt a little rushed.

Overall I would 100% recommend this book to any lesbian fantasy lovers and I also think it is accessible to those like me who are relatively new to the genre.

Thank you to NetGalley for a free copy in exchange for an honest review.

I didn't finish Metal from Heaven. I read through chapter 5, stopping at page 116. As a huge fan of The Scapegracers, I had high expectations for Clarke's latest work and it didn't land for me. I see the appeal but I felt really lost and disconnected from the characters in the story. I really respected the choices Clarke made and saw the emerging anti capitalist message, but due to not feeling grounded in the story, and not being able to follow who was who and the politics, I felt myself drifting through the story, which made it hard to return to it. With fantasy books, I give about 100 pages to see if I can be hooked into the world the author creates, and I hit that mark with this book.

I might revisit the book in the future when the series is finished but for now, I am ending my journey with the book.

Unfortunately, this didn't work for me, but I would recommend this book to those who like speculative fiction but want a book that challenges the status quo and provides a unique setting.

4.5 stars.

This was violent and sexy and full of interesting people doing interesting things. The characters are complex and variously fucked up. The themes are conveyed without the book feeling preachy or didactic. The first person narration is extremely well done and was a good choice for the story. The ending was both satisfying and completely crazy.

I have a few criticisms that stopped this from being a 5-star. Some of the exposition of the world was delivered in a very heavy handed way. The main character hallucinates, and while I think many scenes were intentionally confusing and/or dreamlike, there were a few times where I just couldn't parse what was happening and was annoyed by it. I think it might be 5 stars on a reread though, and I do want to reread. I kind of want to start again right now.

I am absolutely going to read whatever August Clarke writes next. Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC.

What a ride - I've never wished for an apocalypse until I met the Choir. Yes, please let me join the crawly gang. This book was so many things: gritty, smart, sapphic, creative, beautiful, painful. Prepare to be surprised and entertained and gutted.

This a rough, exhilarating, chokehold of a book. A sprint from start to finish that I could not put down - great ready to have big feeling about lesbian bars, industrialism, and justice.

found family | sci-fi fantasy | punk | lesbian love lust and obsession | be gay do crime | political intrigue | visceral

For those pulled in by the comparison to The Princess Bride and Gideon the Ninth, I didn't feel the connection to The Princess Bride but if you loved the relationships and voice in The Locked Tomb series (especially Harrow), you'll enjoy the intrigue, cruelty, playing with point of view, and deep-seated queerness of this story.

It’s no secret I adore the Scapegracers trilogy by the same author, so I was thrilled to get to read their new adult sff release! However, I have complicated feelings about this book.

It took me two weeks to read. Most books I finish within 2-5 days lol. The first third of the book failed to grip me. Things were happening, characters were introduced (many, many characters. Most failed to make an impression beyond a vibe) but I wasn’t into it. The style that I adored in Scapegracers felt more disjointed. Scattered rather than cutting with scalpel precision. You get thrown into the worldbuild and you better learn to swim fast.

That last point is not necessarily a criticism. I like when books challenge me to pay attention. And I was able to swim. But the whole thing has a dreamlike texture where I would have expected some crunch.

I don’t think it’s exactly fair to judge this book solely against my expectations, though. So here are the things I enjoyed about it:

The second half of the book moves a lot faster. It has sharp humor I enjoyed. It has many, many flawed yet endearing characters. Once the tension gets going, it is gripping (I did read that second half in two days xD). The ambiance of the world is woven into the story. The whole worldbuilding around gender and queerness is fascinating and vivid. The anticapitalist message of course speaks to me. The balance of idealism and grittiness is crunchy.

Yet it ultimately does not all come together for me. There are elements of the conclusion I found satisfying, but I wanted more, and not in a “I will have fun finding my own answers to these questions” way.

That being said, the book feels different and fresh in a sff landscape that struggle to capture my attention these days.

So yeah. Complicated feelings.

I recommend it to people who are not too hung up on explanations in their fantasy, people who are tired of pearl clutching puritan books, people who just want to read something different, people who love feral lesbians, people who aren’t afraid of having to put a little work into understanding what they’re reading.

Metal From Heaven had my attention from the start and whilst I sometimes struggled to keep up the characters, world building and prose keep you hooked. If you're a fan of Gideon the Ninth or blood Over Bright Haven then you'll want to pick this one up.

The characters shined for me, our protagonist Marney is a fantastic mess but my favourite had to be Sunny. There's such a wide amount of fleshed out and vibrant characters within this story that you're bound to love them. Everything about the Fingerbluffs was also amazing and was a truly standout setting + community in Fantasy.

Trust me, if you're a fan of the Locked Tomb series don't wait to pick this one up.

Thanks to Kensington Publishing & Netgalley for this arc!

This book was heartbreaking and amazing all wrapped up in a Sapphic fantasy.

When the book first started I was confused, but drawn in by the characters and the characters are where this book excelled. In a world where “crawleys” are seen as wrong but also in a way accepted a unique group of women from different backgrounds all trying to live and love.

I had never heard of August Clarke but will now be looking for their other works under their other name HA Clarke.

An explosive beginning that had me invested instantly, writing that was beautiful and direct and raw in a way that felt like a punch I was thankful for. Our cast of characters are compelling, funny, and I fell in love with everyone in an instant. I cried. I said "holy shit" out loud a couple of times. She sucks the strap!

I enjoyed it.

This book is a revenge story featuring a lesbian main character and a setting simmering with class warfare. it's a fantasy story that's more about the intricacies of the political intrigues instead of the details of the magic system (though the magic itself plays a big part in the story). there have been a lot of comparisons made between this book and Gideon the Ninth and while i didn't understand the comparison in the first half of the book, by the end, i completely get it. it's not just in the beautiful writing style but also the way the book plays with perspective (which felt a bit gimmicky at first but by the end it was worth it). there were moments in the middle of the book that felt drawn out and/or confusing (but not in a good way, which this book also had plenty of), but the emotional climax and gripping beginning more than made up for it. Definitely recommended for anyone looking for a fantasy read that feels unique and distinctive.

This book is powerful, raw, and fascinating. It felt new and different, and I never entirely knew where it was going next. It was not without faults, but none of those faults were ever that it was boring.

I've long thought that the best way to convey leftist ideals is through fiction because, frankly, Marx's Das Kapital is not a fun read. Here is a book that shows the inevitable evils of a capitalist system, of the nobility of the struggle against it. It's a book that shows the beauty possible in anarchist society, and the ways in which the rich encourage the sorts of horrific events on which they will profit. It's a book that shows the ways that money and power corrupt and it takes to task the effective altruist ideas about how it's permissible to do horrible things to the world in the hope that you might do some good with the money it earns you. Importantly, this is all spread throughout an exciting, action- and sex-filled plot. There are some specific mechanistic ways that this is accomplished, too: the ways that Marney, our narrator, can feel the history of the ichorite objects they touch is a hell of a way of talking about the people that manufactured them and a hell of a way of making mining and industry interesting.

For better and worse, this is a bit of a messy book. That's not shade: the messiness of Marney's gender expression and sexuality is great, and gives the book a queer identity that refuses to fit into politely acceptable boxes or labels. Marney refers to themself as a "boy crawly" and beautifully describes what feels to me like dysphoria; they get a mix of he and she pronouns throughout, but it's never clear cut, especially when they talk about who they do and don't want to finger them. Too often, fantasy queerness just recreates a modern liberal view of identity, and I appreciate the way that Clarke uses this new world they have built to avoid that.

Some of the other messiness, though, is less obviously a benefit. The issues I had with the book tended to feel like editing issues, and while it's possible that some of the copy editing typos will be resolved for the proper release (rather than the ARC), this felt like it needed one more pass for clarity. There were plenty of places where I didn't feel like I could follow exactly what was going on, and that gave me nothing so much as the feeling of a fever dream, and while that lack of information was effective at conveying the feelings of the narrator when they were having a fit, it could also be unpleasantly confusing. Early on, in the first train action scene, I was simply unable to follow who was doing what, despite rereading those pages several times.

More than anything, this is a book that fills me with optimism for whatever Clarke will produce next. It's so full to bursting with great ideas and it feels like a fresh new voice, and I can't wait to read their next novel.

Very good book from an author i love dearly. Lesbian characters to the core, complex and a bit overwhelming worldbuilding. 1 less stars because the ending feels like a cop-out.

Metal from Heaven is unlike anything I have ever read before. A masterclass in political intrigue and world building. Still reeling from that ending.
I was massively impressed by the unique writing style and the stylistic choices made. I love when the author trusts their audience and doesn't much care to explain every little bit, instead letting the reader piece things together and slowly make sense of the world themselves. Though there were moments when it felt like the characters were info-dumping a little too much at times, but never overwhelmingly so.
There were a lot of characters thrown into the story which became a bit hard to keep track of at some point. While most of them had their purpose in driving the story forward, others felt flat and didn't add much to the overall happenings. Other than that I don't have any complaints, except now I need a Vikare spin-off.

I received an ARC from the publisher in exchange for an honest review

Metal from Heaven by August Clarke is a first person-POV Sapphic revenge fantasy. Marney’s entire family was killed in a massacre orchestrated by Yann Industry Chauncy during a strike, sparking Marney to swear revenge. She’s raised by the Choir, a group of criminals who teach her everything she needs to know to seduce Chauncy’s daughter, Gossamer, and convince the young heiress to marry her.

This is a very voice-driven narrative in the same way I would describe A Deadly Education by Naomi Novik as voice-driven. Either the voice is going to work for you or it won’t and if it works, it really works and it is going to push everything forward. The narrative switches between calling Gossamer by name and directly speaking to her with ‘you’, indicating that Marney is telling Gossamer the story. There are tangents lingering on capitalism and on Marney’s vengeful feelings as well as her sexuality.

In a lot of ways, I feel like Metal from Heaven’s prose is about breaking the gender binary. Marney’s POV is not interested in being soft or delicate or traditionally feminine but Marney is referenced with female pronouns. It’s hard for me to articulate this beyond ‘the more I read, the more I felt that any preconceived ideas of gender in relation to a POV character need to be thrown out the window and instead begs the reader to open themselves up to what a female POV can be.’ I love stories of revenge and messy women and Sapphic narratives so that this stood out to me in this way is both exciting and making me ask if I subconsciously do gender POVs even though I am against doing so.

Beyond the POV, there are some other cool gender things going on. One of the cultures represented has five genders that are more defined by sexual preferences with one gender reserved for children and priests. It’s a new way to think about gender that I actually haven’t really thought of before because I consider sexual preferences and gender to be separate, but how it’s presented in the text really worked for me. I liked how it was explored and how it specifically plays with those preferences and the lack of delicacy and daintiness in Marney’s POV.

Metal from Heaven was sold to me as a lesbian revenge eco-fantasy and it absolutely does what it says on the tin. Marney is driven by revenge but also falls in love with Gossamer who loves her in turn in her own way. Marney is allergic to ichorite, which harkens back to Greek mythology, but she comes from a community that was mining it. Industry is destroying everything and it’s slowly killing Marney. I think I’m going to have to reread this book several times to truly be able to state all of my opinions on it because there’s a lot here that is so relevant and challenging our norms and ideas.

I would recommend this to fans of Queer revenge stories, readers who prefer narratives that play with gender, and those looking for a voice-driven fantasy.