Metal from Heaven by August Clarke is one of my favourite reads of the year so far. It’s atmospheric and strange, and the characters are both difficult and utterly engaging. I loved this. This book deserves multiple re-reads. Thank you NetGalley, Kensington Publishing, and Erewhon Books for this ARC.

This book is absolutely riveting. I don't think I can form enough coherent thoughts to do it justice, and yet I'll be recommending this book to every single person I meet. If possible, pick this book up NOW! I think everyone needs to delve into the world of the Choir, and to see how revenge, love, gender, magic, and self discovery become intermeshed.

I'll be raving about this book for a long, long time. As always, all my thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for allowing me to read this ARC!

oh. my. god.
i loved every second of this book
after finishing my reread of the locked tomb series i thought i’d give this a try and i was not disappointed.

thank you netgalley for the e-arc!

I'm not sure I could write anything to do this book justice. Let's start with: if you found Gideon the Ninth "confusing" and struggled with its writing in a way that made you disliked the book, Metal From Heaven is not the book for you. While I consider myself fluent, English is my second language and I had a hard time with Metal From Heaven chipping away at the pages of what is already a long book. It's one of those books you read with your brain fully turned on. The worldbuilding and prose are dense and rich and I can't wait to see what people who are good at textual analysis can tell me about this book.

The world of Metal From Heaven is brimming with geopolitics I still don't understand, heavy on long names, characters entering the narrative, leaving it and reappearing much later in the story. You need to keep track. But the core of it is simple enough.

Marney, a young child from a miner family, suffers from a disease that affects miner children, she's luster-touched, rendered sick by the metal they're extracting. When the miners revolt to help their sick children, they're brutally repressed and Marney loses everything, everyone but revenge. In the protest she (I believe? that's how other characters refer to Marney, I know she's meant to be read as a stone butch lesbian with gender going on) loses her entire family and the girl she's in love with. She quickly joins a a group of outlaws that takes her under their wing as she prepares for revenge against the capitalist that took everything from her.

I could talk about themes, about revolution, labor rights, environment, working class queerness vs upper class (crawlies vs lunarists as a thinly veiled dyke vs sapphic), revenge, the entire second-person narrative, i still love you and the locked tomb similarities in terms of butch dyke literature. But I feel so stupid for this kind of book and feel like my worth is in getting smarter people to read it so they can write about it.

It's not a romance but it's not devoid of messy sex scenes either. Like someone said, it's the knife, it's sucking the strap. There are three women who are some sort of love interests to Marney, all representing different parts of her life and ideals. I can't say too much without venturing into spoilers though.

The narrative is messy, you're never sure where you're going and what's going to happen next, every time you feel like a thread is set up, it's not going to be followed like you expect. It is unconventional speculative fiction in the vein of a few similar stories I've read this year, although I mostly grasp what is happening here.

Now, I need to talk about my favorite part which is the use of the second person. The story is told in the first person from Marney persepctive as she is mostly narrating the story to "you". It's very clear early on than "you" is the friend/lover she lost as a child as "you" is the motivation for her revenge. Marney's narration to this girl is intimate, loving and yes the way it's played reminded me of certain parts of the Locked Tomb, Baru Cormorant and maybe the Seven Deaths of the Saint.

This was exceptionally good. I had seen author CL Clark raving about it and so I went in totally blind and oh wow was that the right move. This is such a unique sci-fantasy story with some pretty rad queer rep. I think this book pairs perfectly with the Locked Tomb crowd but also those who dif Stormlight Archive too! 9/10. Thank you so much for sending me a copy of this! I have already preordered a copy for my shelf!

Wonderful story, excellent world building, lovable characters - I enjoyed this very much!! Wonderful story, excellent world building, lovable characters - I enjoyed this very much!!

DNF

I could not finish this book. I started it over a month ago but did but it to the side for the whole months because the idea of reading it never occurred to me. Don't get me wrong this isn't a bad book it just wasn't for me.

This felt like a mix of R.F. Kuang's Babel, Philip Reeve's Mortal Engines series, and Micaiah Johnson's The Space Between Worlds, and I think I'll have to revisit it in the future.

Metal from Heaven is not a light book by any means. It can be a bit hard to navigate at times, and the themes are incredibly deep and heavy. It challenges societal issues we still face now, and it approaches them fearlessly and without sugarcoating. Also, the prose is beautiful. I am always jealous of people who can write purple prose so easily, and the narration style of this novel was strikingly beautiful, especially in the last few chapters.
The reason I didn't rate this book as highly is because I struggled with the plot and the pacing. This could be me going into a reading slump, or it could just be that I missed early details accidentally, but I felt that the pacing jumped around a lot, and every time I got a firm grasp on what was happening and what would come, I was thrown into a whole new setting. At its heart, this book is a story of vengeance and revolution. It's bloody, it's ruthless, and it's full of important messages. That being said, I just struggled to find myself fully engrossed in the story. The beginning and the ending were great, but the middle lost me a bit. (I'm also not typically a fan of political fantasies, so my opinions should be taken with a grain of salt.
I also found it a bit difficult to relate to the characters. That's probably the point; the cast is mostly unlikable, but that's to prove a point. I did enjoy Marney's narration style and her arc as she pursued revenge. However, I didn't feel attached to many other characters, partially because they were frequently introduced all in one chunk, so I sometimes struggled to differentiate between them.
Metal from Heaven is a gritty, revolutionary novel about vengeance, greed, and what happens when a person is pushed to their limits.
Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the free e-ARC!

3.5/5

metal from heaven is a whirlwind of a story on queerness and revenge and identity!!

the prose in this is so intriguing, the narration is both engaging and confusing, as though we are in marney’s mind as she is exploring the world and how to act within it. i did have moments of confusion because of it, with a certain chapter obviously meaning to do that (i sat there for a while very confused) but i absolutely loved it. the storytelling is so lush and moving, i really felt for marney and wanted them to succeed

the magic (if you can call it magic) is super interesting but i would have enjoyed some more exposition on it to truly get to grips on the way that marney was affected by it

the character dynamics and relationships are excellent, it all feels so very real and made me even more invested into the story and world itself. there is the feel of a found family and scenes with all of them together were definitely my favourite

i do wish there had been more action scenes, there was so much potential for explosive scenes and for me there was a lack of it

the queerness being tied with religion was super interesting, and marney herself was such an interesting character to follow through their struggles and growth as a person struggling with herself. can never go wrong with sapphic and political fantasy really

RIYL: Punk lesbians, revolutions, The Locked Tomb trilogy, the Arcane tv show

Metal from Heaven is a real one-of-kind new fantasy novel; a visceral revenge tale, a clear-eyed ode to both the necessity of an egalitarian political revolution and the difficulty of such an endeavor, a book that doesn’t pull its punches against its enemies, while also allowing for the fun indulgences we go to fantasy fiction to provide. I wanted to review it as soon as I saw its 5-star review by Seth Dickinson, one of my favorite fantasy writers, and while it’s not quite at the level of a masterpiece, it’s one of the best books I’ve read this year, and definitely worth its induction into the new canon of Queer SFF about Revolution and Empire, my particular favorite current sub-genre.

The world of Metal from Heaven evokes that thrilling span of time between the early liberal revolutions and the Industrial Revolution’s final victory of the capitalists against the old world’s feudal powers. It’s a setting that’s mostly grounded, with no fantasy races or monsters, and with no magic, aside from the strange resource called ichorite that tycoon Yann I. Chauncey makes his wealth from. We hear of a complex web of nation-states and peoples, with just enough detail to make the worldbuilding feel extensive without bogging down the narrative. Where author August Clark does choose to dive deep into is, rather surprisingly for this materialist revolution narrative, religion, conjuring up a handful of genuinely new and compelling faiths, in a world that cares about your religion even more than your heritage or nationality. Cutting through this world, however, is the ichorite, a substance that seems to be both fuel and constructive material, like oil and plastic combined.

Our protagonist, Marney Honeycutt, starts the novel as a young girl, born and raised among a working-class Tullian family (an insular, socially conservative faith), who spends most of her life working in Yann’s ichorite factories. Like several other youths in the factory, Marney is “lustertouched” - infected by ichorite in a way that occasionally gives her magical control over ichorite objects she interacts with, while also leaving her weak and hallucinating whenever she touches the substance. A brewing strike led by Marney’s sister ends in a massacre that leaves Marney as the sole survivor. She narrates her tale in the first person, while occasionally referencing a “you,” her unnamed close friend killed in the massacre. Her tale is one of vengeance, as she vows to one day kill Yann with her own two hands and avenge her loved ones.

This is a messy book, one that often feels like several different books Frankensteined together. The first half of the book is a lyrical coming of age narrative, charting Marney’s life from her childhood as a survivor of the massacre of her family and fellow striking laborers to her eventual new life among an insurgent band of anarchic lesbian brigands and pirates called The Choir. This part of the book blinks through months and years, and is such is more effective at creating tone and setting and theme than necessarily crafting memorable characters, though a few stand-out, like the Choir’s imposing leader Mors Brandegor the Rancid and two of Marney’s teammates, the beautiful and alluring Sisphe and the roguish rapscallion Harlow. After the halfway point, it swings into something wildly different, and particularly reminiscent of Gideon the Ninth, the first book of the Locked Tomb Trilogy. Here, Marney is among a new batch of colorful characters of high society and must win the allegiance of someone connected to her foe. This part is a whole lot of fun, a comedic, sexy, and brutal romp that both slows the book’s racing pace while also making it even harder to put down, eventually leading to a short final act and a length, quite strange epilogue.

This is also an unapologetically queer book, a lesbian book, as the vast majority of its characters are, to use the in-universe’s partially-reclaimed word, crawlies. This setting allows for homosexuality, if it’s done discreetly, or in the rare case that it produces a necessary marriage alliance, but for the most part, Marney’s burgeoning sexuality, in particularly her masculine butch approach to her gender and sexuality, is still looked down upon, and serves as a bond tying most of the Choice together. There’s longing and desire and sex but there’s not much romance here, as Clarke complicates any sense of queer solidarity by also factoring in class. The violent, oppressive, wealthy war criminals can be gay too. Marney finds it easy to give in her sexual exploits, but is painfully resistant to ever receiving pleasure herself; just one of the complicated sexual and gender dynamics the book plays with.

My biggest complaint about Metal from Heaven is that there’s not more of it, that it’s a standalone novel instead of a series. Not that authors shouldn’t try writing more standalone fantasy novels; it’s just that Metal from Heaven’s lengthy epilogue feels like its rushing through several books’ worth of a story I might’ve liked even more than what the book actually covered. But that’s hard to fault a book for, and it’s really praising with faint damnation. I really loved Metal from Heaven, for all its rough patches - it’s an unapologetically radical, queer, messy, and angry book, one that shows how it’s possible to write a leftist political treatise of a novel while also being a ton of fun. I’ll definitely be keeping an eye out for whatever Clarke decides to write next.

Rating: **** 1/2

Metal from Heaven is set to publish on October 22, 2024.

Thanks to NetGalley for the advance copy in exchange for an honest review. All thoughts expressed are my own.

This book. THIS BOOK. It has eaten my brain and I've struggled to write a coherent review but you know what, I'm not sure there's any way to talk about this coherently. This book is a vicious, biting fever dream. The characters are all actually insane, horrible and wonderful and real, and their relationships are cruel and broken and healing.

This is a book about revenge, about love, about labor rights, about class and lesbianism and how class impacts the queer experience, about train heists, and about family. And it's my favorite release of 2024.

Pre order this astonishing novel and treat yourself in the fall when it comes out. Clarke’s writing is astoundingly lyrical and lends itself to the sense of being told around a camp fire. This leans into the power of community, the bottomless well of horror that is capitalism, throws in a fun side dose of fantasy metal and industrial poisoning, and goes on a gorgeous tale of toxic hothouse lesbians and the girl our girl sets out to marry and kill her father for fun. Oh, and she goes into a full bdsm relationship with the cop obsessed with trying to expose her and bring her down. This is a goddamn amazing read, and you’ll want to pick it up for this fall.

I'd like to thank the publisher and NetGalley for allowing me a chance at reading this.

This book as been sitting on my goodreads for a while, resting at 10% in. While the story is of interest, the prose reminded an awful much like Gideon the Ninth. While a lot of people enjoyed that book, I was someone who did not. At the time there was not many reviews for this up when I requested it - so I took a chance.

This is no way in slight of the author. If you're a fan of the first person narrative writing of Gideon the Ninth, you'll probably enjoy this. I didn't. So I moved on. I hope this finds its audience. I truly wish I was one.

Put the Pedal to the Metal

The nearest easy comparison I can make to this book is Gideon the Ninth, but really it’s sort of an anti-capitalist lesbian pirate collision of Furiosa meets Bridgerton meets Cronenberg. Even that doesn’t really come close to describing it. If it sounds at all interesting, then please just stop here and go read it.

An amazing new metal has been discovered which will revolutionise the world. Marney Honeycutt is a child worker in a dangerous factory which refines it, and has a sickness common to many such workers known as being “lustertouched”. This manifests as a strong allergic reaction to the new metal, to the point of fits and hallucinations when she merely touches it. To force the company to improve conditions, all the workers go on strike, and she ends up on a picket line with her family and her best friend.

That’s when the company enforcers open fire, and everybody she knows dies. It is a tale of blood-soaked survival from that point on. Over the next decade of Marney’s life, she plots how to kill the man who ordered the shooting, all while narrating the story to her dead friend. To describe too much more of her journey would spoil things, but she ends up joining a gang, infiltrating high society, and attempting to woo the daughter of the man she plans to murder.

I will say though, this isn’t a romance. It’s about love in some ways, and there’s certainly sex, but it’s mostly about the desire to get revenge, and how that single-minded focus can drive a person to the point of destruction and beyond.

The world building is fantastic and inventive, the characters wonderfully drawn, and the tale twists around in so many directions at once that I could not even begin to predict where things would end up. I had to re-read several passages towards the end, open mouthed at the sheer audacity of what was happening.

I am sure this will make multiple award lists for 2024, and equally sure some people will absolutely hate it. I thought it was extraordinary, and the most unique book I have read in years. Highly recommended.

Thanks to Kensington Publishing for the early review copy.

Marney Honeycutt works in the Yann I Chauncey Ichorite Factory but when their sister leads a workers' strike that turns into a massacre, they are suddenly all alone. Touched in the head by the metal they worked from birth, Marney has to get out of the city. They fall in with a gang of thieves who whisk them away to a mansion high in the hills by the sea. But Marney will come back. Because they are going to kill Chauncey and they're going to marry his daughter to do it.

August Clarke has done it again. I was captivated from the very first page by Clarke's signature dizzying, dazzling prose. I was utterly immersed in this rich world that blends fantasy and science fiction absolutely perfectly. I loved the different cultures, I especially loved the way Clarke emulated butch/femme lesbian culture, I loved that trans-ness was just part of the world and Marney never had to fight to be who they were.

The queerness really was my favourite part. It was so nice to finally read a book about a trans stone butch that feels like the trans stone butches I know. Marney felt and talked and behaved like so many of my friends do and that representation is so sorely needed. I have a list of friends a mile long to recommend this book because I know they ache to see themselves and their lives represented in media. I'm very grateful that August Clarke is able to do that with their books.

And the prose! Clarke has such a specific way of writing that just latches into your brain and doesn't let go. It flows so beautifully but has a staccato edge that I can't get enough of. I especially enjoyed how Clarke intermittently used second person to elevate how Marney was telling the story and the reason why they were doing that became so satisfying as the story went on. It was utterly brilliant.

If you are looking for a truly unique speculative fiction story that centres queerness and working class people in a story of revenge, I implore you to pick up Metal From Heaven and allow yourself to be swept away in this enthralling book. It's an absolute masterpiece.

2.5 stars.

Wow. What a journey this was. I never read something like this before. I knew I was going in for a wild weird journey, but I still didn't expect what I ended up reading.

We dive into a industrialized futuristic world and the author doesn't waste time showing us the root of this story. You see, as many materialistic things we place above people in our world, ichorite is everything to this world. Is what builds prospect, progress - it is the future. And it is sickening its laborers. Being "lustertouched" is the condition ichorite provokes, and the one that has fallen over Marney as well. When a peaceful plea from the workers becomes a bloodshed and only Marney survives, the story takes action.

What a bang right? Marney is a character driven by the traumas of losing her family that day, as well as the youthful yet powerful love she nourishes for her best friend. A love that shapes and will guide the rest of her life. A love that was never lost, although the lover was. At first I found it odd by how Marney addressed her loved one by nothing but "You". There wasn't a name, but simply a "you". For example, Marney was narrating and she would say something between the lines "How I adored you". Although simple, it felt strong. That person was everything to Marney and you can feel just that when she directly calls to us, her. This also allowed an incredibly impactful moment by the end. I saw it coming, but I loved how it was done. This is Marney's revenge story, but it's also much more than that.

I wish this book was everything I idealized in my head. There's a part of me that loves it, and is still holding on to it. Unfortunetly, there was many things that, ultimately, didn't work for me.

The worldbuilding. I love complicated worlds and to get lost in them, but this one was too much. Or better said, it felt too much by how little insight it was given to us readers. The politics are constantly happening in the background, but they are never fully fleshed out. I wanted to understand them. I tried to make sense of them, but there was too many names and places thrown at you all the time. It's like the author has it all in their head and is showing us only one third of it. I can't read minds yet, although I really tried. And the frustrating part is that this seems like such a compelling world to immerse yourself in. I WANT to know MORE. I loved how religion was depicted in this book, with fascinating and original concepts. It truly intrigued me. But every time I was getting more information, it got harder and harder to puzzle it together in my head. I felt like I lost a lot of world and politics which is unfortunate.

This is one of those books that you need to have a pen and paper right next to you and write the characters names and places down. And I pride myself (I'm lazy) in my insistence on reading without looking back, even when I don't fully grasp what's going on, because I trust the author will make every thing make sense as we continue on with the story. Metal From Heaven doesn't give you any breaks, though. This is the exception. Each character has numerous names that they are addressed by. I read Dostoevsky and this was harder to follow. I was 80% in and I was still confusing the characters and couldn't make sense of the dynamics between them. It got exasperating when you couldn't really distinguish one character from another in a vast cast of them.

Staying on this point, this book presents us an almost all female cast, full of sapphic relationships and affairs and lust and love. This is not something that lowers or necessarily peaks my interest, but it's such a prevalent aspect to this story that I had to mention. Sadly, I felt very disconnected to the characters, including Marney. Even with the heavy politics happening in the background, Marney isn't actively doing anything. Things happen and she reacts to them. I wish there was more planning or action from her. She wants revenge, and I want more scheming. Every character was kinda crazy in their own unique way to the point that they didn't feel like real people. Pretty early on, I had to conform myself that this wouldn't be a book that would win me over through its characters, but through its plot.

What mainly provoked that huge gap between me and the characters happening was the writing style. Here lies one of the fulcral issue I had with this book. It suffers heavily from purple prose. I understand what the author was doing. I even thought at times that this writing style matched the weirdness of the story and characters perfectly (because it actually did), but damn... it became too much and too tiring too quickly. It was hard enough to keep up with the characters and the world on its own, then you add the prose that they are all wrapped in and it becomes the perfect receipt for a permanent state of confusion. It really was the last straw. I could never make sense of what was going on. I loved it a few times, I hated for all the rest. I hated how it was so hard to get through this book. It was too complicated and overly flowery. I applaud the author for being able to develop such a unique style, but it ruined this story for me. It was too much. Besides, the pacing also felt off. Some scenes were too dragged out when they needn't to be.

The ending. Wow. What a weird, unique, perfectly fitted ending.

This book is hard. This book is every word I already said multiple times on here: weird, unique, crazy, and probably more, since I defintely didn't understand all of it. I wish the author finds the right audience for this story, because it is NOT for everyone and it wasn't partly for me either. Metal From Heaven is that rare is that rare case when I find more enjoyment discussing the story than I did while reading it.

Also... Petition for final version of the book to have a map? Please? I think this is the only book, that I have read so far, that a map is desperately needed. Also... a list with the characters and all the names they go by would be nice... Don't mind me, just throwing around some ideas!

Anyway... I recommend it to everyone who's weird and a bit crazy (and is into that as well)!

dnf @ 58% ⋆𐙚₊˚⊹ ᡣ𐭩
very gay, provocative political fantasy 🍷 & is NOT a romance, however has 🌶️ scenes for those who like a little spice in their fantasy ;)
₊˚⊹ 𐦍༘⋆₊ ⊹ i requested this bc i was hooked by the second part of the description. however, that does not occur until half way through the book. i don't have the motivation nor the patience to finish this. lots of world building + political backgrounds, just not my cup of tea i don't think. this book wasn't for me, but may be for you...

thank you for the advanced reader copy netgalley & august clarke <3

attempt 1: may 9, 2024 - may 23, 2024

Just want to start of by saying I did not finish it, and I won't. Hopefully the critique I have will still be useful, which is why I'm sending my current thoughts on it. Here is the original review, with every comment and update I gave throughout.

Review:

Got 30% in and was still not invested in the story. I could not, for the life of me, like the writing style - I absolutely hate it.

I was so excited about the lesbian pirates and bandits, but I can't read more.

Update: I decided to try again and came to about 50%, still dislike it. Definitely a DNF.

I've decided to give a more thorough explanation as well.

The prose is great - but sometimes it gets so dense that I lose track of the plot. It was also very difficult to read, as a non-native English speaker, because of this.

The time skips was confusing, and the big cast that were all dumped on the reader at once was even more confusing. The lack of action, while being filled with action, was also confusing. I know I read about a train being robbed twice and a massacre, but I did not 'feel' any action or rush of adrenaline while reading it. I think the prose ruined it for me.

Definitely a miss for me, and I think this is a book that you will love or hate - no inbetween.

I struggled to get into this book as the beginning was very backstory heavy before getting into the actual main story, on top of that the style of the writing wasn't the best (in my opinion), being first person pov among other things.

I wanted to enjoy it but considering I struggled with Gideon the Ninth as well (which this book is compared to I wasn't completely surprised). That being said, although I DNFed this book at around the halfway mark, I want to try and come back to it at a later date because I find the concept of the book quite intriguing - being a dystopian type world where Marney (and her family and others) are forced to work in unsafe factory conditions, leading to hints of an uprising before well... a massacre (as said in the blurb).

This is not an extensive review - but considering I did not finish the book, I don't really have a lot to say about it.

***arc copy received through netgalley, all opinions and thoughts on this book are my own

This book is feral, infectious, and heart wrenching. It’s hard to talk about in any tangible way. It’s about love, about grief, about unearned guilt. It’s a gut punch and a call to arms. I’ll be thinking about it for a long, long time.