Member Reviews
Thank you Kensington Publishers via NetGalley for the eARC!
Metal from Heaven is an ambitious exploration of labour right, queerness, class warfare, and vengeance. Following a picket line massacre that explodes across the opening chapter, we follow Marney Honeycutt and her drive for revenge.
The novel was beautifully written - I found myself stopping just to take in some of the incredible images that were conjured through Clarke’s writing. Sometimes, however, the beauty of the prose was a double-edged blade for me. More often than not, I found myself getting lost in the prose than I did in the story, and large expositional sections really drove down the tempo and dispersed the excitement and intrigue the opening chapters fostered.
As well as this, while the disjointed narrative style did hold significance within the story, I found it made parsing the story - which does have a complex plot and a large cast - really difficult as a reader. Time was especially difficult to grasp which made tracking ages, events, and wider story arcs very challenging for me as a reader. There is a moment later on in the novel that had a distinct narrative shift that I found to be phenomenal; by far the stand-out moment of the novel for me.
As a side note, after the first few chapters I was really confused with the way this book was marketed. I got intrigued by it being advertised as “for fans of Gideon the Ninth” but, being a fan of The Locked Tomb, I honestly can’t see any comparison between them beside both novels featuring a widely queer cast with lesbian characters in the spotlight, and both novels sitting under speculative fiction. It felt a bit misleading to advertise it like that.
All in all, Metal from Heaven is a really complex and intriguing story and I think this will definitely be some readers’ new favourite - unfortunately, it just wasn’t for me!
. ݁₊ ⊹ . ݁ ⟡ ݁ . ⊹ ₊ ݁.Thank you to NetGalley for providing me with an e-ARC for early review.. ݁₊ ⊹ . ݁ ⟡ ݁ . ⊹ ₊ ݁.
Metal From Heaven is like taking the vibes of Star Wars bounty hunter culture and making it the sexiest, gayest, and most unrelentingly badass mixture of anti-capitalist punk rock eco-scifantasy that I have ever consumed and possibly will ever consume.
Metal From Heaven is like if Sarah Gailey went on a date with Gideon the Ninth and the result was not a relationship but a story that is so inherently 2nd-person-POV lesbianic saddle-raging biker gang hookup that you get whiplash just trying to write a review for it.
Metal From Heaven is THE singlemost queer revenge quest/meetcute governmental takedown grindcore "murder ballad" literary achievement in my very unprofessional opinion, and I've read 3.7 million words of gay fanfiction this year alone (that's War and Peace about seven times over), which absolutely does not qualify me to do anything at all, but I'm going to attempt to ramble about this book a little bit more anyways.
This isn't even normally the kind of thing I would pick up or gravitate towards. If you're looking for high clarity, clean and simple, or tender love and care, this ain't the book for you, and you should read it anyways. While it's not the most high concept unique premise ever imagined, the execution, the attention to detail, and the style that literally drips and oozes out of this thing will probably blow your mind like a pipe bomb shoved behind your temporal lobe. I was convinced to read this as an ARC by a great friend from my book club and I was readily warned and aware of just how insanely gay and nutshitjackwild this would be. And literally, by about forty or fifty pages in, I was already entranced by the vibes. It's bloody, violent, cruel, and apathetic. There's no slowing down, no brakes, no time to wonder about anything but what is going on right in front of your eyeballs. Are you confused reading this stream of consciousness review? Then you're getting closer to being ready for Metal From Heaven.
It's got plot, it's got character, it's got woke messaging out the wazoo. There's like three men in the entire book but it hardly even matters because the gender of characters really only comes up in terms of political and religious belief. No one cares what's in your pants when you're robbing an entire train full of people. Romance? Maybe. There's sex, love, obsession, sadomasochism, and more, but probably not romance. All's fair in fits of ichor-induced seizures and corporate sabotage. Motorcycles, lesbians, tattoos, guns, fancy gowns, sharp nails, forced marriages, righteous anger, revenge, trauma, chronic illness, more lesbians, highway robbery, blowing shit the fuck up, Robin Hood would be real proud, knives, politics, classism, extreme amounts of death, being adopted by five (six?) revolutionary leaders in one day, returning to a home you build with your own blood, drinking, fucking, sobbing, screaming, taking vengeance, losing everything, nothing is true, death isn't the end, and holy mother of pearls, you need to read this goddamn book.
Absolutely astounding. Clarke's creativity and style are daunting, and the book has a vitality and power I don't see a lot. The unreliable narrator (in the sense of Marney having a bit of tunnel vision, not of being deliberately dishonest) was very well depicted. The "Thisness" of the book worked more than it didn't; if I had any criticism it would be that sometimes the story got a little bit away from the author before having to be reigned in. What really clinched it for me was the beyond-epic conclusion. I had no inkling that it was coming and it blew me away. I look forward to seeing what else Clarke can do.
August Clarke's world building is shatteringly vivid. The reader is dragged into the narrator's world from the first beat.
I'm not sure how to genre this book. Steampunk pirate-adjacent fantasy revenge story - might cover it. I'm briefly reminded of the feeling I experienced with Last Voyage of Poe Blythe and Six of Crows - but this story is well beyond either of those.
I haven't been immersed in a world and a story like this since Mistborn, and if I'm being honest, Marney's story feels like it could possibly fit in Sanderson's universe. Except.
Except Clarke has made something unique and clever here. Political intrigue, revenge and bloody coups, Yes. Marney is broken. But aren't we all.
And the story is dark and bloody but shot through with a prism of light so painful, I couldn't put it down. It hurt to put it down.
And it hurt to finish.
"The world would be harrowed.
The Lustrous desire to fly."
A fever dream of a book. Butch lesbian (transmasc?) Magneto has LSD trips every time she uses her powers, fighting capitalist evils and a class war in a Victorian industry style fantasy world. If your favourite of Tamsyn Muir's books was Harrow the Ninth, this is for you, even trippier, angrier, and wilder. Brain melting in the best way
I have been rotating Metal From Heaven in my head ever since I read it, oh man.
The Scapegracers is one of my favourite YA trilogies, so I was pretty keen to see what his adult debut would be like. It has many of the things I love from scapegracers: the unique writing style, a messy and vulnerable butch MC, and complex relationships that blur definitions. But also like that’s put through a blender: still tastes good, but is a completely new world that takes a bit to get used to and can be hard to figure out all the elements.
There’s a lot going on in the first half, while also not having an obvious plot direction - it’s very much worldbuilding and character focused. I was unsure where the story was going other than just following Marney growing up and wanting revenge. But the writing style and interesting characters was definitely enough to keep my attention! And then in the second half the more direct plot gets going.
The world is very rich and detailed with various different religions, classes, cultures. I probably could have used a map and/or list guide to keep track of those (maybe that’ll come in the finished version?). It also introduces a lot of characters - often in groups of 5+ at a time, and I found it hard to remember who everyone was.
I like how queerness is explored - the religions and elite have their various flavours of homophobia, but the lower classes are full of queer people, with the cultural elements that come with it - it really feels like a true reflection of queerness in our world, not the somewhat sanitised version that there’s quite a lot of in fantasy. The elite queers have their Lunarist Society but don’t want to be associated with the crawlies - even when they’re confronted with the fact they’re not all that different (crawly is more or less this world’s version of dyke as a self id, I’m pretty sure). I appreciate how sex is explored in a specific and personal and normalised way (not as like a sub-aspect of an overbearing romance).
Anyway there is a lot in this book, and much to think about - I definitely don’t think it will be for everyone! But overall I loved it a lot, what a wild fever dream of a revenge quest. Also the ending- woah!
This book was captivating, and I hope there will be more to come in this world August Clarke has created.
Once again August Clarke has written a vicious book. The prose is sharp-edged and ruthless, carving its message into your psyche. It’ll leave you smiling, bloody, and wishing for more.
Anyone who’s read The Scapegracer Trilogy will recognize the way August writes. It’s feral, it’s dangerous, and if you loved it there you’ll love it here as well. But that’s not to say the two works feel exactly the same. The tight friendships in the Scapegracers were a balm, of sorts, velvet that wrapped around razored words to give you moments of relief and comfort from the danger of the setting. Metal From Heaven doesn’t focus on such relationships as much, it doesn’t offer those moments to rest and gather yourself. It’s relentless…always pushing forward, happy to carve its themes into you.
And August takes their sweet time with it too. She’s not in a rush, you’re with Marney Honeycutt for almost half the book before the masquerade starts. Long enough for August to let you slip into the character’s skin, settle into her sinews and marrow. All the better to make you feel the gut punches left to come, to snatch you up in the mindfuck at the end.
This book isn’t the Scapegracers, it’s a triumph in its own right. Read it.
Imagine if Upton Sinclair wrote about lesbian pirates. The only survivor of a strikebreaking massacre, Marney is taken in by a group of (mostly lesbian) bandits who fight for riches, revenge, fun, and the hope of a future free of oppression. Metal from Heaven follows Marney as she grows from a heartbroken orphan with magical heavy metal poisoning to a badass lesbian pirate, all while mourning the death of her childhood soulmate. I appreciated this book's ambition, scope, and willingness to get a bit weird, and Marney's narration worked very well. On the downside, the pacing drags in the middle and near the end, the plot twist is so painfully obvious that it's frustrating watching Marney continue to miss it. (To give the author credit, I think it's supposed to be obvious and Marney's obliviousness works as foreshadowing. This does not stop it from being frustrating.) But if the book looks at all interesting to you, I recommend picking it up.
[Review copy via Netgalley.]
Loud, sweaty, sexy, bright, dreamlike, bloody. This won't be a book for everyone. But it was a book for me!
Metal From Heaven follows Marney, starting from when she works in a factory, chronically ill from the harsh conditions and orphaned by her family's attempt to unionize before being shot down by the police protecting the factory's - and CEO Yann I. Chauncey's - interests. We track her joining an outlaw group and sabotaging the industry from the outside to her attempts to woo Chauncey's daughter into a political marriage in order to get closer to him. Metal From Heaven's obvious contemporary is Gideon the Ninth, but there's a little of The Lies of Locke Lamora and The Traitor Baru Cormorant as well.
The writing is bright, blurry, almost stream-of-consciousness style as filtered through Marney's chronic illness and pathetically obsessive fixation on the person she's narrating to: a "you" companion who dies at the very beginning of the book, but who serves as a religious beacon for Marney's perspective. As many other reviewers have already noted, this isn't a love story, and the Clarke is wholly unconcerned with making his characters likable. Everyone here is just a little batshit, and a huge part of the appeal of this book is watching these characters clash together. And those HEIST SCENES!! There's a strong sense of found family here, and I wish we leaned even further into that!
The action sequences are exciting and tightly written, the worldbuilding is expansive and highly political (though at times confusing. I'm hoping the publisher adds a map and glossary to the finished copy), and the fervent religious diversity lends Metal From Heaven a unique texture while also working smoothly into the plot.
For as much as I'm typing, I'm struggling to capture how exciting and fresh Metal From Heaven feels. It rounds up so much of what I've been searching for in a book. It's not perfect - I can already anticipate readers encouraging people to just "get past the slow beginning" - and it's not as neat as some of its contemporaries.
But it's pulpy. It's hopeful. It's camp. It's desperate. It's fun.
Thank you to publisher and Netgalley for the ARC copy. Opinions are my own.
My thanks to NetGalley and Kensington Publishing for a free eARC of "Metal From Heaven" by August Clarke.
I was so excited for this Dark LGBTQ+ Fantasy Standalone with a coming of age story.
It took me overtwo days to get to the 30% mark. Whenever I took a break from reading, I felt dread to start again, all that because of the dense prose and complicated writing style.
I read complex prose before, but it never made me feel distanced from the plot or the characters.
I think this would be a great book for readers that are looking for a challenging Adult Fantasy Standalone.
I will have to pause at 30% because I don't want to get in a reading slump.
Thank you to NetGalley and Erewhon Books for the arc! This was fantastic! I really loved this, and am blown away! It is one of the most unique books I’ve ever read -hauntingly beautiful too. It’s also dangerous, sexy, challenging, radical, queer, and ambitious. Loved the use of second person -it made everything so much more powerful, and powerful it was. If you want to read something that will shake you, move you, it’s right here.
The world building was vast and plentiful, I loved the use of religion and the way it aided the story, the “magic” was extremely interesting to learn about and unravel over the course of the book, and this book was so wonderfully unique. Of course, I loved and very much align with the “radical” and political themes here, as well as the message it sends. And the ending! Holy shit it was everything.
The only thing I’ll take off points for is that on occasion I got a blip of incoherence within the wording and prose, but I also have only 2 brain cells that mash together to create some semblance of thought.
Overall, this is a must-read. Of course, my review is subject to change (definitely for the better -this very well could be a 5 star), but either way I have a feeling I’ll be thinking about this book constantly for a long, long time. ~4.75!
This book, unfortunately, was not for me.
I DNF'd at 35%. I was really hoping to be able to push through but I cannot. The prose felt too slow and with knowing that there are hundreds more pages for me to get through, I just could not get invested. I know this will definitely be for someone, just not for me right now.
This book reminded me of a mix between Gideon the Ninth and Upright Women Wanted. Unfortunately, while both books are really popular, I didn't love them. So unfortunately, I didn't love this book either. I was hopeful that the book would pick up and get more exciting but everything was told in such a monotonous way. I fear I also lost the plot partially way through and just never picked it back up.
But I did love the diversity of this book! It was great to see so many queer characters and their relationships with each other during such a difficult time. I really do think the reason I didn't like this book that much was because of my personal preferences and not because it was poorly written.
What a stunning and brutal fever dream of a book.
I wanted to eat this up, devour every bit of the savoury prose and come back for seconds. However, I realize that same writing may not quite be for everyone - it's a bit dense, very descriptive, and nearly-page-long paragraphs of exposition are not entirely out of the ordinary. But it's all written so gorgeously, with each word and phrase chosen with obvious care, and I was just transfixed by every sentence.
There is a lot going on in the plot of this book, spread out over a decade, and I loved every era of it. Right from the opening chapter, of the Burn Street massacre, this book starts out brutal and wild, and does not let up.
Those descriptions also apply to most of the characters, who are, by and large, mostly horrible lesbians (looking at you, everyone courting Goss). They are unapologetic, they are wholly defined as their own selves, and they each have rich and often terrible histories to them. You could write a spin-off about pretty much any character, and it would be fucked up and amazing.
I don't entirely know what to say about this book. It's unlike anything I've ever read before, and I'm devastated to already know that it will be unlike anything I'll ever read in the future.
<I>Thank you to the publisher, Erewhon Books, and to NetGalley for the ARC.</I>
Where to begin.
I ADORED the premise and the sudden plot-twists. There’s a full spectrum of such different characters but somehow you find yourself remembering who is who (in my case i ALWAYS find that difficult and stressful). Also the political belief system is done so beautifully that you often feel inspired despite the harsh and tense situation they find themselves in.
Sadly I felt offput by the awkward pace of it and how slow everything moved (despite all the action involved). Also I think this is one of those books that could really use a map and/or a guide of each religion. I think it would bring more depth to the world and character building (if you really want to make religion a part of this I think it should be explained).
I think that this will be ABSOLUTELY someone’s favourite book. It was just not mine.
Thank you Kensington Publishing and Netgalley for this ARC!
i am very gay. and somewhat confused. but mostly gay.
is this the princess bride (which i despise) meets gideon the ninth (which i love deeply) vibes? yes, absolutely. Put it in the writing style of Gregory Maguire meets Seth Dickinson with less of Maguire's quirks that are very YMMV for many (love them i do, though!) and you'll have a good idea.
Dense and heavy, dryly humorous and witty, Metal from Heaven forges a world and a hate. Marney is lustertouched, which gives her great power and pain both, and lustersickness which causes both her and the narrative to hallucinate. It's genuinely very, very well done, showing Clarke's deft and practiced hand.
I look forward to reading more-= and yelling about this!
Sadly I had to DNF this book at 40% read - i had been pushing through hoping for the plot to get going for a while now, and it just did not happen. I'm genuinely sad about this, as i had such high hopes for this book because I absolutely loved the author's Scapegracers series - but sadly the vague prose, arbitrary timeskips and generally slow pace just made this something I did not enjoy reading. I wish it had been, because I still love the overall premise of the book and the worldbuilding, when it was possible to discern through the abstract descriptions and lack of concrete details and explanation, seemed really tight and interesting. I am still looking forward to the author's future works!
To be brutally honest, up until the wild ending, I was really, really not vibing with this one. I think the premise was mostly interesting, but there were a few different aspects of the book that made this a difficult book to read.
For starters, the narrative style in this was... a choice. It's written in 1st-person POV (not my favorite, but I can work with it). The main character, Marney, has grown up around ichorite ever since she was forced to work in the ichorite manufacturing factories. This has given her a rather debilitating illness--called "luster-touched"--which causes her body to essentially start to shut down and her mind to hallucinate. It's a fascinating concept, but the way it translated into the narrative style was confusing. Because Marney hallucinates often (there's ichorite everywhere), the narration reflects this. While this could've been interesting enough in small doses, the fact that it happens so often really impacted my ability to completely follow (or enjoy) the story.
This leads into the fact that the way this was written didn't seem to allow me to feel much for the characters outside of Marney (and I didn't completely feel for Marney either). The writing felt very stilted at times and none of the characters really jumped off the page as a result.
Then, there's the fact that the world-building is delivered into GIANT chunks of text, often spanning pages. It often felt tedious and I didn't care enough in the world to want to know more.
Honestly, if it weren't for the wild, unique ending, this would've been a 1-star read. This has Gideon the Ninth as a comp title, but I'd honestly say that Gideon is less confusing than this turned out to be, even at its most confusing (at least, to me). So, overall, really didn't work for me and I'm honestly glad to be done reading it.
August Clarke's debut novel, 'Metal From Heaven,' is a gripping and thought-provoking eco-fantasy that explores the devastating consequences of unchecked capitalism and the power of resistance. Set in a dystopian world where the toxic metal ichorite fuels national growth, the story revolves around Marney Honeycutt, a child worker who survives a massacre perpetrated by industrialist Yann Chauncey's strikebreakers. Ten years later, Marney embarks on a perilous quest for revenge, infiltrating the elite Chauncey family by posing as an aristocrat. Clarke's prose is both lyrical and unflinching, capturing the horrors of the ichorite-driven economy and the resilience of those fighting against it. The descriptions of the foundry's toxic conditions and the plight of the 'luster-touched' workers are particularly haunting. The novel's core themes of labor politics, corporate greed, and the relentless grind of capitalism are woven seamlessly into the narrative. Clarke deftly portrays the ways in which the wealthy and powerful exploit the marginalized, and the devastating impact of environmental destruction on both humans and the planet. However, 'Metal From Heaven' is more than just a social commentary. It is also a visceral and thrilling revenge quest. Marney's determination to avenge her family and friends drives the plot forward, and the scenes where she confronts her enemies are both satisfying and unsettling. The novel also explores the complexities of Marney's own identity as a lesbian woman. Her desire for revenge and her love for her best friend, Anya, are intertwined in a way that challenges traditional gender roles and expectations. Overall, this book is a captivating and thought-provoking debut novel that will stay with readers long after they finish it. Clarke's unflinching exploration of the consequences of unchecked capitalism and the power of resistance makes this a must-read for fans of eco-fantasy, revenge thrillers, and novels that challenge the status quo.