From Bluesky:

Reading METALLIC REALMS by @thelincoln.bsky.social right now and this is just my jam. It's like Nabakov's PALE FIRE mixed with fanfic.

Finished this yesterday and I loved this book. I wish it had been five times longer, I would have devoured it just as happily.

Will add to the Nebula Recommended Reading list when I get the chance.

This was everything that I wanted from the scifi genre and was really enjoying the concept of this. The plot had that element that I was looking for and enjoyed how good everything was in this. The characters were everything that I was looking for and enjoyed going on this journey with them. Lincoln Michel has a strong writing style and was glad I got to read this.

When you read *Metallic Realms* by Lincoln Michel, you experience multiple stories in one. The premise follows our narrator, who chronicles the writings and inner workings of a collective made up of his roommates and their friends.

As a result, readers are treated to episodic sci-fi adventures while also gaining insight into the lives and inspirations of the writers. These authors are struggling 30-somethings living in NYC. Michael, the narrator, is somewhat of an outsider, looking in on their world. While he may provide reliable accounts of the sci-fi stories, he lacks self-awareness and serves as an unreliable narrator when it comes to the behind-the-scenes/interpersonal aspects.

I love the back-and-forth dynamic in this book. It gives me obsessive fan/ *Misery* vibes combined with the unreliable narration and justifications found in *Yellowface*. I was hooked right from the introduction and highly recommend this unique, genre-defying read.

Thank you to NetGalley and Atria Books for this unbelievable ARC.

Thank you NetGalley and Atria Books for this eARC in exchange for an honest review!

I have only read one Vladimir Nabokov novel and that is Pale Fire. I enjoyed it and its layers upon layers of unreliability quite a lot when I read it in my senior year of high school, but I don't think I quite got it. Metallic Realms is like if you took the idea of Pale Fire and got rid of some of the layers and made it about unsuccessful writers in Brooklyn who write sci-fi together.

The novel takes the form of a fictional novel that an outsider to this sci-fi group, Michael, is writing that combines the groups short stories and his recollection of events of their rise and fall. The novel's triumph is Michael, who might be one of the most well realized sympathetic villain, I've ever read. For that i what Michael is in many ways he is the villain of this novel. He is obsessive and narcissistic. He commits a couple crimes throughout the novel and ruins the life of many of the group members in an attempt at keeping them together. Yet even as he does these terrible things you just have such pity and sympathy for him. He feels so real, like a guy who is just a little to oblivious to be able to live a nice life.

The short stories throughout the novel are also doing a very good job at what they are trying to do. As the group degrades and starts fighting more they put a lot of their anger with each other into their short stories, they proceed to get more autobiographical as they go on. Each of the group members has their own style which comes through the various short stories. Its just really marvelous work by Lincoln Michel and I highly suggest this novel for anyone looking for a tale with complex characters.