While at times excessively heavy on the worldbuilding, it's written in a way that indicates the author's true passion for the story he's created. It is refreshing as well to see a lesbian fantasy novel that isn't shy to explore the messier aspects of sexuality and relationships without resorting to compulsory heterosexuality.

2.5

I’d previously read The Scapegracers and well I hadn’t loved the execution and I really liked the idea so when I saw Clarke was publishing a lesbian revenge story featuring a chronically, ill, main character and dystopian workers’ revolution, I was intrigued. I absolutely adore industrial fantasies and this cover is incredible so I went in with pretty high hopes. And I left with very mixed feelings.

This is not an easy book. It’s ambitious and visceral and thematically so rich. But the writing is a choice. We’re pretty much solely in the head of Marney Honeycutt, who is chronically ill from exposure to an element that her and her entire family spent their lives mining. So the writing becomes almost fever dream like and there’s these lush descriptions that make you feel like you’re also getting ill from exposure to this element. Clark doesn’t hold your hand at all, except they kind of do because there are these info dumps on the world that never fully came together for me. And then because we’re in Marney’s head there’s this distance to the rest of the story that had me struggling to wanna pick it up if I wasn’t actively reading it.

I feel like I haven’t really had many positive things to say and that’s not true. Well, this book didn’t fully come together for me. I do think it’s something that’s gonna stick with me for a while, and I applaud Clarke’s ambition. This truly feels like a book he needed to write and I hope that it gets the audience it deserves, though I fear that in an era of cozy fantasy and romantasy it’s going to fall under the radar. I think this is going to be divisive because of the writing and I think if you pick it up, you’ll know within a few pages if it’s a book for you or not.

3.5 stars

I hate to say it—I really hate to say it—but I think I might have found something that is too confusing for me. I love a confusing book, but Metal From Heaven did not quite have the payoff to outweigh the amount of effort I had to put in to follow the story.

Metal From Heaven is weird, complex, confusing, and ambitious. I admire it so much for what it brings to the fantasy genre and for its commitment to being insanely weird from start to finish. While there were a lot of things I really enjoyed about this story, every time I put the book down it was a struggle to find the motivation to pick it back up.

What is going to make or break this book for most readers is the writing style. I am incredibly torn about my feelings on the writing. On one hand, it is uniquely in character for Marney and incredibly ambitious. Metal From Heaven is told from the perspective of a narrator who is unhinged and completely unreliable. She is experiencing mental deterioration from her exposure to the magic in this world. She is also dealing with trauma and is fixated on her vengeance and her grief. All of these things warp her perspective of things. The story reflects this because it is a very bizarre, nonsensical, flighty narrative that captures Marney as a character.

However, the writing is also too often completely nonsensical. I would read paragraphs and unsure if what I had just read actually said anything. Some of the scene transitions or transitions between abstract thought and reality were honestly… bad. The abrupt transitions make it too disorienting for the reader at times even if the abruptness was intentional.

Being so in Marney’s head all of the time also kept me at a distance from the story and the other characters. I didn’t get enough of a sense of the other characters to really care about what was going on at times.

The world-building could be very info-dumpy at the most random times. There would be occasional tangents about the history of the world or the legacy of conflict between groups. It’s just not the kind of information that we needed in so much detail for this kind of story.

The pacing is also at odds with itself. Metal From Heaven has a surprisingly slow open, only reaching the events on the back of the book at the halfway point. In my opinion, that second arc needed to take up more of the book. As it is, it felt like the two halves of the book were fighting for control and, as a result, neither section ended up standing out as much as it could have. We could have spent more time meeting that second cast of characters, forming connections, and exploring the politics of the world. I don't feel like the first half of the story needed to be as detailed as it was.

This review feels unbalanced because some of the things I critique about this book go hand in hand with what I really enjoyed about it. I loved how wild, wacky, and ambitious this story was. I just don't feel like the ending gave me quite enough payoff to make it feel worth it. I love that the magic is completely unexplained and gross. The way that Marney fights to use her powers and how the ichorite uses her, in turn, was so interesting.

Metal From Heaven was a story that I admired but a reading experience that frustrated and underwhelmed me.

- GORGEOUS prose, I can't remember the last time I enjoyed the actual reading element this much. I've been setting a lot of books to just kindle assisted reading just to get through them because the prose is so blah. Metal From Heaven is one of the first books in a long time I actually sat down and read with my actual eyeballs. Not only read, but ENJOYED and actually got back into highlighting words and phrases I loved. Clarke also REALLY captures both the feeling of Marney's first and of her mad religious fervor she's intertwined with the love and vengeance for the best friend/first love of her childhood.

- Fun, unpredictable cast of characters with sharp characterization. Sometimes quite funny.

- Dense worldbuilding can be overwhelming. There are a lot of interlocking political elements that are constantly evolving, and they're usually conveyed in passing conversation. There's land issues, workers' rights, different faiths all in different places driven by different people.

- Plot progression feels random and stilted. Possibly my biggest criticism. The beginning is solid, but the middle feels happenstance. Granted, it's difficult to tie the passage of something like 12 years together tidily. Additionally, some things aren't wrapped up as nicely as they could be. Perdita really deserved a nasty, prominent death.

- The ending/ichorite reveal was CRAZY and genius and I loved it.

I truly don’t know what to rate this book.

Metal from Heaven is nonsensical and feverish and entirely too self indulgent. I somehow loved and hated it, which is especially complicated when it comes to getting my actual thoughts in order about it.

Some thoughts off the bat:
- I completely understand why fans of Arcane and the Locked Tomb love this one. The tech-y, industry-forward world is reminiscent of Arcane while the narrative style is very clearly inspired by Harrow the Ninth.
- Marney is an incredible main character and yet she keeps the reader at a noticeable distance the entire novel, making it difficult to truly understand her.
- The world building is intricate, fresh, and ambitious but those three things are not done in moderation (and lack what would have been a very helpful map), so the political intricacies and different religions ended up leaving me a bit confused, as did the relationships between the neighboring regions and baronies. I have an understanding of the way the world operates, yet my confidence in that understanding is… minimal.
- I love what this book has to say about capitalism, sexuality, and gender. It’s bold. It’s relevant. It’s thought provoking. There are some killer paragraphs in Metal that I think will stay with me for a long, long time.

Read this book though. It’s confusing. It’s campy. It won’t work for everyone but I think it will devastate the people who (like me?) love it.

Special thank you to the publisher & Netgalley for providing me with a copy in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own!

Oh boy this was a fucking ride from start to finish. Metal from Heaven is one of the most beautifully written books I’ve ever read and it’s so phenomenally gay. The prose is rich and has the cadence of prayer at times. Marney is determined and devoted to a fault and mentally raw. She’s the perfect POV character. I could feel her lustertouched fits viscerally. Nearly everyone’s a lesbian, I want to live in the Fingerbluffs, and the ichorite, oh the ichorite is fabulous. I wish I could read a story bible for this world; every single part of it had such care put into its creation. Truly a 10/10 standalone fantasy novel. Very anticapitalist. Please read it.

Thank you to NetGalley and Erewhon for the opportunity to review this book.

An excellent choice for my 69th book of the year. Two things especially impressed me about Metal from Heaven:

1. The worldbuilding: The author has put in a ton of effort to create a world with many distinct cultures, religions, naming systems, etc. - not just the existence of these things, but the ways that these cultures affect everything that the characters do. It was extremely immersive and felt very rich to me in a way that most fantasy novels don’t.

2. There’s a great payoff moment at the book’s emotional climax that really made the whole thing feel worth it to me.

My only dislike is the writing style, which is artistic, beautiful, and not really for me. The writing made it hard for me to get into the first half of the book, but with that said I am doing an immediate reread so I did end up liking it by the end.

This book was so interesting! I love when author just do something different and this one definitely fits that description. I also get where the comparisons to gideon the ninth come from, though I have to say I way preferred this one.

DNF at 33%. I think this says more about me than the book though, I just couldn’t get into it. 3 stars because although it wasn't for me, I can see others really enjoying this.

This was weird From start to finish, but ot in a bad way! It was great!
It was confusing at times and the narration took me some time to get used to, but it didn't take me away from the story.

I’ll post up a full review eventually, but hot damn. This book is so much. It’s blood and bright and horrifying and lovely. I wouldn’t really call this book a romance or even romantic, but it is filled with love, and I cannot appreciate it enough for that.

I’m a pretty big fan of Clarke’s other trilogy but unfortunately I think my rating and feelings have to come down to an *it’s not you—it’s me* situation. I never had a good enough grasp of what was going on in order to enjoy the interesting world and premise. I think Gideon the Ninth is a perfect comp for Metal from Heaven, especially because I feel the exact same way about both books. Clearly, they have found their audience and I’m genuinely happy readers enjoy these books so much; I’m just not one of those readers sadly.

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

Alright, first off: this fucking rules. It’s rich in language and it kind of feels like a fever dream and it’s also quite brutal. The amount of imagery, emotion, and panache Clarke fits in here is impressive and while I did find the prose dense in information, it’s absolutely worth the read. There are people that have been able to articulate what the hell is going on in this far better than I can (I admit, I’ve fallen a bit behind on my ARCs and I did read this via audio from the library—I enjoyed this, and will certainly be re-reading physically as soon as I can shove it into my busy, busy schedule) because I feel like if I tried to distill this book down it would just come out like “aliogudfgashlfasjdkgl.” It’s ambitious and I think that should be rewarded regardless, but I do think it sticks the landing and in general just works. The voice was so strong and reading this made me feel breathless.

Thank you NetGalley and Erewhon for the e-arc!
This was one of my highly anticipated reads and I am so excited to say I ended up flying through it. The world-building is incredibly intricate and a bit heavy but it really lends to such a detailed story. The characters were my favorite part as I am such a sucker for messy queer characters. The revenge plotline was a bit less relevant than expected but I still ended up liking it. Definitely worth reading especially with the themes.

I have started this book a couple of times , and have gotten to about the same spot… from what I'm have read the concept is cool just not my type of book.. Who knows I may pick it up in the future

The premise of this book is so captivating. I really enjoyed the detailed writing and the worldbuilding.

Thank you Net Galley for providing me with this eARC!

This is an incredibly complex book. There were definitely sections that I thought were too smart for me but eventually they would piece together.

It’s into action from the start but takes a second for the reader to adjust. The way that the author utilizes the language to tell the story can be very strange at times and it took me a second to get my head around when listening to it. The narrator also pronounced things very strangely (example Rin ed instead of rind, bow-dice instead of bodice, etc) and everytime it happened it took me out of the story for a second. I preferred reading to listening.

The FMC grows through the story. Through time jumps you seem them age. This helped guide the story in some aspects but I feel like sometimes the storyline waxed poetically longer than it needed to. The main character would muse and contemplate, and the story wouldn’t move forward because so much time was spent on these thoughts. It slowed the pacing down for me a little bit. There were often unconnected tangents that the story would go into that took me out of the narrative.

It felt like it took the narrative a long time to get to the point that is referenced in the synopsis of the book. And I found that kind of irritating because I just felt like I was constantly waiting to get to the part that I was excited for it was almost too much set up.

The world building is a lot to digest. A lot of the characters had multiple names so I did have a hard time keeping track who was who at times. The magic in this is very unique and the politics are very complex and thought out.

I enjoyed the fact that the powers of the main character is more often a hinderance rather than a help. It’s definitely something that, though it gives her advantage, it gives her an equal disadvantage at the same time. It is like a physical disability that although can make her who she is, definitely takes a toll on her.

I found the book enjoyable, but also not at times. It sometimes is a little gruesome or squeamish for me.

The big reveal was soooooo predictable. But at the same time most of the characters never did what I wanted or expected them to so it was an interesting catch-22.

I was interested to see how the author would wrap this up into a standalone and was impressed with how it was done.

I liked a lot of things about this book. I liked the idea of a lesbian revenge fantasy, the backdrop of industrial revolution and labor strikes, the lyrical writing of the author, and the expansive worldbuilding - unfortunately, the narration kind of killed the vibe for me.

Content warnings include: death, seizures, hallucinations, violence, organised crime, robbery, sex on-page, homophobia.

One of my biggest issues was that the main plot that is described in the book description - the bit about the main character Marney seeking revenge on the the man who killed her family, so to get close she starts courting for his daughter's hand - doesn't even come up until after 50% into the book. This is already a pet peeve of mine, but unfortunately the bits between the very beginning, where Marney's family is killed, and the plot really starting, were not my cup of tea.
Not because of what was happening - Marney growing up with bandits - but because of the narration.

For a huge part the book is written as Marney telling what happened to her to "you", her childhood friend who died with her family. Meaning the events are not written as if they are happening to Marney, but as if they had happened in the past and she is recounting the events. I simply did not like that.

The book was not well written - the writing is very beautiful, and I have enjoyed it already in the author's other works. However, the very lyrical writing, combined with the retrospective narration, and how the reader is thrown into the entire world without much explanation made it confusing to read at times. Usually I don't mind a bit of confusion while reading (the book is compared to Gideon the Ninth after all, which is famously confusing and one of my favourite books) but in this case this specific combination made me not particularly engaged with the book or plot.

Additionally, while the characters were pretty cool, they also felt very scattered and surface level. Even some of the most important characters I had no grasp on as I finished the book, and since a lot of the characters switched around, appeared out of nowhere just to disappear again, it was hard to really get invested into any of them as they were discarded so quickly even when they seemed important. And even the ones that reappeared never got much depth.

Conversely, it actually felt like there was a lot of depth to the setting and worldbuilding, but following it was difficult, and I admittedly just gave up on some of the world politics and countries/players involved. I wanted more from it, but couldn't quite get there.

The plot, what there was of it, was very cool. Unfortunately, it sort of just.... ends at 90%, and the rest of the book is told in a sort of omniscent epilogue style were a ton of events are summarized. It's not like it doesn't make sense for the plot, and IS explained away, but it felt like a very strange choice. It also gave some of the coolest worldbuilding reveals, but it wasn't as impactful as it could have been due to the narration, again.

Ultimately this has a super cool concept and I did enjoy parts of it, but it hugely missed the mark for me due to the narrative choices.

DNF AT 30%. The run-on formatting and the weird bioessentialism (wtf is boycrunchy and girlcrunchy or whatever for butch and femme) and just batshit piratical anarcho-capitalistic politics of this books got real unbelievable. I initially found the second person perspective intriguing but the sentence formatting got tiresome, especially cause the main character seems to roll an auto-fail on not being incredibly obviously shady every time.

DNF @ around 65%

This book was truly a victim of circumstance. I was reading "Metal from Haven" during the 2024 election and the themes of the book started feeling a little too close to home. I had to put it down, and once I put down books I'm not good at picking them back up.

By all standards, this is a fantastically written book with strong themes and messages about greed, capitalism, and labor politics. It reminded me a lot of "Babel" and I think it deserves a place next to it in discussions about politically impactful industrial fantasy novels. I will definitely recommend it to people, despite not finishing it myself.

Thank you NetGalley and Erewhon books for the eARC. All opinions are my own.