Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for an advanced copy of this book. I want to state upfront that I DNF this book at 40% because there were several elements in my reading experience that did not match my expectations and taste.

First of all, the premise is magnificent: a queer tale of political vengeance, with a found family of strong, badass bandits, all permeated with the melanchonic remembering of a simpler past while the main character evolves and subsided to what the world does to her. But does not fall: she intends to pursue her goal, as stated in the description of the book - but unfortunately I did not get to when the revenge plot really kicked in.

What stopped me from reading was the pacing of the book. It started off strong and seemed to proceed in quite a regular motion, setting the worldbuilding and the atmosphere that more than a fantasy book reminded me of a western tale: the places, the language, the action, it was original and entertaining until the heist element became too preponderant and eclipsed the changes and evolution and insight on the characters and the overall plot.

The idea of a found family made up of rejects, dreamers, anarchists and pirates is incredibly fascinating, and the whole "we're playing as a noble man and need to keep up the facade other than being burglars and thieves" was really enthralling, but it didn't last long.

I think this book would be PERFECT for readers who want a good slap in the face when it comes to immersing themselves in a fictional universe. Me, I'm the kind of reader that likes to be accompanied by the author a little more, without having to get past pages upon pages of environmental description to get to "a" point.

Kudos for the characters, if you're looking for a fascinating found family that will throw you off a train if you dare say too much, this is the perfect read for you!

4.5 stars rounded up LFGGGG this book is batshit fucking awesome. The raging revenge lesbians. The radical class struggles. The labor organizing. The weird ass religions. The many many characters who you want to run away from but also make out with. And such a satisfying creative insane ending!!

This book will absolutely not be for everyone but who cares because it was perfect for me. The writing was propulsive and almost stream of consciousness, with mostly short staccato sentences. I was worried I wouldn't like it but that style actually worked so well for this story telling. There is also a non-zero amount of second person (again, correct choice for this book), but haters be warned. Finally this book is absolutely visceral and will make you want to scream and rage and tear down all of the unjust structures of our society, so you should probably be in a fighting mood going in and just embrace it.

The only reason its 4.5 and not 5 stars is some pacing/worldbuilding problems. In particular the transition from bandit lesbians in the woods to rich psychotic lesbians in a mansion was a bit tough. Right in the middle of the book we are thrown into an entirely new place and forced to quickly learn a new cast of characters, geopolitical dynamics, and history (both interpersonal and actual historical). It was way too much to digest. I really hope this book gets a detailed map, a character list, and maybe even a historical timeline printed at the beginning before it is published.

But don't let that overwhelming worldbuilding dump deter you, if you got through Gideon and Harrow you can definitely do this! The world is actually super interesting, familiar enough while being creative, and the metal/magic/science/religion/politics combo is next level.

Finally have I mentioned that basically every character is a lesbian and they are all uniquely unhinged (in the best way). There's maybe one character I would feel comfortable hanging out with in this book but I sure loved reading about all of them.

Thank you SO MUCH to the gods of advance copies (and kensington publishing) who granted me both a goodreads giveaway and a netgalley ARC in exchange for an honest review.

And a final thank you to CL Clark and Rebecca Roanhorse who are both authors I love who recommended this book on goodreads, which is how I found it! Yay to queer SFF community!

At the beggining I was not quite convinced about the book. I had a hard time getting into the narrative voice as it felt very "stream of conciousness" and was quite dense. I also felt disappointed because the book is a political fantasy yet it felt like there was really no fantasy element to it. As I kept reading I started getting little by little into the rythm of Marney's voice but I was still unconvinced regarding the fantasy elements so I kind of resigned to enjoy other parts of it (the overall delicious queerness, the political intrigue)

Boy oh boy, was I in for a ride.

I won't deny the book is slow. Very slow. But that last 30% of the book was insane. It just kept escalating. It made me nervous, it made me CACKLE, it made me sad, it made me scream in surprise. I feel like that last idk, 100 pages, made me feel every single emotion in existence. And when I reached the ending and realized its ties to the beggining? I just knew I was in need of a second read.

The narrative is exquisite and while it's hard to get through (even more as non native english speaker) it serves its purpose of supporting the plot, especially since it's a first person POV.

**Thank you Kensington Publishing and NetGalley for the arc! All thoughts and opinions are my own.**
Posted to: NetGalley, Goodreads, and The Storygraph
Posted on: 7 October 2024

3.4 (rounded down to 3) out of 5 stars.

I don’t know where to start for this one. I wanted to love it, so so SO badly did I want to enjoy this! Rebecca Roanhorse hadn’t steered me wrong before so I was ready for another banger she reviewed.
It fell short for me and I don’t know why! It was easy going first. You do kinda start off kind of thrown into this world, but I think August Clarke does a splendid job of pulling you through with the main character. I think what got me confused some was the sudden ‘you’ that was mentioned and turned out to be a friend (potentially lover too I think?) of Marney. Once I got it though, it was like nothing.

I think what bugged me was the pacing? It started off with a bang, kind of slows down, and I feel like it alternates between these action scenes and suddenly slower informational bits. The world building was slipped into these slower bits, and I think it just felt like a dump at times? I literally entered a reading slump during one of the slower bits and found myself pushing through until it got a little better, but I just couldn’t bring myself to force-read it anymore.
I say this, but still I don’t think it was a /bad/ read. It just wasn’t for me at the moment. I do want to try and pick it back up again another time because the plot was good. I was here for the lesbians and the worker’s revolt, and I was not left wanting. I think the info bits were just dragging too much, and I was too distracted to fully re-immerse myself after picking it back up from one break already. Lots of people did seem to enjoy this read though, and I can really see why! At the same time, I can also see how it isn’t for everybody as well. It’s definitely an interesting ready, and the writing style wasn’t entirely my favorite, but it’s one I want to come back to. Just for now, I had to DNF because I didn’t see myself picking it back up again and actually finishing it before it released.

Thank you to Net Galley and] Erewhon Books for the ARC. I was really excited to read this because I love sapphic relationships and revenge. At first when I started reading this, I thought the prose was really beautiful. However, it soon got frustrating and I feel like the prose's beauty is at the expense of the story. The prose is really distracting from the plot which makes it hard to get invested in the characters and their journey. Also, this is a matter of taste, but I thought there was way too much description and exposition but not enough plot related stuff in the book.

loved the author's previous trilogy but this book wasn't for me at all. it was heavy, the characters didn't resonate with me and i struggled with the writing quite a bit, i just could not finish it.

I loved the concept of this gloriously gay revenge steampunk fantasy, but absolutely could NOT abide the writing. I was torn between skimming (with the result of not having a clue as to what was going on) and getting bogged down in the utter illogic of certain phrases (with the result of losing the pacing).

Clarke's writing reminds me of Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone's in This Is How You Lose the Time War, which I disliked, so if you appreciated it, you could give this one a go. It's very focused on writing descriptive sentences that have never been written before, and using active voice in short, choppy, or run-on sentences.

At times Clarke seemed to dismiss science for the sake of a phrase they liked. I had to put the book down after I read the sentence:

"The bodies above me went cold."

A quick Google search says that it takes dead bodies about 2 hours to start cooling down, and 12 hours before they feel cool to the touch. The above line is from a massacre scene, where immediately afterwards the murderers approach the pile of bodies to deal with the remaining survivors. Talk about me struggling with the pacing because totally illogical sentences such as these would just stop me in my tracks.

METAL FROM HEAVEN is marketed as being for fans of Gideon the Ninth... which isn't exactly me, per se, but GtN hooked me enough to persevere through its wild narrative. GtN's confusion was also because of things the reader didn't yet know about or comprehend, but that, looking back, make sense. MFH didn't produce the same effect in me. The lines that I stumbled over are merely in the story to be edgy and novel.

Do I think some people will love this? Absolutely. Already it's garnering praise from a whole range of readers. But I'm afraid I'm more of a traditionalist when it comes to narrative style, and this book lost me from the beginning and never reeled me back in.

At the start of this book, the very first sentence drew me in. The style of writing was so intriguing and captivating. I was astonished by how beautiful and delicate I found the writing to be, while still maintaining the powerful, deeper meanings. However, when this writing style was maintained through and not deviated from, I found it to be a bit dense and hard to get through. Outside of this, I quite enjoyed the plot. The characters were really good and well-developed. The only drawback for this book is that it didn't really hold me. It drew me in, got me interested, then did not hold that. After a little bit, it became more so making myself read, rather than finding myself drawn back to picking up the book again.

DNF at 58%. I really wanted to like this book, but unfortunately it's just not for me. Also, I don't understand why it's being compared to The Princess Bride?

Oh my god! hat a book! What a rush! Absolutely killer read. Be Gay Be Do Crime encapsulated! Marney Honeycutt, you will always be immortal to me.

The Class Consciousness. The Means of Production becoming SENTIENT?! Ough, there's so much in this book.

A novel filled with lesbians, chronic illness, and barely any men? A perfect premise for fans of the so-called "Sapphic Trifecta," Muir's The Locked Tomb series, and the ever-growing genre of sapphic fantasy/sci-fi works. Metal from Heaven has such a unique premise and a strong voice that holds steady throughout the novel, it does not shy away from the grittiness and visceral-ness of violence and revolution all while existing within a queer-heavy cast. Its dedication to queerness and the vastness of its existence within the world is notable.

It has such a vast and complex web of characters who are all the worst people you’ve ever met. And I LOVED every second. This isn’t a romance and it’s not a happy story, it’s gritty and violent and that’s what makes it so special.

But the world-building could have been more conscience, in my opinion, there were sections where the transitions between world-building topics were sloppy. Large chunks of text that take up half a chapter, while only being mildly related to the other half, can feel long-winded and out of place. Some sections take longer to process their narrative belonging. But the substance of the world-building and the characters made up for it in my opinion.

And the last few chapters, MWAH Chefs Kiss, it is everything I could have hoped for, I live for unconventional writing styles and it served so deliciously.

Despite areas with some flaws, it’s a solid, violently sexy, read that any Locked Tomb fan should try out.

First and foremost, props to the artist because this cover is absolutely amazing. There were moments when reading this book that I found myself having read four pages, yet completely confused as to how I got there. The scene transitions could've used some work but the characters and their scenes with one another were great. I'd be willing to read more from the author as I do feel they have a lot of potential for growth.

Thank you, NetGalley and Kensington Publishing, for the ARC.

Metal from heaven was both tender and violent, and the only way I can describe reading it is as "breathtaking”

While the Gideon the Ninth comp title played a part in me picking this book, I don’t think it’s really an accurate comparison, and it might end up disappointing some readers. However, I am struggling with finding a way to describe this book in a way that does it justice.

In short, Metal From Heaven follows a young girl named Marney as she barely escapes the massacre that takes her entire family and her childhood friend, whom she was in love with, and along the way encounters bandits who take her under their wing to join their large revolutionary organization, all the while she seeks revenge on the man who killed her loved ones.

While the prose is captivating from the start, it took me a while to get into this story itself. The pacing was somewhat slow, and the world is revealed to us bit by bit, which was frustrating and sometimes confusing, but the payoff is worth it in my opinion.

I enjoyed Marney as a POV. Her devotion and love for the people around her were beautiful to read about. Her connection to her childhood friend is an absolute highlight; the way it turns into worship of an idealized version of who she remembers her friend to be was heart wrenching. Even the way she sees the world (and therefore, how we see it) is influenced by her love for her friend, which was really fascinating.

I loved the lesbianism in this book, from the varied gender expressions, the history, the terminology, the communities, and the sex. I have not read any book that depicts lesbianism like this, and I am so grateful for it.

My only complaint is that I think some side characters and some plot points could’ve been fleshed out more.

Overall, this was a stunning book with a great main character, a well-realized world with interesting history and politics, and gorgeous prose.

Easily one of my favourite books I've read this year! I love how different this is from anything else I've read, I love the prose, I love the industrial revolution setting and the protagonist, I love how unapologetically gross and strange it is. I don't think this is all that similar to Gideon the Ninth (although I imagine that a lot of Gideon fans will enjoy this as well), and the comparison to The Princess Bride actually boggles the mind. I'd recommend this to anyone who enjoys weird fantasy and prose that reads like a fever dream.

A brassy and bold undertaking in more ways than one, Metal From Heaven is a great book if you’re looking for something different and very overt about its intentions.

This book is not subtle. Nothing about it could be considered downplayed or nuanced. This book is 100% arguing that capitalism, corporate greed, and anti-unionism are bad and communal living and stealing from the rich are good (no complaints here, to be clear). It's unabashedly presenting an argument in this regard, which serves to make the themes and motivations of the characters easy to understand.

Unfortunately, the style of the prose is not so simple. I’ve read many challenging novels, and I enjoy books that play with structure and aren’t entirely straightforward … but this didn’t do enough with structure to compensate for the way it was written. Basically, this book is a whole whackload of sentence fragments. While it happens far too often to be unintentional, I found it choppy and entirely broke my immersion. If it was somehow related to the main character’s magical abilities, sure, but that’s never made overtly clear (and given everything else is overt in this book, having that be the one subtlety seems odd). Had the sentence fragments increased when she touched anchorite or during other times where choppiness would enhance the reading in a mimetic way, that would have worked quite well, but to just have everything sentence fragments all the time just didn’t work for me.

Moving back to the good stuff, the physical descriptions in the novel are excellent. You really understand what everyone looks like, which I think is one of the harder things to pull off. It’s easier to give everyone sort of minimal description and let them fill in the blanks, but the characters in this book were detailed and rich. The queerness was great, too—there’s a real “lesbians banding together” feel that welcomes you into the fold.

That being said, the characters are a bit “much” at times. This could be getting boring in my old age, but all of them had very loud personalities. It felt a bit like a carryover from YA where, at least the limited YA I've read, doesn’t lend itself to subtle characters. This, like the prose, is a preference thing. I think some readers will love these characters. Me, I’m like, does anyone just chill once in a while? Can we just sit down for five minutes?

As a whole, I found my interests would move in spurts. I would be super entranced for 10% or so, then kind of meh for another 10% until something else picked it back up. This could be because there is a bit of info-dumping worldbuilding that could have been woven in a way that was less clunky or trimmed back. There’s also a severe lack of transition phrases, which ties to the prose again.

I will say, though, the ending is batshit crazy wild, which was a lot of fun (in a sense). This book has a lot going for it, and I think a lot of people will love it. I loved the themes it was addressing, the power-lesbian dynamics, and the worldbuilding was rich despite how it was presented, but I didn’t love the book overall.

If you’re in the mood for something that starts off right in the thick of the action and is a high octane, no holds barred, these are my politics and screw an allegory. I’m telling it to you straight, queer as hell, not happy ending; you will enjoy this.

I need to say two things at the start:
1. You have to read to the end. Period.
2. The author did not hold back. At all. Not in the description of the MC, in the worldbuilding, in the brutality, in the fragmentation, in the prose per se, in the spice. I am pretty sure you haven't read anything like this before. I know I didn't.

The world is unique and incredibly rich. The way we learn about it is through Marney, who loses everything in the beginning, and then finds a new way and a purpose. The purpose is revenge. And in a way, love.

At this point I feel that my review is as fragmented as the narration of this book is. Which, in a way, is fitting. We are in Marney's stream of consciousness, and in the first part there's vignette after vignette until we hit the turning point.

I'm not sure what to tell you about this book. If you're really into it, I think it has the potential to alter your brain chemistry. If you're not....you might still be fascinated.

I love that it's queernormative, and that the MC is so very different from other heroines. I appreciate highly what the book is doing. I'm just not sure how I'm feeling about it.

Sorry that this review is not helpful.. Just read the book I guess. It's definitely worth it.

4/5 stars

Thank you @netgalley and @kensingtonbooks for the eARC!

#MetalFromHeaven #Netgalley #Bookstagram

A tale on female rage and revenge. This is by far the strangest book I’ve read in years. Marney is an incredible character. We follow her story from the massacre of her family up to the journey of her revenge. It’s beautifully written, the book contained twists I didn’t expect and turns I’d been waiting on since the moment I read the first chapter. This is one of those books where the character is a bit detached from the reader, we don’t fully know what Marney is doing or why, and even though I usually don’t like books like that, it makes so much sense with this one. This is not a romance, it’s a tragedy, an emotional tale of the world falling apart around you. It’s hard not to like this book, do I love it? I don’t know.. probably not, it’s not what this book is meant for.

The book grasps a side of queer relationships that is hard to find in lesbian fiction. I’ve noticed after 200+ read books that lots of writers almost seem afraid to write heavy sex scenes between women. As if because it’s two women, some “man”handling wouldn’t happen. It’s frustrating and often boring to me. Marney is not always a sweet lover, she can sometimes be rough, sometimes unkind, depends on what her relationship with her partner is. Finally a queer character that doesn’t hold back, it was nice to read about dynamics that don’t always hold hands and gaze into each others eyes during ‘love making’.

A part I found lacking in the book was the romance, a personal preference. That was not what Marney’s story was about. It doesn’t lack love, it’s full of it actually; I can even argue it’s the main subject of the book, the driving force behind Marney’s character. She’s full of it, her passion for life is difficult to grasp since it’s full of violence and she seems to not always stand with two feet on the ground, but it becomes clear and beautiful once you see her traverse in her path for revenge. She does everything for the ones she lost, her family, friends and first love never leave her. She carries them with her in her heartbreaking journey and narration throughout the book. She’s one with them. It’s as if she talks to her childhood friend with letters that she expects no response from. This book is written in first person with Marney sometimes referring to that friend/ first love as You. Marney speaks to you.

Because the basis of a romantic storyline was lacking for Marney (at least with someone alive), I wouldn’t usually have picked up a book like this. I don’t regret it one bit, but it still is saddening to read. I loved Vikare however, a wild, intelligent and passionate character. She formed a love interest in a way I suppose. They fit well together, but as expected, Marney is not really tied to their world in the way she would’ve if the massacre of Burn Street never happened. You know it from the beginning of this book that Marney won’t have a proper happy ending, if it can even be called happy? It’s painful since Marney deserves the world.

Regardless, the narration was gorgeous. Definitely a challenge for a non-native speaker, the comparison to Gideon the Ninth is accurate for this book. August crafts a beautiful and intricate world with detailed politics and multisided characters traversing in it. I will be giving this book a 4.5 on Goodreads for world building, character design and plotwriting. Thank you Kensington Publishing on NetGalley for the copy in exchange for an honest review.

The only thing this has in common with The Princess Bride is the concept of Inigo Montoya. As for Gideon the Ninth, let the record show I dislike Gideon’s narration so much I've DNF’d GtN three times.

So what does Metal from Heaven feel like? Easy: it’s Robin Hood. But a Robin Hood set in a fantasy* late 19th Century/early 20th Century where the Merry Men are a bunch of motorcycle riding dykes trying to usher in a communist revolution and their Sheriff of Nottingham is Andrew Carnegie. If that sounds like fun to you, beware: reading this is like jumping headfirst into something as dense as Dune for the first time—the vocabulary, the culture, and the names will make you crave the glossary Dune is now packaged with so you can make sense of what’s going on. And just when you think you’ve got a hang of your bearings, the setting will shift and you have to start all over again with a dozen new characters from different parts of the world (all of them with different religions, different styles of names, nicknames, connections, etc.).

I’ll be honest, there's a lot of characters in this I could tell you nothing about. A lot of characters I might have a vague idea of one thing about them. They were, frankly, set dressing. Only a few characters really matter and they'll be the ones our protagonist thinks about when they're no longer in the room. Usually bad character work is a huge deal breaker for me, but this just isn't a character book. Not really. Marney, our protagonist, is the only character you need to enjoy to appreciate this story. And even then doesn't mean you have to like Marney. Marney is difficult to like. In particular, she's going to really piss off some readers with her romantic choices which is a big deal because, while this book isn’t a romance, it hinges on a specific romance. What a mess! Still I adored this book.

If you do pick this one up, I feel like it's imperative to note this book is hard to judge without reading the full story down to the last page. It's like trying to offer an opinion on something like Evangelion. Too much hinges on the end. The secrets of this world aren't even hinted at until like 90% in.

Honestly, speaking of Evangelion, my final verdict of this book is that it wishes it was an anime. The part of the cast that falls flat as words on a page would pop as anime characters. Luster, ichorite… all that nonsense wishes it could be animated by Trigger.

Alas, it’s a book instead.

*This book is labeled/marketed as fantasy, but I would argue it’s sci-fi. Even the title feels like it’s alluding to the sci-fi nature of ichorite. The characters, however, don't know they're in a sci-fi world. They attribute things to religion so… I get the “fantasy” label, but… yeah.

This book was unlike anything I’ve read before. When I started it I knew I was going down a path I hadn’t travelled before but the writing made me want to buckle up and enjoy the ride. There’s a part of me that loved it but I think there were parts that felt a bit overcomplicated and it made it difficult for me to settle into the story. Though the ending felt like the perfect end to the story.

“You can't be your own company if you're a woman like me. We cannibalize ourselves. We remember things. Memory's a scourge!"

I have been a fan of Clarke since The Scapegracers and this books has solidified that even more. This book marks their adult debut and, boy, does it achieve everything it sets out to.

Straight away, this book draws you in with prose which is so lyrical and poetic that you are instantly sucked into this industrial landscape. The contrast between the lyricism in this book and the more comedic style writing in The Scapegracers shows just how successful Clarke is at what they do.

My absolute favourite thing about Clarke is their ability to write such beautiful, gorgeous, delectable characters. Harlow, Candor, and Tricksy had been on the page all of 5 seconds before I decided that I loved every single one of them and that they were my precious children. You will also want all of them to end up with Marney because obviously in a Clarke book you’re going to wish that they could all just be one big happy polycule.

The only thing that took away slightly for me was because of how lyrical it is, sometimes it can be hard to grasp what is going on, especially towards the end. Where I definitely knew what was going on, but also I definitely had no clue what was going on too.

(Also can I just say I guessed the part of the plot twist straight away in chapter one and I was so happy with myself)

So if you choose any book to read this year about a bandit and her found family of recluses, let it be this one. I promise you will not be disappointed.

Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC and the opportunity to get my hands on this book in advance!