This a rough, exhilarating, chokehold of a book. A sprint from start to finish that I could not put down - great ready to have big feeling about lesbian bars, industrialism, and justice.

found family | sci-fi fantasy | punk | lesbian love lust and obsession | be gay do crime | political intrigue | visceral

For those pulled in by the comparison to The Princess Bride and Gideon the Ninth, I didn't feel the connection to The Princess Bride but if you loved the relationships and voice in The Locked Tomb series (especially Harrow), you'll enjoy the intrigue, cruelty, playing with point of view, and deep-seated queerness of this story.

It’s no secret I adore the Scapegracers trilogy by the same author, so I was thrilled to get to read their new adult sff release! However, I have complicated feelings about this book.

It took me two weeks to read. Most books I finish within 2-5 days lol. The first third of the book failed to grip me. Things were happening, characters were introduced (many, many characters. Most failed to make an impression beyond a vibe) but I wasn’t into it. The style that I adored in Scapegracers felt more disjointed. Scattered rather than cutting with scalpel precision. You get thrown into the worldbuild and you better learn to swim fast.

That last point is not necessarily a criticism. I like when books challenge me to pay attention. And I was able to swim. But the whole thing has a dreamlike texture where I would have expected some crunch.

I don’t think it’s exactly fair to judge this book solely against my expectations, though. So here are the things I enjoyed about it:

The second half of the book moves a lot faster. It has sharp humor I enjoyed. It has many, many flawed yet endearing characters. Once the tension gets going, it is gripping (I did read that second half in two days xD). The ambiance of the world is woven into the story. The whole worldbuilding around gender and queerness is fascinating and vivid. The anticapitalist message of course speaks to me. The balance of idealism and grittiness is crunchy.

Yet it ultimately does not all come together for me. There are elements of the conclusion I found satisfying, but I wanted more, and not in a “I will have fun finding my own answers to these questions” way.

That being said, the book feels different and fresh in a sff landscape that struggle to capture my attention these days.

So yeah. Complicated feelings.

I recommend it to people who are not too hung up on explanations in their fantasy, people who are tired of pearl clutching puritan books, people who just want to read something different, people who love feral lesbians, people who aren’t afraid of having to put a little work into understanding what they’re reading.

Metal From Heaven had my attention from the start and whilst I sometimes struggled to keep up the characters, world building and prose keep you hooked. If you're a fan of Gideon the Ninth or blood Over Bright Haven then you'll want to pick this one up.

The characters shined for me, our protagonist Marney is a fantastic mess but my favourite had to be Sunny. There's such a wide amount of fleshed out and vibrant characters within this story that you're bound to love them. Everything about the Fingerbluffs was also amazing and was a truly standout setting + community in Fantasy.

Trust me, if you're a fan of the Locked Tomb series don't wait to pick this one up.

Thanks to Kensington Publishing & Netgalley for this arc!

This book was heartbreaking and amazing all wrapped up in a Sapphic fantasy.

When the book first started I was confused, but drawn in by the characters and the characters are where this book excelled. In a world where “crawleys” are seen as wrong but also in a way accepted a unique group of women from different backgrounds all trying to live and love.

I had never heard of August Clarke but will now be looking for their other works under their other name HA Clarke.

An explosive beginning that had me invested instantly, writing that was beautiful and direct and raw in a way that felt like a punch I was thankful for. Our cast of characters are compelling, funny, and I fell in love with everyone in an instant. I cried. I said "holy shit" out loud a couple of times. She sucks the strap!

I enjoyed it.

This book is a revenge story featuring a lesbian main character and a setting simmering with class warfare. it's a fantasy story that's more about the intricacies of the political intrigues instead of the details of the magic system (though the magic itself plays a big part in the story). there have been a lot of comparisons made between this book and Gideon the Ninth and while i didn't understand the comparison in the first half of the book, by the end, i completely get it. it's not just in the beautiful writing style but also the way the book plays with perspective (which felt a bit gimmicky at first but by the end it was worth it). there were moments in the middle of the book that felt drawn out and/or confusing (but not in a good way, which this book also had plenty of), but the emotional climax and gripping beginning more than made up for it. Definitely recommended for anyone looking for a fantasy read that feels unique and distinctive.

This book is powerful, raw, and fascinating. It felt new and different, and I never entirely knew where it was going next. It was not without faults, but none of those faults were ever that it was boring.

I've long thought that the best way to convey leftist ideals is through fiction because, frankly, Marx's Das Kapital is not a fun read. Here is a book that shows the inevitable evils of a capitalist system, of the nobility of the struggle against it. It's a book that shows the beauty possible in anarchist society, and the ways in which the rich encourage the sorts of horrific events on which they will profit. It's a book that shows the ways that money and power corrupt and it takes to task the effective altruist ideas about how it's permissible to do horrible things to the world in the hope that you might do some good with the money it earns you. Importantly, this is all spread throughout an exciting, action- and sex-filled plot. There are some specific mechanistic ways that this is accomplished, too: the ways that Marney, our narrator, can feel the history of the ichorite objects they touch is a hell of a way of talking about the people that manufactured them and a hell of a way of making mining and industry interesting.

For better and worse, this is a bit of a messy book. That's not shade: the messiness of Marney's gender expression and sexuality is great, and gives the book a queer identity that refuses to fit into politely acceptable boxes or labels. Marney refers to themself as a "boy crawly" and beautifully describes what feels to me like dysphoria; they get a mix of he and she pronouns throughout, but it's never clear cut, especially when they talk about who they do and don't want to finger them. Too often, fantasy queerness just recreates a modern liberal view of identity, and I appreciate the way that Clarke uses this new world they have built to avoid that.

Some of the other messiness, though, is less obviously a benefit. The issues I had with the book tended to feel like editing issues, and while it's possible that some of the copy editing typos will be resolved for the proper release (rather than the ARC), this felt like it needed one more pass for clarity. There were plenty of places where I didn't feel like I could follow exactly what was going on, and that gave me nothing so much as the feeling of a fever dream, and while that lack of information was effective at conveying the feelings of the narrator when they were having a fit, it could also be unpleasantly confusing. Early on, in the first train action scene, I was simply unable to follow who was doing what, despite rereading those pages several times.

More than anything, this is a book that fills me with optimism for whatever Clarke will produce next. It's so full to bursting with great ideas and it feels like a fresh new voice, and I can't wait to read their next novel.

Very good book from an author i love dearly. Lesbian characters to the core, complex and a bit overwhelming worldbuilding. 1 less stars because the ending feels like a cop-out.

Metal from Heaven is unlike anything I have ever read before. A masterclass in political intrigue and world building. Still reeling from that ending.
I was massively impressed by the unique writing style and the stylistic choices made. I love when the author trusts their audience and doesn't much care to explain every little bit, instead letting the reader piece things together and slowly make sense of the world themselves. Though there were moments when it felt like the characters were info-dumping a little too much at times, but never overwhelmingly so.
There were a lot of characters thrown into the story which became a bit hard to keep track of at some point. While most of them had their purpose in driving the story forward, others felt flat and didn't add much to the overall happenings. Other than that I don't have any complaints, except now I need a Vikare spin-off.

I received an ARC from the publisher in exchange for an honest review

Metal from Heaven by August Clarke is a first person-POV Sapphic revenge fantasy. Marney’s entire family was killed in a massacre orchestrated by Yann Industry Chauncy during a strike, sparking Marney to swear revenge. She’s raised by the Choir, a group of criminals who teach her everything she needs to know to seduce Chauncy’s daughter, Gossamer, and convince the young heiress to marry her.

This is a very voice-driven narrative in the same way I would describe A Deadly Education by Naomi Novik as voice-driven. Either the voice is going to work for you or it won’t and if it works, it really works and it is going to push everything forward. The narrative switches between calling Gossamer by name and directly speaking to her with ‘you’, indicating that Marney is telling Gossamer the story. There are tangents lingering on capitalism and on Marney’s vengeful feelings as well as her sexuality.

In a lot of ways, I feel like Metal from Heaven’s prose is about breaking the gender binary. Marney’s POV is not interested in being soft or delicate or traditionally feminine but Marney is referenced with female pronouns. It’s hard for me to articulate this beyond ‘the more I read, the more I felt that any preconceived ideas of gender in relation to a POV character need to be thrown out the window and instead begs the reader to open themselves up to what a female POV can be.’ I love stories of revenge and messy women and Sapphic narratives so that this stood out to me in this way is both exciting and making me ask if I subconsciously do gender POVs even though I am against doing so.

Beyond the POV, there are some other cool gender things going on. One of the cultures represented has five genders that are more defined by sexual preferences with one gender reserved for children and priests. It’s a new way to think about gender that I actually haven’t really thought of before because I consider sexual preferences and gender to be separate, but how it’s presented in the text really worked for me. I liked how it was explored and how it specifically plays with those preferences and the lack of delicacy and daintiness in Marney’s POV.

Metal from Heaven was sold to me as a lesbian revenge eco-fantasy and it absolutely does what it says on the tin. Marney is driven by revenge but also falls in love with Gossamer who loves her in turn in her own way. Marney is allergic to ichorite, which harkens back to Greek mythology, but she comes from a community that was mining it. Industry is destroying everything and it’s slowly killing Marney. I think I’m going to have to reread this book several times to truly be able to state all of my opinions on it because there’s a lot here that is so relevant and challenging our norms and ideas.

I would recommend this to fans of Queer revenge stories, readers who prefer narratives that play with gender, and those looking for a voice-driven fantasy.

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.