This book. THIS BOOK. It has eaten my brain and I've struggled to write a coherent review but you know what, I'm not sure there's any way to talk about this coherently. This book is a vicious, biting fever dream. The characters are all actually insane, horrible and wonderful and real, and their relationships are cruel and broken and healing.

This is a book about revenge, about love, about labor rights, about class and lesbianism and how class impacts the queer experience, about train heists, and about family. And it's my favorite release of 2024.

Pre order this astonishing novel and treat yourself in the fall when it comes out. Clarke’s writing is astoundingly lyrical and lends itself to the sense of being told around a camp fire. This leans into the power of community, the bottomless well of horror that is capitalism, throws in a fun side dose of fantasy metal and industrial poisoning, and goes on a gorgeous tale of toxic hothouse lesbians and the girl our girl sets out to marry and kill her father for fun. Oh, and she goes into a full bdsm relationship with the cop obsessed with trying to expose her and bring her down. This is a goddamn amazing read, and you’ll want to pick it up for this fall.

I'd like to thank the publisher and NetGalley for allowing me a chance at reading this.

This book as been sitting on my goodreads for a while, resting at 10% in. While the story is of interest, the prose reminded an awful much like Gideon the Ninth. While a lot of people enjoyed that book, I was someone who did not. At the time there was not many reviews for this up when I requested it - so I took a chance.

This is no way in slight of the author. If you're a fan of the first person narrative writing of Gideon the Ninth, you'll probably enjoy this. I didn't. So I moved on. I hope this finds its audience. I truly wish I was one.

Put the Pedal to the Metal

The nearest easy comparison I can make to this book is Gideon the Ninth, but really it’s sort of an anti-capitalist lesbian pirate collision of Furiosa meets Bridgerton meets Cronenberg. Even that doesn’t really come close to describing it. If it sounds at all interesting, then please just stop here and go read it.

An amazing new metal has been discovered which will revolutionise the world. Marney Honeycutt is a child worker in a dangerous factory which refines it, and has a sickness common to many such workers known as being “lustertouched”. This manifests as a strong allergic reaction to the new metal, to the point of fits and hallucinations when she merely touches it. To force the company to improve conditions, all the workers go on strike, and she ends up on a picket line with her family and her best friend.

That’s when the company enforcers open fire, and everybody she knows dies. It is a tale of blood-soaked survival from that point on. Over the next decade of Marney’s life, she plots how to kill the man who ordered the shooting, all while narrating the story to her dead friend. To describe too much more of her journey would spoil things, but she ends up joining a gang, infiltrating high society, and attempting to woo the daughter of the man she plans to murder.

I will say though, this isn’t a romance. It’s about love in some ways, and there’s certainly sex, but it’s mostly about the desire to get revenge, and how that single-minded focus can drive a person to the point of destruction and beyond.

The world building is fantastic and inventive, the characters wonderfully drawn, and the tale twists around in so many directions at once that I could not even begin to predict where things would end up. I had to re-read several passages towards the end, open mouthed at the sheer audacity of what was happening.

I am sure this will make multiple award lists for 2024, and equally sure some people will absolutely hate it. I thought it was extraordinary, and the most unique book I have read in years. Highly recommended.

Thanks to Kensington Publishing for the early review copy.

Marney Honeycutt works in the Yann I Chauncey Ichorite Factory but when their sister leads a workers' strike that turns into a massacre, they are suddenly all alone. Touched in the head by the metal they worked from birth, Marney has to get out of the city. They fall in with a gang of thieves who whisk them away to a mansion high in the hills by the sea. But Marney will come back. Because they are going to kill Chauncey and they're going to marry his daughter to do it.

August Clarke has done it again. I was captivated from the very first page by Clarke's signature dizzying, dazzling prose. I was utterly immersed in this rich world that blends fantasy and science fiction absolutely perfectly. I loved the different cultures, I especially loved the way Clarke emulated butch/femme lesbian culture, I loved that trans-ness was just part of the world and Marney never had to fight to be who they were.

The queerness really was my favourite part. It was so nice to finally read a book about a trans stone butch that feels like the trans stone butches I know. Marney felt and talked and behaved like so many of my friends do and that representation is so sorely needed. I have a list of friends a mile long to recommend this book because I know they ache to see themselves and their lives represented in media. I'm very grateful that August Clarke is able to do that with their books.

And the prose! Clarke has such a specific way of writing that just latches into your brain and doesn't let go. It flows so beautifully but has a staccato edge that I can't get enough of. I especially enjoyed how Clarke intermittently used second person to elevate how Marney was telling the story and the reason why they were doing that became so satisfying as the story went on. It was utterly brilliant.

If you are looking for a truly unique speculative fiction story that centres queerness and working class people in a story of revenge, I implore you to pick up Metal From Heaven and allow yourself to be swept away in this enthralling book. It's an absolute masterpiece.

2.5 stars.

Wow. What a journey this was. I never read something like this before. I knew I was going in for a wild weird journey, but I still didn't expect what I ended up reading.

We dive into a industrialized futuristic world and the author doesn't waste time showing us the root of this story. You see, as many materialistic things we place above people in our world, ichorite is everything to this world. Is what builds prospect, progress - it is the future. And it is sickening its laborers. Being "lustertouched" is the condition ichorite provokes, and the one that has fallen over Marney as well. When a peaceful plea from the workers becomes a bloodshed and only Marney survives, the story takes action.

What a bang right? Marney is a character driven by the traumas of losing her family that day, as well as the youthful yet powerful love she nourishes for her best friend. A love that shapes and will guide the rest of her life. A love that was never lost, although the lover was. At first I found it odd by how Marney addressed her loved one by nothing but "You". There wasn't a name, but simply a "you". For example, Marney was narrating and she would say something between the lines "How I adored you". Although simple, it felt strong. That person was everything to Marney and you can feel just that when she directly calls to us, her. This also allowed an incredibly impactful moment by the end. I saw it coming, but I loved how it was done. This is Marney's revenge story, but it's also much more than that.

I wish this book was everything I idealized in my head. There's a part of me that loves it, and is still holding on to it. Unfortunetly, there was many things that, ultimately, didn't work for me.

The worldbuilding. I love complicated worlds and to get lost in them, but this one was too much. Or better said, it felt too much by how little insight it was given to us readers. The politics are constantly happening in the background, but they are never fully fleshed out. I wanted to understand them. I tried to make sense of them, but there was too many names and places thrown at you all the time. It's like the author has it all in their head and is showing us only one third of it. I can't read minds yet, although I really tried. And the frustrating part is that this seems like such a compelling world to immerse yourself in. I WANT to know MORE. I loved how religion was depicted in this book, with fascinating and original concepts. It truly intrigued me. But every time I was getting more information, it got harder and harder to puzzle it together in my head. I felt like I lost a lot of world and politics which is unfortunate.

This is one of those books that you need to have a pen and paper right next to you and write the characters names and places down. And I pride myself (I'm lazy) in my insistence on reading without looking back, even when I don't fully grasp what's going on, because I trust the author will make every thing make sense as we continue on with the story. Metal From Heaven doesn't give you any breaks, though. This is the exception. Each character has numerous names that they are addressed by. I read Dostoevsky and this was harder to follow. I was 80% in and I was still confusing the characters and couldn't make sense of the dynamics between them. It got exasperating when you couldn't really distinguish one character from another in a vast cast of them.

Staying on this point, this book presents us an almost all female cast, full of sapphic relationships and affairs and lust and love. This is not something that lowers or necessarily peaks my interest, but it's such a prevalent aspect to this story that I had to mention. Sadly, I felt very disconnected to the characters, including Marney. Even with the heavy politics happening in the background, Marney isn't actively doing anything. Things happen and she reacts to them. I wish there was more planning or action from her. She wants revenge, and I want more scheming. Every character was kinda crazy in their own unique way to the point that they didn't feel like real people. Pretty early on, I had to conform myself that this wouldn't be a book that would win me over through its characters, but through its plot.

What mainly provoked that huge gap between me and the characters happening was the writing style. Here lies one of the fulcral issue I had with this book. It suffers heavily from purple prose. I understand what the author was doing. I even thought at times that this writing style matched the weirdness of the story and characters perfectly (because it actually did), but damn... it became too much and too tiring too quickly. It was hard enough to keep up with the characters and the world on its own, then you add the prose that they are all wrapped in and it becomes the perfect receipt for a permanent state of confusion. It really was the last straw. I could never make sense of what was going on. I loved it a few times, I hated for all the rest. I hated how it was so hard to get through this book. It was too complicated and overly flowery. I applaud the author for being able to develop such a unique style, but it ruined this story for me. It was too much. Besides, the pacing also felt off. Some scenes were too dragged out when they needn't to be.

The ending. Wow. What a weird, unique, perfectly fitted ending.

This book is hard. This book is every word I already said multiple times on here: weird, unique, crazy, and probably more, since I defintely didn't understand all of it. I wish the author finds the right audience for this story, because it is NOT for everyone and it wasn't partly for me either. Metal From Heaven is that rare is that rare case when I find more enjoyment discussing the story than I did while reading it.

Also... Petition for final version of the book to have a map? Please? I think this is the only book, that I have read so far, that a map is desperately needed. Also... a list with the characters and all the names they go by would be nice... Don't mind me, just throwing around some ideas!

Anyway... I recommend it to everyone who's weird and a bit crazy (and is into that as well)!

dnf @ 58% ⋆𐙚₊˚⊹ ᡣ𐭩
very gay, provocative political fantasy 🍷 & is NOT a romance, however has 🌶️ scenes for those who like a little spice in their fantasy ;)
₊˚⊹ 𐦍༘⋆₊ ⊹ i requested this bc i was hooked by the second part of the description. however, that does not occur until half way through the book. i don't have the motivation nor the patience to finish this. lots of world building + political backgrounds, just not my cup of tea i don't think. this book wasn't for me, but may be for you...

thank you for the advanced reader copy netgalley & august clarke <3

attempt 1: may 9, 2024 - may 23, 2024

Just want to start of by saying I did not finish it, and I won't. Hopefully the critique I have will still be useful, which is why I'm sending my current thoughts on it. Here is the original review, with every comment and update I gave throughout.

Review:

Got 30% in and was still not invested in the story. I could not, for the life of me, like the writing style - I absolutely hate it.

I was so excited about the lesbian pirates and bandits, but I can't read more.

Update: I decided to try again and came to about 50%, still dislike it. Definitely a DNF.

I've decided to give a more thorough explanation as well.

The prose is great - but sometimes it gets so dense that I lose track of the plot. It was also very difficult to read, as a non-native English speaker, because of this.

The time skips was confusing, and the big cast that were all dumped on the reader at once was even more confusing. The lack of action, while being filled with action, was also confusing. I know I read about a train being robbed twice and a massacre, but I did not 'feel' any action or rush of adrenaline while reading it. I think the prose ruined it for me.

Definitely a miss for me, and I think this is a book that you will love or hate - no inbetween.

I struggled to get into this book as the beginning was very backstory heavy before getting into the actual main story, on top of that the style of the writing wasn't the best (in my opinion), being first person pov among other things.

I wanted to enjoy it but considering I struggled with Gideon the Ninth as well (which this book is compared to I wasn't completely surprised). That being said, although I DNFed this book at around the halfway mark, I want to try and come back to it at a later date because I find the concept of the book quite intriguing - being a dystopian type world where Marney (and her family and others) are forced to work in unsafe factory conditions, leading to hints of an uprising before well... a massacre (as said in the blurb).

This is not an extensive review - but considering I did not finish the book, I don't really have a lot to say about it.

***arc copy received through netgalley, all opinions and thoughts on this book are my own

This book is feral, infectious, and heart wrenching. It’s hard to talk about in any tangible way. It’s about love, about grief, about unearned guilt. It’s a gut punch and a call to arms. I’ll be thinking about it for a long, long time.

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.