So: this is a book which is wildly and unapologetically itself. Don't come to this book expecting it to make space for you. It proudly takes up its own space, and it's up to you whether you're along for the ride.

This is a fantasy novel set during a faux-Industrial Revolution which stars a tattooed queer motorcycle gang, in which basically everyone is a lesbian and almost every combination of characters has had sex (symbolically or otherwise) with each other. "Be gay, do crimes" doesn't begin to cover it. It is not about characters changing or growing or doing a little hero's journey or anything cute like that; it is a punk anarchist anticapitalist dyke manifesto.

So settle in, don't fight it, munch on the crunchy yummy and occasionally experimental prose, roll with the sweeping sometimes-disconnected vignettes and bursts of ideology, embrace the symbolism and the rich embodied sensual style, and you'll have a ball. I did and I am a very different person than August Clarke.

A couple of things I think METAL FROM HEAVEN does really well:

- I loved the portrayal of religion, particularly the way faith can entangle with your life and sense of awe/desire and how you conceptualize yourself, long past the point where you're orthodox or observant. Given the whole punk burn-the-world-down vibe, I was really surprised to discover that - in many ways - this is a nuanced story about someone finding a richly meaningful place in her usually very gender-essentialist and homophobic religion. Also the way the Torn Child riffs off the Trinity/the suffering Jesus/the Church as Christ's body/...imma have to get back to you on that one. Really good stuff.

- The second person pays off, trust me. (I am so here for my two nickels: bizarre sapphic second-person SFF novels about bodies, cf HARROW THE NINTH.) Also the way it connects to all the other worship and awe and desire and lust...The thematic/symbolic throughline in this book is just so well done.

- There is some fabulous representation here of how gender and sexuality can be intertwined in complex ways. This is definitely representation of a very specific kind of messy nonconformist queer experience which not all queer people share, but it is so rare to find and well done and I felt lucky to be let into it.

- This is also a book which is constantly curious about community, care and softness, the slippery boundaries of what love can be. There are no "normal" relationships here and quite a big cast of characters (most of whom have 2-4 names to boot...), so it can be a lot to keep track of. But even that feels intentional. It's almost baiting you: why DO you have a problem with a big messy network of characters, huh? Why DO you want one protagonist to have all the flashy agency?

Some other things METAL FROM HEAVEN is not trying to do:

- Many fantasy novels spend a lot of their attention on plot, magic, worldbuilding puzzles, complicated explanations and reveals, etc. IMO this book has a solid plot throughline, but this is not Metal From Heaven's preoccupation. You are here for the vibes, the characters, the politics, and the embodied symbol world. Don't get impatient when it pauses the plot throughline for character vignettes or sex scenes, you will drive yourself nuts.

- Yes, the ending is weird, but our protagonist does have hallucinatory out-of-body magic. And it pays off a ton of the magic, character, political, and thematic throughlines. It follows. Just remember: this is a not a story about people changing, it's a story about people being and wanting. Roll with it. Soak in the vibe.

- This is not Queer Rep 101; this is Queer Rep 301 at least, made for the gays first and everyone else second. This book is not going to apologize for Making Things Weird or being problematicTM.

- This is also probably not the book for you if you get bothered about historical accuracy, or about being preached at. This book has opinions, it has a point, and it is not embarrassed about it.

Great read. Highly recommended if you're here for it.

Thanks to Netgalley and Kensington Publishing for an e-ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Metal from Heaven is a high-stakes revenge story set in a fantasy world moving through its industrial revolution. It's topped off with political intrigue, the highs and lows of high school football -- I mean organized banditry for a cause, secret identities, the precursor to the L Word, and unadulterated intimacy (physical, psychological, spiritual, and everything in between).

We follow Marney Honeycutt, an ex-child worker and sole survivor of the Yann Chauncey Ichorite Foundry strike massacre and her self-imposed destiny to kill Yann Industry Chauncey, and the radical love she experiences along the way.

This book is bloody, dramatic, capitalist, and horny. One of my favorite four combos. And it is absolutely brutal.

In the best way, of course.

The titular "metal from heaven" is an azure luster-y substance called **ichorite**, named in the same vein as ichor, blood of the gods. Marney is one of many luster-touched, a person exposed to ichorite for prolonged periods of time (usually from a young age), but she also holds a unique ability to feel and meld ichorite to her will at the cost of potentially deadly "fits".

I saw this book pitched as being for fans of Gideon the Ninth and The Princess Bride. While I can see the similarities between Metal from Heaven and The Locked Tomb series (mostly their absolute manic, almost chaotic, lesbian energy), The Princess Bride felt a lot less on the nose. The Traitor Baru Cormorant feels like a more apt comparison in my opinion.

*Metal from Heaven* is probably more explicitly in your face than both of the above novels, so if you liked Gideon the Ninth and The Princess Bride this might be in your wheelhouse, but it's just something to keep in mind.

---
Writing-wise, Metal from Heaven is 50% punchy, 20% headache inducing, 30% gripping, and 100% feeling.

The propose is so so so beautiful. Not in a slow and a poetic way; moreso... sharp. It's stark and clear like a gut punch that knocks the wind out of you and leaves you feeling it hours after.

The pacing... is weird. Personally, felt very off. The introductory section of the story felt too slow and too fast at the same time. Marney is a questionably reliable narrator, mostly in part due to her idol worship of <i>you</i>. Stylistically, the prose feels very stream of consciousness. There were a good chunk of times where it felt like there a big skip, or some significant thing happened, and the dots just weren't connecting at first read. Reading this book felt like I was hallucinating almost, which, in all fairness feels appropriate given Marney's ichorite fits.

Everything starts to pick up around halfway through the book, once we're introduced to the core premise of how Marney will actually carry out her plans to kill Yann Industry Chauncey. Up until that point, it feels like a big lore / backstory drop (which, it technically is), and that's when the story really starts.

The reveal felt a little heavy handed to me, but I did love the idea that she inexplicably tied into Marney's fate, even if it wasn't the way Marney thought she would. I did love the two of them were foils to one another in the way that processed and internalized their trauma and grief, and the way justify themselves so similarly.

---

Marney herself is a compelling character. She is a big, fascinating mess, who has clung onto her perception of the idea of <i>you</i>, her childhood friend and... everything? It feels like a disservice to only describe her as a friend or a crush. To Marney, <i>you</i> is her reason for everything.

Throughout her life, she is solely driven by her desire to kill Yann Chauncey. There is this, powerful almost itching feeling that Marney's narration brings. Her desire and determination is palpable and heavy and you can feel every bit of it.

Other main characters and side cast are equally as interesting. There are of course the scattered here and there characters, but Marney's core circle are all incredibly well-written and interesting in their own right.

I myself adored Vikare and Sisphe in particular, and felt just so much feeling that I cannot describe for Gossamer Dignity Chauncey.

---
I would argue that Metal from Heaven is a happy story in many ways, depending on your definite of happy. It celebrates the love, grief, and worship that make us human in an all too human way. It explores oneness with the world, trauma and how we cope with it, the systems that chain and cage us, perceptions of self and the lies we tell ourselves, the hard and painful road of self-discovery, and the friends and family we find along the way.

More than anything, it's a story about you. About you, me, and us. About what it means to just be, in the best ways and the worst ways.

Metal from Heaven was weird, aching, and beautiful. It has good bones, even if it is sometimes a little too ambitious for itself. August Clarke aimed for the stars, and while they didn't quite get there, they at least reached the moon.

“A bloody lesbian revenge tale and political fantasy set in a glittering world transformed by industrial change – and simmering class warfare.” – When I read this in the synopsis I was like SAY LESS! I knew this was going to be a good one, and it absolutely delivered.

First off can I just say that it’s criminal that there isn’t a special edition of this book because I would buy it in a heartbeat! This story is a brilliant mix of revenge, revolution, labour rights, environmental destruction, and class conflict. It’s messy, it’s bloody, sexy and it’s unapologetically bold from the very start (you’ll know what I mean if you’ve read it).

I enjoyed the story, but I have to admit it took me a minute to get used to the writing style. There’s a lot packed into each page, with LOTS of descriptions, intricate worldbuilding, and at times, paragraphs that seem to stretch onto page long descriptions. But once I got accustomed to it, I couldn’t stop reading to the very end. The political systems, the religious factions, the magic, it was all of it very well-thought-out and woven together brilliantly. I just wish there had been a detailed map and glossary to help me keep track of everything. My pen and notepad were sick of me 😂😭.
The story is set in a dystopian world powered by ichorite, a toxic metal that fuels the nation's growth while poisoning its people. Our MFC Marney Honeycutt, is a child worker who survives a massacre orchestrated by industrialist Yann Chauncey's strikebreakers. Ten years later, Marney embarks on a dangerous mission to avenge her people and family by infiltrating the elite Chauncey family, pretending to be one of their own.

I especially loved reading Marney’s character arc. Growing up in ichorite factories left her with “luster-touched,” a debilitating illness that causes her body to slowly shut down and her mind to hallucinate. Her journey from a tragic childhood to becoming a part of a choir (cough *gang* cough) and eventually a bandit was truly a wild ride. 👀

Overall, I ate up Metal from Heaven, even though the writing style sometimes had me struggling to keep up but that’s just me living on two brain cells that were struggling to survive, lol. If you’re looking for a revenge story with complex, morally ambiguous characters in a Victorian-style political fantasy world, you need to read this.

A huge thank you to Erewhon Books and Kensington Publishing Corp for providing an e-ARC and a finished copy in exchange for an honest review!

This piece is a beautiful evaluation of revolution from multiple nuanced angles. The multicultural landscape depicted all reference facets of a single significant event with a brilliance. The protagonist is a compelling representation of disability well supported by a network of mutual aid. I will be thinking about this work for a long time.

Rounding up from 3.5 stars. Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an eARC in exchange for an honest review..

If you like sapphic revenge tales that read like a Fever dream, this is the book for you! I loved the opening, the overall idea, and world building so much. Our main character, Marney, becomes a bandit with The Choir after her entire family is massacred.

Where I disconnected from the book was the writing style. It felt a little too dreamlike and I get that it’s from Marney’s perspective and she hallucinates all the time, but it did make things a bit hard to follow and I wasn’t as invested as I’d like to be. Overall a fun read of this is your vibe.

I’m so sorry, but this book was not for me. I found the narrator’s point of view exhausting, even though I’ve enjoyed other books where the protagonist seems to experience psychosis such as Harrow the Ninth.

The last 10% of the book was a complete puzzle, and not in the good way. It felt like this book wanted to be a series but was forcefully shoved into a standalone and suffered greatly for it. I added a star for this odd decision that I assume was imposed from the top down, and not a choice of the author.

As I had a negative experience, I’ve chosen not to repost elsewhere, as to not prejudice readers against this book. It wasn’t for me, but authors I respect have given high praise for it, so maybe it’ll work for you.

I know some people will love this, but I can't. The energy is non-stop over the top, which means there isn't any variation, everything is extremely important, but also, everything is the same. It is just tiring.

There are transitions that are hard to follow, needing re-reading, new slang that takes several pages to make sense, and world building without any real support. All those things bounced me out of the narrative.

I am unfortunately going to join those that did not enjoy this. In theory, this has everything I like - a FMC full of trauma trauma ready to avenge those that she lost, lots of women that aren't pretty and perfect and Only Good, lesbians, and a really cool world with cool magic and incredible worldbuilding. But I could just not get through this at all.

Something about the writing for this book was just so incredibly vague. It felt like reading someone's diary that they wrote as they were going through a fever dream or on some kind of hallucination - a few moments of clarity where I was like, "oh wow, I know what's going on" only to be thrown back into an incredibly dense paragraph full of description that, other than looking poetic, really did not tell me all that much about the characters, the plot, or what was going on. It also felt like the entire time was just going forward through snapshots, with nothing really linking scenes and to me that made it even more difficult to understand what was happening and who was present.

I also just could not get myself to care for the main character. The first 10% I was rooting for her, but I gave up and DNFed around 28% in when I could not get myself to focus after a pagelong description of something that just put me to sleep, and I zoned out after that. I tried skimming through it, but I think it is just not for me.

Would recommend this for those of you that like a bit of a vague, densely descriptive and flowery language all while not truly being all that proper, and if you honestly love a bunch of cool lesbians doing cool, at times unethical shit (or so I heard). Please don't let my review keep you from picking this up, because all my friends recommended this to me and loved it, so I think I am just not intellectual enough for it, but truly, do give it a shot!

Thank you to Kensington Publishing and NetGalley for this e-ARC for review. I’m quite excited to read it and will provide a review promptly.

4.5 stars rounded up.

This book is for communist and anarchist queers who loved Gideon the Ninth but also kind of wished Catherynne M. Valente had written the prose instead.

My number one tip to you is to keep paper and pencil at hand to write down character names and attributes because this book does no hand-holding and every character has at least three names, sometimes up to five. It takes place in a fully realized fantasy world of many different cultures and religions and there's no guide to help you keep it all sorted (unless it's added to the official release). It's a glorious mess.

So, what the hell is this book even about? Our protagonist Marney is the only survivor of strike-breaking massacre at a factory that refines a strange and magical metal called ichorite. She is "lustertouched", born allergic to ichorite but also with a magical resonance to it. In the aftermath of the massacre she winds up joining the Choir, a gang of political radicals who have overthrown a baron and are keeping up the charade of him still being alive while the people live in a socialist commune funded by stealing from the rich. There are many ways the charade can fall, and the most obvious ticking clock is that the baron had a young daughter who at some point needs to appear in high society or things will get too suspicious. Meanwhile, Marney has sworn to kill Yann Industry Chauncey, the man who discovered how to refine ichorite and ordered her family killed. These threads eventually come together as the Choir spies an opportunity to kill two birds with one stone by entering a disguised Marney into a competition among nobility for the hand of Chauncy's daughter in marriage.

<i>We must resist the ossification of precedent. We march toward Hereafter, not tomorrow, we march past tomorrow, we know tomorrow will be hard.</i>

This is an intensely political book. While many different political philosophies are exposed by characters on the page, the true core is to the far left. Reading such a radical political underpinning in a fantasy novel, a genre with deep conservative roots, was extremely refreshing. I've never experienced it before and I hope it blasts open a dam. It felt like clarke was writing this book because they wanted to read it, not to chase any trends or to the tastes of the mass market. I hope it blows up. I hope it goes nuclear.

It's also extremely queer. I immediately made the connection from the in-book word crawly to queer (and several other words I fear I don't have the license to type), especially when Marney starts using it around people who call themselves Lunarists or astrologists. It's wonderful to have a stone butch protagonist. The sex scenes are perfectly woven into the story. It's a sapphic book for messy, sexual, sapphic punks.

The actual storytelling is where I struggled. This book meanders. Marney often reflects on things and directs a large amount of her narration to her dead first love, sometimes in the middle of other things. Marney is also prone to seizures, hallucinations, and fits when exposed to ichorite. It's a book you cannot skim or listen to at 3x speed. I feel a lot of fantasy is written where the prose is as unobtrusive as possible, so you barely notice the words as you turn the pages. This prose is sharp and present; the book demands you look at each word. If you don't, you actually can skim right over important plot developments. Overall, I found the back 60% to be far more enticing than the 40% that came before. The pacing also speeds up beyond that point. The ending is beyond my dreams.

In short, it's a damn fine novel that didn't work perfectly for me. I want to give a copy to every radical that helped shape my burning queer self as I came of age, into the hands of all my friends making messy queer art, and to all people who are dreaming of the Hereafter.

Thank you NetGalley, Kensington Publishing, and Erewhon Books for this ARC I received in exchange for my honest review.

My kingdom for a map and a dramatis personae!

At about 40% I asked my Buddy Reader "Anyway, what the fuck is [redacted]? What the fuck is [further redacted]? What the fuck was happening with that [redacted] on the [redacted]?"

There were eventually answers to those questions (some sooner than others), but by the time we got to them, I was kind of past caring. In the best possible way.

Much like Clarke's debut The Scapegracers, the story here is meandering. It sometimes feels like it takes forever to get to any sort of point, but I firmly believe this is a feature of their writing, not a bug.

I hope this book finds its audience so I can have more people to talk about it with. This might be the single most queer female gaze focused book I've ever read? Truly, absolutely, wonderfully off the rails and delightful.

(Ignore the people who say this is a second person narrative. It's not.)

I DNF'ed this book at about 33%. For a book that's almost 450 pages that's over 150 pages read, and eventually I just couldn't do it. This is a standalone but based on the pacing you would think it's a series. I also know that this is an ARC but I found myself having to read passages over and over because they didn't make any sense. I was also just so confused about...so many things. The idea of this one was a cool one, but it was just a big miss for me. Don't let that stop you from picking it up though, because I know there are several people who have really enjoyed it!

Highlights
~the strangest metal you’ve ever met
~unexpected otters
~the life of a highwaywoman is the life
~service-top MC ftw
~I’m an anarchist now and I’m not sorry

Metal From Heaven grabs you by the throat with the very first line, and doesn’t let go until long after the last.

I still have bruises. I am scarred where this book touched me; I am branded.

And I am so, so good with that.

Metal From Heaven is a feral, phantasmagoric fantasy with bloody knuckles and otherworldly oil between its teeth, an anarchist bacchanal as sharp as it is gorgeous, hot pink and vicious. It’s almost impossibly vivid, every detail jewelled and gleaming, every line a decadent feast, electric and crackling. It’s an iridescent lightning strike, and you’ll find clarke’s prose seared like Lichtenberg figures across your skin before it’s done.

My blood was thick and vibrant. Cut me and find grenadine. Cut me and find white hot light.

The blurb has the plot covered pretty well: Marney’s family and community are all murdered for a peaceful work strike by Chauncey, the man who discovered and discovered how to utilise ichorite, a weird metal that can be used for almost anything. He didn’t care about his workers; they protested; he had them killed. Marney falls in with bandits; grows up; and eventually masquerades as a noble to get close to Chauncey’s daughter, with the goal of killing Chauncey. And – because where would the story be if they didn’t? – things get complicated.

>I understood that we had a future of incomprehensible beauty. I just lacked the words for it then.<

But even before we get to the plot, the structure of Metal From Heaven is already unusual. The opening lines are spoken from the end of the story;

>Know I adore you. Look out over the glow. The cities sundered, their machines inverted, mountains split and prairies blazing, that long foreseen Hereafter crowning fast.<

What’s a Hereafter? Who is adored? What’s happening?

What’s happening is Marney telling her story. To us, but not really us. To one person in particular.

Marney survives her family’s massacre, and a single moment of careless, casual kindness – a stranger, not just feeding her, but feeding her the kind of dessert she’s never beheld before – hooks her fate in with that of the Choir: anarchist communists who steal from the rich to support their own hidden community in the far-off Fingerbluffs. They are Hereafterists (does that ring a bell?), working towards paradise on earth (the Hereafter) with every breath, defiantly discarding the constrictions of religion, gender, sexuality, and anything else that seeks to restrain them.

And it’s absolutely beautiful.

>We leaned off our lurchers and gave luxurious silks and fine jewels to everyone who gathered to watch us pass, and the crooked teeth they showed us were beautiful, and the air was perfumed with marmalade and tobacco flowers, and Harlow and Sisphe and I reclined on the cliffs like natural princes, eating fruit and sunning ourselves, adorned with scrapes and bruises.<

We’re supposed to be hypnotised by the Fingerbluffs, and I don’t know how anyone could fail to be: it’s a dream, a Kubla Khan of a place where everyone is free to be who they want; where children wear jewels and buying-and-selling is just for fun. But like Kubla Khan, it dissolves like candyfloss when you try to hold it. clarke never zooms in to show us the complicated, messy bits that come with giving society the finger – and this doesn’t feel like clarke being forgetful; it reads as very deliberate. We’re supposed to raise our eyebrows at Marney’s blithe assurance that the Hereafter will be perfect, even though she can’t articulate what that means, never mind how it could be manifested. I’m pretty confident that we’re meant to give a head-tilt at the fact that the Fingerbluffs couldn’t exist without capitalism living next door to steal from – how are the Fingerbluffs going to support themselves in a world with no more rich?

Unclear.

But I can be sure that it’s deliberate because clarke never drops the ball with his worldbuilding. In Metal From Heaven, he’s created a rich world so fully-realised you’ll forget it’s fictional, dazzlingly embroidered with history, competing religions, fashions, gender roles, political structures – nothing has been forgotten, and yet the worldbuilding is never overwhelming. The placement of small, unique details – prayer-pearls, the Bleed, lip-rings, tattoos – infuses the book with the vivid impression of a vast and complicated world, without having to show us every bit of it. Things are close enough to be familiar, with factories and motorcycles and trains, but the tiny elements that remind you that we’re not in our world are like pop rocks candy: glittering and sharp in your mouth, sweet and vital. Battered bread, domesticated otters, blue fruit – dazzling, viscerally convincing, and completely side-stepping any need for info-dumps.

>Two hundred years ago Ignavian revolutionaries had decided it was unjust to have a class-based truth tense and hearsay tense, that is, it was a moral injury for the poor not to be taught truth’s grammar, for everything a working man said to be assumed to be half figment, for the privileged to be the authority on all things.<

Marney herself is a feral tangle of desire and trauma, sharp as broken glass and soft as fur. She’s the kind of fearless whose courage comes from having already written herself off, and good gods she is fucked-up. The biggest critique I have of the Hereafterists is that none of them saw baby!Marney desperately needed healing – but then, just about everyone else among the Hereafterists is broken, too, so maybe there was no one whole enough to help her. Either way, Marney is a fascinating main character; oddly passive in some ways, fervent in her beliefs but uninterested in the nitty-gritty of them, quick to self-sacrifice, uneasy with her body and gender, vicious, rabid. She’s only a few steps above illiterate, which is interesting in a genre where leads are usually supernaturally special; she’s a wild thing who loves softness and luxury and femininity; who wants to make people happy as much as she wants to murder her family’s murderer; who has no pride at all. I adore her.

>It was a disjuncture in the meat of me. A bone-deep fear. That fear was hungry, it wanted, I wanted, I lusted and was satisfied. Just not with hands on me. It sometimes seemed to me I had a cuntless cockless body. I was nothing but output and appetite, I gave, my pleasure lived in my knuckles and my nail beds and the leather belts around my hips. My clit was my tongue. My slit was my throat.<

So what’s this book about? Yes, we know the plot, the plot is in the blurb, but what is it about?

Metal From Heaven is gender-fuckery and untamed queerness, labour politics and workers’ rights, anti-capitalist and gloriously anarchist. What the fuck is femininity weaves through the story, a bright, hot pink ribbon with razored edges. Pink, pink is everywhere: pink is the colour of gender-fuckery, as we see when Amon paints his face not blue for men or black for women, but pink; pink is what Marney sees when she uses her magic, the world smearing and shining around her. This is political fantasy – fiercely, unabashedly political – where there’s nothing on the menu but the rich, the rich and those who’ll betray everyone else to serve them.

>Our fight was with the above and those below who’d betray their comrades to get higher.<

clarke is writing about violence and freedom and sex and kink, the unceasing fight to make the world better, the belief that it can be better. Hope, and what hope costs. It’s gritty and gorgeous in equal measure, deliriously sensual, sexual; it has no interest in genre conventions at all, doesn’t ignore your expectations so much as never recognises that they’re there in the first place. It’s intoxicating and addictive – I have read my advanced reading copy THREE TIMES now, and I will read it many more times, I don’t see how I could ever be done.

And the prose? I highlighted so many lines and passages that I broke my ereader, and I have a long, long list of sentences I need tattooed on me. I have FEASTED on the prose here and I am FED, my word-hunger has never been so satisfied in my LIFE. I already adored clarke’s writing – hells yes I did, and if you haven’t read the Scapegracers trilogy, you bloody well ought to – but my siblings in Satan, the only way I can put this is, Metal From Heaven is the opposite of a lobotomy.

In more ways than one: yes, I galaxy-brained at the painfully exquisite language, but also: this book radicalised me. I’ve been anti-capitalist for a while now, but hi, yes, I’m convinced, anarchist communism is the way to go. Not because the Hereafterists are perfect, but because clarke fucking convinced me that too many of the tenets I’ve taken for granted are an outrage, an unforgivable violence. And I’m eager to see what other readers think, if anyone else has been convinced, and if so, where do we go from here?

>When few rule the many, they must use force to take what they want, and demonstrate force not just to keep it, but to snuff the fires of contradiction from the collective. People above must do this. This is a quality of being above. Someone must be below, and to be below is to be bereft and suffer.<

How often does a book really blow your mind? Really teach you something new, really make you see the world in a different way? NOT OFTEN. Mostly the books we love already align with our own beliefs and views – yes they do, don’t deny it – but every now and then, one comes along like a taser, and it’s going to hurt but the shock jolts you wide awake.

This book is a taser.

>It was not intuition, it was insanity and faith.<

When you put everything together, plot and worldbuilding and stunning main character and themes and prose–! This BOOK, this book is a nonpareil, a crown jewel, a comet that sears through the skies once in a generation. It is an Event and a miracle and a war-cry, ornate and bloody, decadent and distilled, a glamour bomb reshaping the world. It’s like nothing else you’ve ever read in so many different ways.

I bear my scars from reading it proudly.

>Keep me and save us. Keep me or I’ll kill you. Say you’ll keep me.”

“I’ll keep you.”<

Metal From Heaven doesn’t play nice and doesn’t play fair; this is a book that challenges you, bites you, wants you awake and wild and bleeding light. No review can do it justice; this is one you have to experience.

If you read only one book this year, let it be this one. You will not regret it.

You ever think to yourself while reading a book, “man I can’t wait to read this again?”Or even get a little bit sad that the book isn’t infinite and you can’t read it forever? Metal from Heaven had me feeling both of these to the point I limited how much I read per day to enjoy it longer. I could have stayed in those pages forever and been happy.

From a massacre in the opening scenes you are quickly shoved into a world of class warfare, radical bandits and luster touched victims. A story about resilience, competition, heists and community that made me feel like I was risking my life along side Marney and her gang. The writing and characters are so beautiful and immersive. The description of the book read “Visceral lesbian revenge quest” and that’s what got me hooked. I received this as an ARC and will be recommending it to everyone I know. I love this book so much and I can’t wait to buy a copy when it comes out.

Thank you to NetGalley for an ARC!

DNF @ 50%

I really, really wanted to like this, but unfortunately, this was just not for me.

My biggest gripe is the writing style. I feel like it could either be a hit or miss, and it was a miss for me. It's very metaphorical and dreamlike, with makes everything feel kind of slow? Which isn't a bad thing, but based on what I heard, I was expecting something more fast-paced and action packed, which the first 50% of this was not.

I might try rereading this in the future, if I ever find myself in the mood for it, but for now I have to DNF.

4.5 stars rounded up.

I am stunned by this book, in the best way. I had decent expectations for it and it was better than I thought/anticipated by a mile.

I thoroughly enjoyed the narrative style - I've only read one other book that I can think of where the second-person narration (addressing a "you") was done well. And it worked extremely well for the story being told here.

While I didn't relate to all the struggles in the story (sexuality, gender, and some with religion), I thought that the way they were presented was exceptional.

Furthermore, the descriptions of Marney's reaction to the ichorite - the metal from heaven, as it were - were astounding. I could picture them in my mind so clearly, and could even feel them at some points.

The only reason I hesitate the give it a full 5 stars is it didn't quite hit the emotional response at the end that I felt myself anticipating. That said, I will be reading this book again in the future.

Absolutely fucking insane (affectionate).

Metal from Heaven is a violent, sapphic, revolutionary fever dream. Part Harrow the Ninth (unreliable narrator, hallucinations, copious amounts of leaking bodily fluids), part The Traitor Baru Cormorant (meticulous political fantasy, destroying the colonizers from within), and part The Lies of Locke Lamora (thrilling heists, beloved friendships) yet wholly its own unique experience - it's as though August Clarke blended every element I love and poured it back out even more vibrant and brutal and queer than ever.

I'm desperately hoping this finds its weird niche of fans after it releases on October 22nd.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the eARC.

Where to even start when reviewing a book that I believe is one of the most mind-blowingly written books of this century? How to put it into words that I have never read anything like this?!
Metal From Heaven is stunning in the sense that I would be stunned similarly by some beautiful strange thing falling from the sky onto my head. It turned me inside out.
Revenge. Love. Gutwrenching grief and reckoning. Would give it more than five stars if I could. Highly anticipating more creations from this author.

Thank you NetGalley for another ARC,

Harold, they are lesbians!

Metal from Heaven, by August Clarke, was a wild ride from beginning to end. The plot is complex and the writing is a feverish, dream-like, grimy stream of conscience. This book is not going to be for everyone, let me just get that out of the way; the way the story is told is unique and, in my humble opinion, not made to binge read, you still can, of course(I’m not the boss of you), but I think this particular narrative rewards those who really take their time reading and absorbing what they read.

One of the things that I absolutely loved about Metal from Heaven, was that the cast women were so diverse, and I’m not only talking about their appearances, but also about their personalities. These women were ruthless, and ambitious, clever, angry, violent, caring, compassionate; they felt like real people.

The ending was a dream, a stream of conscience so delicious to read I still think about it.
August Clarke will be on my radar from now on.

It took me a couple times to get into the mindset to start this, but once I got over the hurdle I really enjoyed it!