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

I have only read one Vladimir Nabokov novel and that is Pale Fire. I enjoyed it and its layers upon layers of unreliability quite a lot when I read it in my senior year of high school, but I don't think I quite got it. Metallic Realms is like if you took the idea of Pale Fire and got rid of some of the layers and made it about unsuccessful writers in Brooklyn who write sci-fi together.

The novel takes the form of a fictional novel that an outsider to this sci-fi group, Michael, is writing that combines the groups short stories and his recollection of events of their rise and fall. The novel's triumph is Michael, who might be one of the most well realized sympathetic villain, I've ever read. For that i what Michael is in many ways he is the villain of this novel. He is obsessive and narcissistic. He commits a couple crimes throughout the novel and ruins the life of many of the group members in an attempt at keeping them together. Yet even as he does these terrible things you just have such pity and sympathy for him. He feels so real, like a guy who is just a little to oblivious to be able to live a nice life.

The short stories throughout the novel are also doing a very good job at what they are trying to do. As the group degrades and starts fighting more they put a lot of their anger with each other into their short stories, they proceed to get more autobiographical as they go on. Each of the group members has their own style which comes through the various short stories. Its just really marvelous work by Lincoln Michel and I highly suggest this novel for anyone looking for a tale with complex characters.