Metal from Heaven
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Description
He who controls ichorite controls the world.
A malleable metal more durable than steel, ichorite is a toxic natural resource fueling national growth, and ambitious industrialist Yann Chauncey helms production of this miraculous ore. Working his foundry is an underclass of destitute workers, struggling to get better wages and proper medical treatment for those exposed to ichorite’s debilitating effects since birth.
One of those luster-touched victims, the child worker Marney Honeycutt, is picketing with her family and best friend when a bloody tragedy unfolds. Chauncey’s strikebreakers open fire.
Only Marney survives.
A decade later, as Yann Chauncey searches for a suitable political marriage for his ward, Marney sees the perfect opportunity for revenge. With the help of radical bandits and their stolen wealth, she must masquerade as an aristocrat to win over the calculating Gossamer Chauncey and kill the man who slaughtered her family and friends. But she is not the only suitor after Lady Gossamer’s hand, leading her to play twisted elitist games of intrigue. And Marney’s luster-touched connection to the mysterious resource and its foundry might put her in grave danger – or save her from it.
H. A. Clarke’s adult fantasy debut, writing as August Clarke, Metal From Heaven is a caustic, dizzying eco-fantasy that addresses labor politics, corporate greed, and the relentless grind of capitalism, while also embodying a visceral lesbian revenge quest against the people and institutions who control and oppress the helpless.
"A riotous phantasmagoria that epitomizes the phrase 'be gay, do crime.'" - Melinda Borie, Collection Development Librarian, Floyd County Library (New Albany, IN)
Book Information
Posts
I need to say two things at the start: 1. You have to read to the end. Period. 2. The author did not hold back. At all. Not in the description of the MC, in the worldbuilding, in the brutality, in the fragmentation, in the prose per se, in the spice. I am pretty sure you haven't read anything like this before. I know I didn't.
The world is unique and incredibly rich. The way we learn about it is through Marney, who loses everything in the beginning, and then finds a new way and a purpose. The purpose is revenge. And in a way, love. At this point I feel that my review is as fragmented as the narration of this book is. Which, in a way, is fitting. We are in Marney's stream of consciousness, and in the first part there's vignette after vignette until we hit the turning point. I'm not sure what to tell you about this book. If you're really into it, I think it has the potential to alter your brain chemistry. If you're not....you might still be fascinated. I love that it's queernormative, and that the MC is so very different from other heroines. I appreciate highly what the book is doing. I'm just not sure how I'm feeling about it. Sorry that this review is not helpful.. Just read the book I guess. It's definitely worth it. 4/5 stars Thank you @netgalley and @kensingtonbooks for the eARC! #MetalFromHeaven #Netgalley #Bookstagram
Mixed but also loved it?
~ARC received through netgalley, opinions are my own ~ 3,5 stars because a part of me wants to say 2,5 and another 4,5. This was a wild ride for me. I LOVED the first 2 chapters. You get thrown right into the action and everything feels gritty and horrible and you can just FEEL the world. After those 2 chapters though I kind of had to drag through for a while and nearly DNF'ed and probably would have if I wouldn't have chased the high the first 2 chapters gave me. The problem is in the first 2 chapters the MC is a child but because this is an adult book with very explicit sex scenes later on the MC of course has to age quite a bit before we can start the actual revenge story. So what follows are snippets of the teen years of the MC that are just not well paced and because you constantly jump around you get whole paragraphs of messy VERY purple prose that are supposed to give you an introduction to the new scene but that quite frankly brought me to my limits of understanding what's going on which I never really had before (not even in one of the comp titles: the locked tomb series). I liked the writing during the actual scenes when there was dialogue and stuff happening but sometimes I'd just sit here and not know what was going on. Thankfully starting in chapter 9 the actual revenge story starts and the actual plot unfolds and then I loved it again (and my reading pace increased significantly). There is some very interesting world building in this book which escalates until the very finale which made me actually gasp because I thought the idea was so cool. A lot of the mythology was really cool and there were some really powerful sentences and ideas brought up in that context that I enjoyed massively. I love that this is a (mostly) queernormative world and nearly everyone is a lesbian so big yay for that - I love when women. The characters are pretty flat for the most part. They all serve a specific purpose and don't really have room to stray from that but they are overall fine in my opinion. The book is overall very much based on being anti-capitalism which I love as well. So yeah this book definetly has it's weaknesses and especially in the first half really stretched out my patience but after that I really loved it and devoured nearly 300 pages in a day.
Description
He who controls ichorite controls the world.
A malleable metal more durable than steel, ichorite is a toxic natural resource fueling national growth, and ambitious industrialist Yann Chauncey helms production of this miraculous ore. Working his foundry is an underclass of destitute workers, struggling to get better wages and proper medical treatment for those exposed to ichorite’s debilitating effects since birth.
One of those luster-touched victims, the child worker Marney Honeycutt, is picketing with her family and best friend when a bloody tragedy unfolds. Chauncey’s strikebreakers open fire.
Only Marney survives.
A decade later, as Yann Chauncey searches for a suitable political marriage for his ward, Marney sees the perfect opportunity for revenge. With the help of radical bandits and their stolen wealth, she must masquerade as an aristocrat to win over the calculating Gossamer Chauncey and kill the man who slaughtered her family and friends. But she is not the only suitor after Lady Gossamer’s hand, leading her to play twisted elitist games of intrigue. And Marney’s luster-touched connection to the mysterious resource and its foundry might put her in grave danger – or save her from it.
H. A. Clarke’s adult fantasy debut, writing as August Clarke, Metal From Heaven is a caustic, dizzying eco-fantasy that addresses labor politics, corporate greed, and the relentless grind of capitalism, while also embodying a visceral lesbian revenge quest against the people and institutions who control and oppress the helpless.
"A riotous phantasmagoria that epitomizes the phrase 'be gay, do crime.'" - Melinda Borie, Collection Development Librarian, Floyd County Library (New Albany, IN)
Book Information
Posts
I need to say two things at the start: 1. You have to read to the end. Period. 2. The author did not hold back. At all. Not in the description of the MC, in the worldbuilding, in the brutality, in the fragmentation, in the prose per se, in the spice. I am pretty sure you haven't read anything like this before. I know I didn't.
The world is unique and incredibly rich. The way we learn about it is through Marney, who loses everything in the beginning, and then finds a new way and a purpose. The purpose is revenge. And in a way, love. At this point I feel that my review is as fragmented as the narration of this book is. Which, in a way, is fitting. We are in Marney's stream of consciousness, and in the first part there's vignette after vignette until we hit the turning point. I'm not sure what to tell you about this book. If you're really into it, I think it has the potential to alter your brain chemistry. If you're not....you might still be fascinated. I love that it's queernormative, and that the MC is so very different from other heroines. I appreciate highly what the book is doing. I'm just not sure how I'm feeling about it. Sorry that this review is not helpful.. Just read the book I guess. It's definitely worth it. 4/5 stars Thank you @netgalley and @kensingtonbooks for the eARC! #MetalFromHeaven #Netgalley #Bookstagram
Mixed but also loved it?
~ARC received through netgalley, opinions are my own ~ 3,5 stars because a part of me wants to say 2,5 and another 4,5. This was a wild ride for me. I LOVED the first 2 chapters. You get thrown right into the action and everything feels gritty and horrible and you can just FEEL the world. After those 2 chapters though I kind of had to drag through for a while and nearly DNF'ed and probably would have if I wouldn't have chased the high the first 2 chapters gave me. The problem is in the first 2 chapters the MC is a child but because this is an adult book with very explicit sex scenes later on the MC of course has to age quite a bit before we can start the actual revenge story. So what follows are snippets of the teen years of the MC that are just not well paced and because you constantly jump around you get whole paragraphs of messy VERY purple prose that are supposed to give you an introduction to the new scene but that quite frankly brought me to my limits of understanding what's going on which I never really had before (not even in one of the comp titles: the locked tomb series). I liked the writing during the actual scenes when there was dialogue and stuff happening but sometimes I'd just sit here and not know what was going on. Thankfully starting in chapter 9 the actual revenge story starts and the actual plot unfolds and then I loved it again (and my reading pace increased significantly). There is some very interesting world building in this book which escalates until the very finale which made me actually gasp because I thought the idea was so cool. A lot of the mythology was really cool and there were some really powerful sentences and ideas brought up in that context that I enjoyed massively. I love that this is a (mostly) queernormative world and nearly everyone is a lesbian so big yay for that - I love when women. The characters are pretty flat for the most part. They all serve a specific purpose and don't really have room to stray from that but they are overall fine in my opinion. The book is overall very much based on being anti-capitalism which I love as well. So yeah this book definetly has it's weaknesses and especially in the first half really stretched out my patience but after that I really loved it and devoured nearly 300 pages in a day.