-I attempted to make this review spoiler free. For those who have read the book, please let me know if I let something slip, and I will edit the post.-
This week (almost two years late) I just read the amazingly bloody, beautifully confusing, and politically creative artwork that was Metal from Heaven. On the surface this book seemed like something I would enjoy and move on from. Its an adventure story about a bandit looking for revenge. Most of the cast is very sapphic. And it was advertised with undercurrents of class struggle. The description undersold on everything and left out how blindingly creative this book was.
This first and most stunning part of this book is the language used and how it acts like a knife wrapped in flowers. The prose and words chosen to describe the characters and setting feel musical and vivid. From reading I have such a particular vision of how I think of the world and the characters. I can see the ichor soaked railroads and lapiz fruits that form both a descriptive bait and plot driven hook that make up this book so vividly. Everything is technicolor and bright and bloody. And oh it is so bloody. Both in the actual descriptions and in the violent way the language both tears understanding from you and sutures it back into place upsidedown and right where it should have been all along. So many times my understanding of the history, plot, characters, and setting were vivisected and reformulated in ways that left me floored. And the whole time the language carried it in a bloody flower covered kiss.
Through the language, that which benefits the most from the prose is the characters who are so lovable and loathsome, and many times both. These characters are rancid and flawed and you will love them for it. Others are beautiful and perfect and you will despise them. The cast is so full of portraits painted in pearlescent oil and flowing texture. For how massive the cast is, I feel I understand the core of everyone. This is an especially impressive feat considering the main character and narrator might be the most flawed narrator I have encountered. Even starting the book, it is clear there is something deeply wrong with the character, for every memory and impression is coated with a veneer of what Marney *needed* to have happened, not what did happen. Despite this, the trueness of each character shines through, and I have both a deep understanding of the kernel of the soul in each character, and the impression of memory of each of them that lives in Marney's head.
For the character of Marney herself, you can not disentangle her from the politics of the book, and the politics weaves through every other element that makes up this book. If I had to describe this book in a concise way, it is a manuscript to revolutionary thought that most other speculative fiction authors attempt but ultimately fail at. In the past decade, there has been a movement to describe class struggles and the structures that cause the inequity we see in the world today. I applaud this movement, and many of my favorite books from recent years incorporate this as a central mover in their plot. However, all that I have read fails in one way or another. Many start with a false sense of politics that relies on a 'great man' feeling of literary history. While books must rely on a few driving characters, many revolutions and revolts in recent speculative fiction feel like they just want the 'right type of person' in power, and don't criticize the power itself. Or, the books humanize those who do harm in a way that softens the oppression that the books try to present. Without too many spoilers, I think Metal from Heaven succeeds due to two facts. First, throughout the book it emphasizes that hereafter is a constant struggle from everyone and the sacrifice of individuals is heroic and helpful, but not all encompassing. And second, while the most vile drivers of oppression in this book are the most humanized, it is combined with clear examples of why they can and do still do great harm. Some of the most insidious characters are those who seem most harmless, and this is due to their purposful politics that mirror the flawed implementation of political actors in other speculative fiction. I am no political theorist, so I have trouble describing how this book works so well, but the politics of this book feel real and pure in a way that so many other books have failed at.
And clearly, the politics at play can not be described or useful if there is not a stage for them to perform on. And the stage was the biggest risk and most rewarding outcome of this book. Really, the only apt comparison I can make is to Disco Elysium. While many have rightly compared the setting in this book to those made by China Miéville for the surrealism and weirdness -- while still feeling unflinchingly authentic and consistent -- the modern feeling of the creativity and the history and in-universe politics can only be matched by that in Disco Elysium. This is not a jump to make, as the game was directly credited in the book's acknowledgements, but it is still the only one that I continue to make. Though in a crowning move that tops the world building of Disco Elysium, the varied and fruitful politics of the cultures in this world are what truly bring it to life. It is a constant that helps remind the reader of motivations, and is a tool through which the August Clarke worked wonders. My one wish is that the tensions between the religions was explored as well as the tensions between the in-world politics.
While I increasingly want to put this book at or near the top of my favorite books of all time list, the missing religious tension is not the only flaw of the book. Many other who have written reviews have pointed out aspects that they have labeled as flaws. Some of these reviews I see and feel I can dismiss. I find the massive extent to which Marney serves as an unreliable narrator, through both lying by omission to the reader and by obscuring the actions through language and prose, as the biggest positive of the book. I do admit that this makes the book very difficult to read in parts. I first attempted the book as an audiobook a month or so ago, and shelved it once I realized I needed to read it as a physical book in my hands so I could flip back and re-read sections. However, this is more a failure of marketing. So I say it clearly now, Marney is so god damn unreliable you will hate her for it, and you will love August Clarke for it. Take that as it is and know it when you go in.
Towards what I have seen and agree with as actual flaws of the book: the characters may be vivid, but there are too many and they are too static. I needed a bookmark in the Dramatis Personae at the beginning of the book due to how frequent I needed to flip back to it to remind me of who was who. Now I even wish I took notes on each character after each scene. Further, most of the characters are disappointingly static. While each one is fully fleshed out, other than Marney they don't change. These two issues compounded with each other. If the cast was reduced, the word length used on the extraneous characters could have been used to make the remaining characters more dynamic. However, that is my only real complaint of the book, and it is minor given how spectacular the rest of the book is.
To the end, I left what is both the most relevant and somehow least important part of this book to me. How goddamn gay everyone is. Despite the character list being well over forty named and participating characters, I can count on one hand those who aren't queer in one way or another. Almost all of them are women in one form or another. Given all this, you might think this is a queer-normative setting à la some of Becky Chambers' books. This could not be further from the case. It is so abundantly clear that the queerness in universe is obscene and transgressive and just as offputting as this book would be if I put it in the hands of an evangelical. It mirrors queer subcultures and the dynamics of sex in a loving tribute to real live queer communities I can only compare to 'Paul takes the Form of a Mortal Girl', but in a beautifully creative and authentic way. The subcultures of the crawlies are a mirror of the revolutionary and political lesbian movements of the twentieth century. The variety and honesty of the presentation of queerness without sanitation is so refreshing. Further, in something I don't see many queer novels attempt to address, the lunarist movement of the book feels like a natural mirror to the log cabin republicans and trans women working at lockheed martin that exist in our own world. The tension between the two movements feel so real and important towards the characters in each. For how I still think the politics of class is the most important part of this book, the queerness is such an integral element I can only describe this book as blowing well past queer literature and into what I have to call dyke literature. I think its only right that the queerness and politics of the story can not be disentangled.
In the end, I think the last thing I should touch on are the influences. If you read the book yourself, I am sure you can spot these all and more, but many are explicitly listed in the acknowledgements of the book. Among them are political theorists like Marx and Emma Goldman, masterful authors of language like Jose Esteban Muñoz and Octavia Butler, and a full list of some of the pinnacles of queer literature like 'Stone Butch Blues' and 'Giovanni's Room'. There's beloved modern media like 'End of Evangelion' and the already mentioned 'Disco Elysium'.
At the end of this, I can only beg more people to read this book. I am surprised how this book didn't become more popular when it came out. (Though it seems well appreciated by critics and authors alike, it won a 2024 Lambda literary award) I am currently begging all of my queer and trans friends to read it, as I need people to discuss this book with. If you've read it, please share your thoughts! I want more from this author. I'm excited to read some of his other work, which I hope lives up to the sky high exaltation I felt when I finished Metal from Heaven.