A review by blankpagepanic
Metal from Heaven by August Clarke

adventurous dark emotional hopeful reflective sad tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

Where to even begin.
Every time I open a book, I hope to be sucked in from the very first word. There are great books out there, but still this doesn't happen as often as I'd like. Until this book comes along, and with it all my prayers to a God I don't believe in and don't pray to are answered and every page feels like drowning, like coming up gasping for air only to be swallowed by the current, body battered by the cliffs.
I love the feeling; I could get drunk on it.

"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."

This is not a happy story, not really, but it's a real story in a richly imagined, vibrantly complicated world that gnaws on itself and takes you, helplessly, along for the (angry motorcycle) ride. It's a story about loving so much you hurt yourself. About finding you, the real you, while lost in others like them. It's all the uneven parts of a whole that don't quite fit yet manage to hold, like a broken vase that's been glued back together and tries desperately not to crack, and if it's held all hope is lost. But not really, because being whole is good but being broken is also okay. Maybe even more than okay, because you're seen and cared for even though you didn't ask for it, but it doesn't matter because you deserve it and that's all anyone can hope for anyway.
Friday philosophy aside, this book altered my brain chemistry. I didn't know I needed it until I had it, and now that I have it I don't know how I went so long without.

"Help that wants to help is a cog that makes the right kind of ticking sound inside the machine and by harmony becomes invisible."

Take Babel

(if Robin were pro-revolution from the start)

, shove in the unhinged energy of Gideon the Ninth and you've got (you guessed it!): Metal From Heaven.
Chaotic, poignant, deliberate prose that reads like being high on butch-fairy pixie dust (I know that for a fact because this book exists; thank me after the author).
The characters? Fifty-shades-of-royally-fucked-up. Which is to say I hate everyone a little but will also gladly lick the ground they step on (maybe even something else).

There are great books out there, and then there are running-into-a-burning-building-to-save-you books.

"Unalone toward dawn we go, toward the glory of new morning!"

THANK YOU NetGalley for the ARC.