For most of the past two years, I’ve been on a bookish Discord server with a bunch of other nerdy people who enjoy picking books apart and giving glowing recommendations to the things they enjoy. Because I’ve been there long enough and have a handle on whose tastes align with mine, I couldn’t ignore it when one day, a woman I’ll call R started raving about a book she had just finished called Metal from Heaven. “The world-building! The characters’ relationships! The prose!” Several of us- myself included- immediately purchased the book or requested it from the library. The ones who read it next gushed about it as well. So when I received a notification from the library that my hold for Metal from Heaven had come in, I expected to enjoy it, too. And I did. Mostly. Metal from Heaven is about a young woman, Marney Honeycutt, whose family was gunned down when they and their fellow factory workers dared to call a strike to ask for better working conditions and healthcare for their children, who were developing a strange condition due to the metal being processed in the factories. The metal, ichorite, is a strange natural resource that the industrialist Yann Chauncey and others process in their factories to manufacture various materials snapped up by the wealthy classes- everything from cloth to weapons is made with ichorite. But the children of the ichorite miners and factory workers develop a debilitating illness when exposed to the metal, though their pleas for help are met with violence. Marney was the sole survivor of the massacre at the factory where her family worked. After escaping and finding a home among bandits and revolutionaries, she is determined to take revenge on Yann Chauncey. Years later, the perfect chance arrives when Yann Chauncey seeks a marriage partner for his ward, Lady Gossamer. Marney and her fellow revolutionaries infiltrate the upper classes to vie for Gossamer’s hand to get close to Yann Chauncey, but they aren’t the only ones who seek such an important bride. What follows is a series of cutthroat games of intrigue wherein Marney’s strange, luster-touched abilities could either save her or destroy her. It’s a fascinating concept, and there are plenty of fascinating ideas in the book. The one that caught my attention the most was the idea of revolution being a perpetual thing, not a one-time event. We always have to work and fight for our rights, because as soon as a beneficial law is enacted, some benighted person will start trying to undo it. We always have to be watchful. We always have to fight for the betterment of all. Like Marney and her sisters in revolution, we can’t stop our work because of a single victory. The work of maintaining freedom is constant. The characters, too, are fascinating. Marney, Gossamer, Candor, Sisphe, and all the others are compelling even when they’re doing terrible things. They all feel like realistic people reacting to realistic circumstances in the only ways they know how. Not every author can manage this with a large cast of characters, but Clark does it with ease. So what, ultimately, kept me from absolutely adoring this book and everything about it? The prose. Clarke’s writing is smart and lyrical, showcasing a style and voice unlike most others in the science-fiction and fantasy community, but to me, it was just on the wrong side of being too stylish and too glossy. Like the surface tension of water that allows you to see into the depths, but stops you from diving in to really get into the heart of the matter. Still, I would recommend Metal from Heaven. Though not everyone will love Clarke’s writing style, the story and its foundational ideas and notions of queer normativity are fascinating and the characters are compelling even when they’re at their worst. Sometimes it can feel like fresh ideas in speculative genres are hard to find, and then something like Metal from Heaven comes along and makes you realize that there are indeed amazing voices out there writing fascinating stories that are worth the reading, even if you don’t connect perfectly with them. Traveling in Books is free today. But if you enjoyed this post, you can tell Traveling in Books that their writing is valuable by pledging a future subscription. You won't be charged unless they enable payments.
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Sunday, 1 December 2024
Sisters of Perpetual Revolution
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