Metal from Heaven is a real one-of-kind new fantasy novel; a visceral revenge tale, a clear-eyed ode to both the necessity of an egalitarian politicalMetal from Heaven is a real one-of-kind new fantasy novel; a visceral revenge tale, a clear-eyed ode to both the necessity of an egalitarian political revolution and the difficulty of such an endeavor, a book that doesn’t pull its punches against its enemies, while also allowing for the fun indulgences we go to fantasy fiction to provide. I wanted to review it as soon as I saw its 5-star review by Seth Dickinson, one of my favorite fantasy writers, and while it’s not quite at the level of a masterpiece, it’s one of the best books I’ve read this year, and definitely worth its induction into the new canon of Queer SFF about Revolution and Empire, my particular favorite current sub-genre.
The world of Metal from Heaven evokes that thrilling span of time between the early liberal revolutions and the Industrial Revolution’s final victory of the capitalists against the old world’s feudal powers. It’s a setting that’s mostly grounded, with no fantasy races or monsters, and with no magic, aside from the strange resource called ichorite that tycoon Yann I. Chauncey makes his wealth from. We hear of a complex web of nation-states and peoples, with just enough detail to make the worldbuilding feel extensive without bogging down the narrative. Where author August Clark does choose to dive deep into is, rather surprisingly for this materialist revolution narrative, religion, conjuring up a handful of genuinely new and compelling faiths, in a world that cares about your religion even more than your heritage or nationality. Cutting through this world, however, is the ichorite, a substance that seems to be both fuel and constructive material, like oil and plastic combined.
Our protagonist, Marney Honeycutt, starts the novel as a young girl, born and raised among a working-class Tullian family (an insular, socially conservative faith), who spends most of her life working in Yann’s ichorite factories. Like several other youths in the factory, Marney is “lustertouched” - infected by ichorite in a way that occasionally gives her magical control over ichorite objects she interacts with, while also leaving her weak and hallucinating whenever she touches the substance. A brewing strike led by Marney’s sister ends in a massacre that leaves Marney as the sole survivor. She narrates her tale in the first person, while occasionally referencing a “you,” her unnamed close friend killed in the massacre. Her tale is one of vengeance, as she vows to one day kill Yann with her own two hands and avenge her loved ones.
This is a messy book, one that often feels like several different books Frankensteined together. The first half of the book is a lyrical coming of age narrative, charting Marney’s life from her childhood as a survivor of the massacre of her family and fellow striking laborers to her eventual new life among an insurgent band of anarchic lesbian brigands and pirates called The Choir. This part of the book blinks through months and years, and is such is more effective at creating tone and setting and theme than necessarily crafting memorable characters, though a few stand-out, like the Choir’s imposing leader Mors Brandegor the Rancid and two of Marney’s teammates, the beautiful and alluring Sisphe and the roguish rapscallion Harlow. After the halfway point, it swings into something wildly different, and particularly reminiscent of Gideon the Ninth, the first book of the Locked Tomb Trilogy. Here, Marney is among a new batch of colorful characters of high society and must win the allegiance of someone connected to her foe. This part is a whole lot of fun, a comedic, sexy, and brutal romp that both slows the book’s racing pace while also making it even harder to put down, eventually leading to a short final act and a length, quite strange epilogue.
This is also an unapologetically queer book, a lesbian book, as the vast majority of its characters are, to use the in-universe’s partially-reclaimed word, crawlies. This setting allows for homosexuality, if it’s done discreetly, or in the rare case that it produces a necessary marriage alliance, but for the most part, Marney’s burgeoning sexuality, in particularly her masculine butch approach to her gender and sexuality, is still looked down upon, and serves as a bond tying most of the Choice together. There’s longing and desire and sex but there’s not much romance here, as Clarke complicates any sense of queer solidarity by also factoring in class. The violent, oppressive, wealthy war criminals can be gay too. Marney finds it easy to give in her sexual exploits, but is painfully resistant to ever receiving pleasure herself; just one of the complicated sexual and gender dynamics the book plays with.
My biggest complaint about Metal from Heaven is that there’s not more of it, that it’s a standalone novel instead of a series. Not that authors shouldn’t try writing more standalone fantasy novels; it’s just that Metal from Heaven’s lengthy epilogue feels like its rushing through several books’ worth of a story I might’ve liked even more than what the book actually covered. But that’s hard to fault a book for, and it’s really praising with faint damnation. I really loved Metal from Heaven, for all its rough patches - it’s an unapologetically radical, queer, messy, and angry book, one that shows how it’s possible to write a leftist political treatise of a novel while also being a ton of fun. I’ll definitely be keeping an eye out for whatever Clarke decides to write next.
Thanks to NetGalley for the advance copy in exchange for an honest review. All thoughts expressed are my own....more
Yes, The Book of Elsewhere is by that Keanu Reeves. Aiding him (perhaps as a ghostwriter, though trying to dissect which parts come which author is toYes, The Book of Elsewhere is by that Keanu Reeves. Aiding him (perhaps as a ghostwriter, though trying to dissect which parts come which author is tough) is China Mieville, champion of the New Weird speculative fiction movement, left-wing political activist and extremely verbose academic, and one of my favorite authors of all time. So, yeah, I had to get this book.
The Book of Elsewhere is based on Keanu Reeves’ recent comic book series BRSRKR, which is slated to receive a film adaptation, though you don’t need to have read the comic to understand the book (I still haven’t.). It follows the story of a mysterious immortal warrior referred to as either Unute, or as “B” by his current companions. He’s basically if John Wick was a bit more talkative, regenerated rapidly from any wounds, was possibly the oldest human being ever, and sometimes regenerates inside a giant flesh pod/egg if his body is too damaged.
This description might lead you to expect that the book is a fast-paced, action-filled thriller with simple prose, destined for best-seller-dom…but to the book’s great credit, it’s certainly not that. This is a complicated, messy, and deeply weird book, one that doesn’t hold its audience’s hand and is willing to risk throwing off a lot of its potential readers. It jumps back and forth throughout time and narrative voice, from the book’s present, in which Unute is working with a secret U.S. government agency in exchange for the best scientists in the world trying to figure out how to make him mortal, to many moments in Unute’s past, often told in the first-person by various people who crossed his path and were forever changed.
Unute’s great killing power is augmented by a berserker rage that leaves him unable to control himself, radiating blue lightning, and leaves him without the memories of what he did when he finally comes to. Most of the time, he ends up killing some of his own team; a price the government is willing to pay for his skills and knowledge. The other central character is the leader of a part of Unute’s task force, a government bureaucrat with a lot of genre-savvy. Between her and Unute, they bring up a litany of possibilities as to Unute’s existence, pre-empting any fan theories. And while the book’s end does seem to give a definite answer as to what, metaphysically, Unute is and represents, it still leaves the wide open of mystery of how he came to be in the first place.
This is a grim and dour book, with lots owed to the pulpy dark camp of the John Wick movies, but it still manages to be funny and delightful on rare occasions. One of my favorite bits of sci-fi worldbuilding comes when Unute briefly references ancient civilizations with advanced technology that eventually fell, without records of their existence, leaving his handler practically salivating at each little scrap of hoarded knowledge. Unute, despite everything, despite having lived and died millions of times, still feels like a person. He still has likes and dislikes, favorite records and fond memories of friends. In many ways, he’s even more human than John Wick is portrayed to be. I loved the subtle distinction in Unute’s ultimate desire from other famous immortal characters; he wants to become mortal and lose his ability to regenerate, but he doesn’t actually want to die. He just wants the possibility, the sense of meaning that the inevitability of death gives the rest of us humans.
I won’t spoil it here, but relatively early on in the book, we learn of the only other being Unute has ever met that seems to be the same thing as him; and it’s not another human being. It’s yet another example of some piece of this book that speaks to the love and deep knowledge of pulp, of science fiction, fantasy, and other genre fiction. It’s something that feels new and fresh while also making you wonder why no one has ever included it in any of the other, related stories. It’s this sense of play and imagination that really makes The Book of Elsewhere work, past the stream of obscure words and obfuscated mysteries and time-jumps. It’s a surprisingly personal book - I don’t know much about Keanu Reeves, but I do know that he’s suffered a lot of loss from the deaths of many of his closest family. A key subplot involves one of the soldiers in Unute’s team, trying to find ways of working through the death of his husband, another member of the team, killed by Unute in another berserker rage. The book is concerned with death from every angle; all the ways we want to fight back against it, hate it, rage in its face, and how we might not want to actually live in a world with it forever kept at bay.
I never knew where The Book of Elsewhere was going to go next. This wandering, spiraling plot structure could easily be construed as aimless or boring, but it gripped me with its surreal story, the simple poignancy of an immortal character like Unute, and the sense that around every corner would be some new weird wonder. It takes some time to really start to click, and its definitely not your bog-standard fantasy or sci-fi romp. I imagine lots of people will bounce off it. But if you’re a fan of the Weird, I’d highly recommend it....more
If science fiction at its best presents intellectually engaging ideas about humanity, the future, and science, then fantasy also has its highest aspirIf science fiction at its best presents intellectually engaging ideas about humanity, the future, and science, then fantasy also has its highest aspiration - to capture the vivid color and emotion of dreams. The original titans of fantasy literature definitely lived up to that lofty goal - take The Lord of the Rings, for example - but also indelibly shaped what fantasy could be for decades. There are plenty of excellent stories told in some version of the “standard fantasy setting,” but, regardless of quality, this particular flavor of fantasy still has a stranglehold on the imagination. What else could fantasy be if it was willing to cast off those shackles?
Maybe it’s something like Gogmagog.
Gogmagog tells the story of Arcadia “Cady” Meade, a grizzled elderly sea-woman who finds herself hired to transport a strange young girl and her robotic caretaker across a river formed from a dead dragon. We’re quickly introduces to the strange twists of this world - it has television powered by crystals, there was some terrible recent war complete with bomber planes, there are different types of sapient peoples (including some with mind-reading antenni and others with mood-revealing gems stuck in their foreheads, with autonomous shadows that can hold memories when trapped in blankets), and of course, that the twisting river is still haunted by the ghost of the dragon that died to create it. Every new bit of worldbuilding is a delight, and Noon and Beard inject Gogmagog with a host of vivid, dreamlike images and setpieces that are already inspiring new ideas for my own storytelling - the highest praise I personally can give a fantasy story.
While most of the characters are relatively simple, Cady is a delight; a profane, grumpy old woman with lifetimes of mystery in her past, clad in a old weathered bowler and rumpled suit, who spits archaic British aphorisms and brews hallucingenic drugs from magical seeds. It probably won’t come as a shock to hear that Cady has one very big secret, but its reveal is impressive, with ramifications that further cement her as one of my favorite characters in recent genre fiction. It’s extremely fun to see what new weirdness lies behind the next bend of the ghostly river, and how Cady will go about trying to keep her eclectic bunch of passengers safe. I can’t say that I found the tale too emotional, but it’s sense of fun and inventiveness goes a long way towards making up for that, even if that sense of remove keeps me from putting this book with the absolute best of the genre.
Despite its weirdness, in many ways, the world of Gogmagog still broadly conforms to what we imagine from secondary world fantasy - it’s a unique world composed of several different types of sapient beings, with magic and ghosts and dragons and war. The story is the well-worn tale of a group of adventurers traveling to an important destination, with a series of unique encounters along the way, as the party picks up new members. The prose, while well-written, is relatively simple and readable. Other examples of the weird or slipstream take bigger risks than Gogmagog does, which makes it more of fantasy genre piece that draws from weird fiction than the inverse.
But for all my hedging, I love stories like this! The glut of Dungeons & Dragons style adventuring fantasy stories says something about people’s love for this narrative structure, not to mention its longevity from classics like The Odyssey. Gogmagog may not be that experimental in its form or voice, but it manages to hit a personal sweet-spot between more a more conventional approach to narrative and a rich imagination. It’s the perfect kind of thing to jolt the seasoned fantasy reader out of a rut of samey imagined worlds, and would serve as both a great example of and worthy introduction to the world of weird fantasy.
Gogmagog: The First Chronicle of Ludwich is set to publish on February 13, 2024.
Thanks to NetGalley for the advance copy in exchange for an honest review. All thoughts expressed are my own....more
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