Metal from Heaven

I first encountered August Clarke's writing as H.A. Clarke in their young adult contemporary witches Scapegracers trilogy described as The Craft meets Mean Girls—except more heartwarming and queer a found family trope, but with teen witches funnelling their angst into reckless magic.

So I was excited to read Metal from Heaven and it didn't disappoint.

I am unapologetic communist and this book carries revolutionary theory and action in full. It begins with an organized labor strike and protest during a surge of unionization efforts by workers in this nation. Told at that time from the point of view of a young (around 12/13) factory worker Marney Honeycutt. The eponymous metal from heaven – ichorite – is part of Marney’s body from in-utero exposure to the substance making her lustertouched and interacting with the metal on a primal level (handling it can induce violent attaches like an allergic reaction, but it also gives her a measure of control over it. Those calling for a better world, Marney’s family and community, are all murdered at the orders of Chauncey, the man who discovered how to utilise ichorite. Like all capitalists didn’t care about his workers; they protested; he had them killed. After escaping Marney embraced by bandits known as 'the Highwayman’s Choir' and their community of Fingerbluffs. We follow Marney as grows up; and eventually masquerades as a noble to get close to Chauncey’s daughter, with the goal of killing Chauncey. And – because where would the story be if they didn’t? – things get complicated.

The author in an interview said they had never seen stone butches in genre fiction, given that they are one, or was at the time when I wrote this book so they explored what lesbianism means in terms of class and how messy and gender-transgressive lesbian masculinity is and has been and will continue to be.

And make no mistake this book is full of dynamic fierce and masc/femme queer women and what a joy, it is glorious. Cailen at the Lesbrary describes it as thus 'Metal From Heaven is gender-fuckery and untamed queerness, labour politics and workers’ rights, anti-capitalist and gloriously anarchist. What the fuck is femininity weaves through the story, a bright, hot pink ribbon with razored edges. Pink, pink is everywhere: pink is the colour of gender-fuckery, as we see when Amon paints his face not blue for men or black for women, but pink; pink is what Marney sees when she uses her magic, the world smearing and shining around her. This is political fantasy – fiercely, unabashedly political – where there’s nothing on the menu but the rich, the rich and those who’ll betray everyone else to serve them'.

In that same interview I referenced above the author went on to talk about the Ichorite which is a major narrative point. The author said "… comes from my anxiety that fossil fuels are like corpses, a very literal dinosaur body. Imagine plastic and oil and everything we derive from said corpses being haunted, and how immense and profound the scale of that haunting would be. Simultaneously, I’m a Marx nerd. Marx writes about the commodity fetish as this capitalist delusion where we think we’re having relationships with objects instead of with each other. What would it mean if there was a substance that, in interacting with it, it becomes immediately clear that this is not the case? There’s a lot of goofy Marx interpolation in my worldbuilding. I think other Marx-heads will recognize what I’m playing with".

One Marx head to another all I can say I bravo.

The final fifth of the book speaks of the revolution in detail but from an omniscient but third person point of view but still in Marney's voice and it’s a glorious conclusion in the sweet hereafter.