Can’t-Wait Wednesday is a weekly meme hosted over at Wishful Endings to spotlight and discuss the books we’re excited about but haven’t yet read. Most of the time they’re books that have yet to be released, but not always. It’s based on the Waiting on Wednesday meme, which was originally hosted by Jill at Breaking the Spine. 

This week my Can’t-Wait-For Book is Metal From Heaven by august clarke!

Metal from Heaven by August Clarke
Genres: Adult, Fantasy, Queer Protagonists
Representation: Lesbian MC
Published on: 22nd October 2024
Goodreads

For fans of The Princess Bride and Gideon the Ninth: a bloody lesbian revenge tale and political fantasy set in a glittering world transformed by industrial change – and simmering class warfare.

He who controls ichorite controls the world.

A malleable metal more durable than steel, ichorite is a toxic natural resource fueling national growth, and ambitious industrialist Yann Chauncey helms production of this miraculous ore. Working his foundry is an underclass of destitute workers, struggling to get better wages and proper medical treatment for those exposed to ichorite’s debilitating effects since birth.

One of those luster-touched victims, the child worker Marney Honeycutt, is picketing with her family and best friend when a bloody tragedy unfolds. Chauncey’s strikebreakers open fire.

Only Marney survives.

A decade later, as Yann Chauncey searches for a suitable political marriage for his ward, Marney sees the perfect opportunity for revenge. With the help of radical bandits and their stolen wealth, she must masquerade as an aristocrat to win over the calculating Gossamer Chauncey and kill the man who slaughtered her family and friends. But she is not the only suitor after Lady Gossamer’s hand, leading her to play twisted elitist games of intrigue. And Marney’s luster-touched connection to the mysterious resource and its foundry might put her in grave danger – or save her from it.

H. A. Clarke’s adult fantasy debut, writing as August Clarke, Metal From Heaven is a caustic, dizzying eco-fantasy that addresses labor politics, corporate greed, and the relentless grind of capitalism, while also embodying a visceral lesbian revenge quest against the people and institutions who control and oppress the helpless.

"A riotous phantasmagoria that epitomizes the phrase 'be gay, do crime.'" - Melinda Borie, Collection Development Librarian, Floyd County Library (New Albany, IN)

This is a slightly unusual post, because usually I don’t do Can’t Wait features for books I have arcs of. And lately I’ve tried to focus on books that are almost out, in the hopes that makes whoever read these more likely to preorder them, instead of, you know, featuring a book so early that by the time it’s released you’ve forgotten about it.

But I just got my arc of this one yesterday, and I really can’t wait, and I need to SCREAM ABOUT THIS BOOK TO ABSOLUTELY EVERYBODY, so.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

august clarke (I always see his name written in lowercase letters, so I assume that’s how he prefers it) wrote the Scapegracer trilogy under the name HA Clarke, and if you’ve hung around here for any amount of time you are probably aware that I love it with the fiery passion of a thousand thousand suns, and seriously what are you even DOING with your life if you have not doused yourself in the razor-sharp glitter that is that trilogy???

My review of book one, The Scapegracers
My review of book two, The Scratch Daughters
My review of book three, The Feast Makers

BUT THAT IS NOT WHY WE ARE HERE

Except it is, a little, because if it wasn’t for Scapegracers I wouldn’t know how impossibly ferally magically perfect clarke’s prose and imagination are, so I wouldn’t know to want Metal From Heaven so damn bad it literally physically hurts

I mean, The Princess Bride crossed with Gideon the Ninth??? I would scoff, if were were talking about almost any other author. Because who could pull that off? It sounds amazing, I want that combination – but come on. Really?

You can read the first chapter over at Paste, so I feel safe saying: yeah, really.

Political fantasy, revenge, class warfare, labour politics, queerness everywhere, a magical metal that makes the colour pink into a danger-signal – all of it in clarke’s fever-dream claws-out blood-between-your-teeth prose???

YES

GIMME

I CAN’T WAIT

I need you to need this book as badly as I do, okay? Preorder it, and then go read the Scapegracers series to tide you over until October!!!

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