Michael Barnes

Everyone who has read and enjoyed V.E. Schwab works knows what to expect and this novel is no exception. One review described this as A "darker, edgier sister of Addie LaRue".

The focus begins in 16th-century Spain, with the rebellious red headed Maria who seeks and marries a wealthy viscount to seize control over her own life. She soon learns even a wealthy wife is just another cage, but a mysterious widow Sabine says only two groups of women in this society are free Widows and Nuns (and she says she is in to bad a relation with god for that role. María chooses transformation as escape.

The point of view then jumps to 2019, and the most modern college student Alice, with flashbacks of memories of growing up in Scotland with her mercurial older sister. Alice wakes up alone after a one-night Sapphic stand unable to tolerate sunlight, sporting two new fangs, and desperate to drink blood. Alice’s modern timeline brings these ancient horrors into our digital age, where smartphones capture evidence and social media creates its own form of surveillance. Yet the fundamental questions remain unchanged: what does it mean to hunger, to need, to survive at the expense of others? Alice chooses to fight back and it's her story I found the most engaging I do love a tale of female coming of rage.

The last point of view is introduced halfway through 19th century, Charlotte is sent from her home in the English countryside to live with an aunt in London when she’s found trying to kiss her best friend. She’s despondent at the idea of marrying a man, but another mysterious widow—who has a secret connection to Maria’s widow from centuries earlier—appears and teaches Charlotte that she can be free to love whomever she chooses. Charlotte chooses toxic love despite its destructive nature.

Maria, Charlotte, and Alice are queer women searching for love, recognition, and wholeness, growing fangs and defying mortality in a world that would deny them their very existence.

Of course it wouldn't be V.E. Schwab without beautiful lyric descriptions with the title of the book coming from a poem/song provided by a sire/sired pair of vampires she meets early in her transformation.

What sets this novel apart from other vampire fiction is Schwab’s refusal to romanticize the monstrous. María’s transformation from victim to predator is portrayed with unflinching honesty—there’s no moment of beautiful awakening, no gentle introduction to supernatural powers.

This one is for all of those postgraduates who at 2am in the morning after having finished marking, subsisting on instant ramen, wondering how bad the mold in their shared rental is, and trying to remember what day it is…who have had that dark moment of the soul and think is this worth it? This one's for you.

Saberin C at grimdark magazine summaries it thusly Katabasis is the story of two PhD students who travel to hell with the sole purpose of rescuing the soul of their advisor, Professor Jacob Grimes, who exploded in a freak magical accident that may or may not have been one of the post-grads’ fault.

Alice Law is a graduate student in Cambridge’s Department of Analytic Magick and her drive is if she works hard enough, is clever enough, unrelenting enough she can win that elusive prise an ongoing position in academia.

Along for the journey to hell is her ex Peter Murdoch, her only significant academic rival (indeed grimes the asshat plays them off against each other). Peter is charming, brilliant, seemingly maddeningly unbothered by the stress and strains of post graduate work (don't worry we learn this is all surface) —and equally desperate to bring Grimes back, if only for reasons he refuses to disclose. Thes two are fully developed and painfully relatable. Finding relatability in a character who can cast spells and hold multiple degrees isn’t easy, but Kuang makes Alice feel completely relatable

The world building of the magic system and hell is brilliant and would make the book worth it for that alone, but the character study of these two souls is equally satisfying. The hell we visit is syncretic—Greek, Chinese, Hindu, and modern theoretical magick all blend together into a believable metaphysical dark academic architecture.

One of my favourites which is what I have come to expect from R.F Kuang an author who I can guarantee I will read anything she publishes.

Story is set in alternative London in 1883, in our 19 century England belief in spirits and the existence of mediums were widespread in this world, in our alternative worth the Veil between the living and dead has thinned. Mediums can be identified by their Violet-eyes. In England this is administered the Royal Speaker Society. Men who are mediums if they have the wealth can become speakers, able to move through society with little to limit their authority, women with violet eyes are considered too 'hysterical' to contact the veil and admonished "you know what happens to girls who deal with ghosts"

"Our protagonist sixteen-year-old Silas Bell would rather rip out his violet eyes than become an obedient Speaker wife. According to Mother, he’ll be married by the end of the year. It doesn’t matter that he’s needed a decade of tutors to hide his autism; that he practices surgery on slaughtered pigs; that he is a boy, not the girl the world insists on seeing.

After a failed attempt to escape an arranged marriage, Silas is diagnosed with Veil sickness—a mysterious disease sending violet-eyed women into madness—and shipped away to Braxton’s Sanitorium and Finishing School. The facility is cold, the instructors merciless, and the students either bloom into eligible wives or disappear. So when the ghosts of missing students start begging Silas for help, he decides to reach into Braxton’s innards and expose its rotten guts to the world—as long as the school doesn’t break him first". -Booksthatburn

I have read Andrew Joseph White and his novels are powerful, and well-grounded in his voice. At points in the book I wanted to skip over parts because I knew something terrible was going to happen to Silas, but I was grateful to the author because even though something terrible happens he was kind to the read, certainly kinder than what was happening to the characters.

Also Silas's inner voice was embodied as a rabbit who provides comments throughout the book and Silas resolution with the voice was very satisfying.

A definite favourite for me to add to my coming of female rage shelf.

A story told with alternating points of view between Lottie a fit, smart freshman on a hockey scholarship the phrase sunshiny as fuck could be used to described her, she is determined to find out what really happened to a girl called Janie who died 10 years earlier at the college (did I mention Lottie is a bit of a true crime fan) and is inhabited by the spirit of a rightfully pissed off angry nun. The other point of view is the beautiful, gothic and fiercely scholarly Alice who to manage the all too believable rage that besets any woman in our hegemonic masculinity culture she stumbles upon a sinister soul-splitting ritual hidden in Carvell’s haunted library, which can manage it, at the cost of a Jekyll/hyde type split. I also loved the slow, caring affection that develops between these two. I definitely want to read more of

Warning there is an immortal cat that during one of these Jekyll/hyde rages is strangled by our protagonist but does return a few days latter.

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.