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Metal Angel
A dissatisfied angel falls to Earth to pursue his long-held dream of becoming a heavy-metal rock ’n’ roll god
For Volos, heaven is a bore; the real action is in the world of mortals. So the restless celestial abandons the eternal realm, transforming himself into a beautiful, decadent example of the human male while keeping his wings intact, and sets out to become a rock star. Needing appropriate lyrics for his soon-to-be hit singles and having no firsthand experience with mortal emotions and concerns, Volos finds everything he needs in the personal writings of a sexually repressed wife and mother from the Bible Belt. The daughter of a tyrannical fundamentalist preacher, Angie composes poetry in secret, and she is shocked when she hears her own words on the radio. Surely a higher power is calling her to Los Angeles. But the music is leading her to a shining star who is more than a man yet less than human—a true soulmate capable of changing her world in ways she never could have imagined.
Multiple award–winning fantasist Nancy Springer reinvigorates the fallen-angel trope in
a delightfully inventive and thought-provoking story of a celestial being who is unhappy in the service of a distant and unapproachable God. Metal Angel is an enthralling exploration of belief, spirituality, sexual awakening, and superstardom.
For Volos, heaven is a bore; the real action is in the world of mortals. So the restless celestial abandons the eternal realm, transforming himself into a beautiful, decadent example of the human male while keeping his wings intact, and sets out to become a rock star. Needing appropriate lyrics for his soon-to-be hit singles and having no firsthand experience with mortal emotions and concerns, Volos finds everything he needs in the personal writings of a sexually repressed wife and mother from the Bible Belt. The daughter of a tyrannical fundamentalist preacher, Angie composes poetry in secret, and she is shocked when she hears her own words on the radio. Surely a higher power is calling her to Los Angeles. But the music is leading her to a shining star who is more than a man yet less than human—a true soulmate capable of changing her world in ways she never could have imagined.
Multiple award–winning fantasist Nancy Springer reinvigorates the fallen-angel trope in
a delightfully inventive and thought-provoking story of a celestial being who is unhappy in the service of a distant and unapproachable God. Metal Angel is an enthralling exploration of belief, spirituality, sexual awakening, and superstardom.
316 pages, Paperback
First published December 23, 2014
6 people are currently reading
99 people want to read
About the author
Nancy Springer
197 books2,355 followersBIO -- NANCY SPRINGER
Nancy Springer has passed the fifty-book milestone, having written that many novels for adults, young adults and children, in genres including mythic fantasy, contemporary fiction, magical realism, horror, and mystery -- although she did not realize she wrote mystery until she won the Edgar Allan Poe Award from the Mystery Writers of America two years in succession. DARK LIE, recently released from NAL, is her first venture into mass-market psychological suspense.
Born in Montclair, New Jersey, Nancy Springer moved with her family to Gettysburg, of Civil War fame, when she was thirteen. She spent the next forty-six years in Pennsylvania, raising two children (Jonathan, now 38, and Nora, 34), writing, horseback riding, fishing, and birdwatching. In 2007 she surprised her friends and herself by moving with her second husband to an isolated area of the Florida panhandle, where the birdwatching is spectacular and where, when fishing, she occasionally catches an alligator.
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
May 13, 2016
This starts out enjoyably crackish, with the angel Volos falling to Earth and attempting to reinvent himself as a man (he accidentally forgets to omit the wings)—and not just any man, a rock star! Unsurprisingly, I enjoyed the bits I could imagine were a Castiel AU fic. But the ending gets seriously melodramatic. Meanwhile, Springer made me quite uncomfortable with her treatment of homosexuality in this book, which really surprised me coming from the author of the wonderful Larque on the Wing. And yet here we have Volos trapped in a relationship with the villainous and nasty Mercedes—a gay dude who’s repeatedly referred to as “womanish” or “womanly”—from which he of course can only be rescued by the love of a good woman and her no doubt magical vagina. Urk. At the end of the book, Volos still considers himself bisexual, but—yeah. Like I said. I was uncomfortable.
I think I’d really rather read the Castiel AU fic instead.
I think I’d really rather read the Castiel AU fic instead.
October 13, 2024
love the themes great imagery, the way he describes being human is so so so good, but sigh…. Can’t stand pregnancy in romance books 😭 not the books fault, but ughhhh
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
September 7, 2013
Penguin, 1994
Intended Audience: Adult
Sexual content: Explicit
Ace/Genderqueer characters: ? (Angel/human)
Rating: PG-13/R for sex, violence, and language
Writing style: 2/5
Likable characters: 3/5
Plot/Concepts: 2/5
Volos was a lower angel, fed up with an eternity of singing praises and running errands for a distant father-god. One night he left it all behind, willing himself into existence so that he could pursue a life of rock n’ roll stardom in L.A. The only thing he didn’t imagine himself keeping was the enormous wings, but being stuck with them might just help propel him into the spotlight even faster.
Sadly, this book is not about a robotic angel (the “Metal” in the title got my hopes up). I picked it up while browsing at a used book store, read the back cover, and started literally laughing out loud. Flipping through it I found that the writing style was entertaining, probably unintentionally so. It was only a few bucks, so I took it home thinking it would be good for when I needed something silly to cheer me up. I’m a bit embarrassed to be reviewing it—it’s pretty much the epitome of a cheap paperback in terms of content—but I figured I may as well share my thoughts.
I certainly got my money’s worth of laughs, and ended up liking a few of the characters a lot more than I expected. I’m a huge sucker for the wants-to-be-human trope, as might be obvious from my obsession with semi-emotive robots. But here’s a confession: back in my teenage years of devouring mainstream fantasy, I also had a thing for angels becoming human and realizing it’s not so easy being mortal. I even wrote a few fallen angel characters of my own. I think this is why I came to like Volos so easily, despite the book’s heavy emphasis on his sex drive and sex appeal. In the process of learning about the human experience, Volos is helped by an old wannabe-cowboy named Texas, who ran away from his wife due to some sort of midlife crisis. The father-son relationship between Texas and Volos, and the way it shows Volos’s naivety and vulnerability, was the best part of the entire book. If the book had been more about that relationship and less about Volos’s relationship with his two lovers (one male, one female), it might have gone on my mental “reread someday” list. Their interaction was a little cheesy in parts, but the entire book was pretty much the same way, with the same sort of loquacious narrative and extreme emotional emphasis as might be found in a popular work of fan-fiction.
Really, the various plot elements and concepts made me feel like I was reading the adapted screenplay of an anime, complete with color-changing wings and eyes of mystical soul-bearing effect, fated connections, power-hungry lovers, supremely awful parents, obscure and extreme sects of fundamentalist Christianity, and a universe based off a sort of mish-mash of religious cosmologies. I rolled my eyes a lot, cringed and grumbled at all the sexual allusions in the word choices (even when there was nothing all that sexual going on), and got especially fed up with the introduction of Angie.
Angie is psychically linked with Volos—he gets all his lyrics from her mind, even though they’ve never met. She is the daughter of a preacher who leads an extremely strict fundamentalist Christian denomination, and the husband of a man named Ennis, who is so obedient to that sect that he shows no desire toward her at all (I read him as ace until later in the book). As such she is extremely sexually repressed and the book dwells on her secret yearnings a lot. Penning rock n’ roll lyrics being her one outlet for these feelings, she eventually starts to listen to Volos’s songs on the forbidden radio and realizes that the lyrics are hers. She then takes her kids and runs off to L.A. to find Volos. After that point I started to like her character a lot more, because contrary to my expectations, she didn’t jump on Volos like a wild animal. Instead she kept her distance until she and Volos had grown closer emotionally. She didn’t feel immediately entitled to him despite her ideas of being “soul mates”.
The gender dynamics in this book are a mix of good and bad. As far as representation goes, there is only one female main character, Angie. Texas’s wife Wyona and Volos’s manager Brett are barely in the book enough to be considered, but one is a stereotypical patient mothering figure and the other is a crush-you-beneath-my-stiletto type. In a sense Angie’s character arc is about her becoming complete via Volos. That irked me, but on the other hand she is the one who makes the decision to leave her oppressive upbringing and surprisingly, she learns in the end that she does not have to be dependent on or defined by any of the men in her life, not even an angel.
Something I found interesting was that Volos and his male lover Mercedes are repeatedly described as androgynous or feminine, and Volos admits at one point that he is technically genderless and could have materialized as a woman. He purposely chose to be a man because he wanted the privilege that came with the label, and in the beginning he is all about defiance and power and sticking it to the man upstairs. But, his character arc is about learning that giving and submitting in the service of genuine love is nothing to be ashamed of. In this way there are a lot of intriguing gender themes hovering in the background, most seeming to imply that wholeness comes not through conforming to what others expect of you because of your shape or appearance, but who you are inside! (I think the cheesiness is rubbing off on me.)
Books like this are written to suck you in with melodrama, and Metal Angel succeeds in that for the most part. It’s never going to win any great literature awards, and if it weren’t for my love of the fallen angel trope, I probably would have put it down when the first mention of genitalia crossed the page. Let’s just say I haven’t been so hesitant to read a book in front of my acquaintances and coworkers in a long time, but secretly I want an edited copy because hey, there’s a reason some things even became cliché in the first place.
Intended Audience: Adult
Sexual content: Explicit
Ace/Genderqueer characters: ? (Angel/human)
Rating: PG-13/R for sex, violence, and language
Writing style: 2/5
Likable characters: 3/5
Plot/Concepts: 2/5
Volos was a lower angel, fed up with an eternity of singing praises and running errands for a distant father-god. One night he left it all behind, willing himself into existence so that he could pursue a life of rock n’ roll stardom in L.A. The only thing he didn’t imagine himself keeping was the enormous wings, but being stuck with them might just help propel him into the spotlight even faster.
Sadly, this book is not about a robotic angel (the “Metal” in the title got my hopes up). I picked it up while browsing at a used book store, read the back cover, and started literally laughing out loud. Flipping through it I found that the writing style was entertaining, probably unintentionally so. It was only a few bucks, so I took it home thinking it would be good for when I needed something silly to cheer me up. I’m a bit embarrassed to be reviewing it—it’s pretty much the epitome of a cheap paperback in terms of content—but I figured I may as well share my thoughts.
I certainly got my money’s worth of laughs, and ended up liking a few of the characters a lot more than I expected. I’m a huge sucker for the wants-to-be-human trope, as might be obvious from my obsession with semi-emotive robots. But here’s a confession: back in my teenage years of devouring mainstream fantasy, I also had a thing for angels becoming human and realizing it’s not so easy being mortal. I even wrote a few fallen angel characters of my own. I think this is why I came to like Volos so easily, despite the book’s heavy emphasis on his sex drive and sex appeal. In the process of learning about the human experience, Volos is helped by an old wannabe-cowboy named Texas, who ran away from his wife due to some sort of midlife crisis. The father-son relationship between Texas and Volos, and the way it shows Volos’s naivety and vulnerability, was the best part of the entire book. If the book had been more about that relationship and less about Volos’s relationship with his two lovers (one male, one female), it might have gone on my mental “reread someday” list. Their interaction was a little cheesy in parts, but the entire book was pretty much the same way, with the same sort of loquacious narrative and extreme emotional emphasis as might be found in a popular work of fan-fiction.
Really, the various plot elements and concepts made me feel like I was reading the adapted screenplay of an anime, complete with color-changing wings and eyes of mystical soul-bearing effect, fated connections, power-hungry lovers, supremely awful parents, obscure and extreme sects of fundamentalist Christianity, and a universe based off a sort of mish-mash of religious cosmologies. I rolled my eyes a lot, cringed and grumbled at all the sexual allusions in the word choices (even when there was nothing all that sexual going on), and got especially fed up with the introduction of Angie.
Angie is psychically linked with Volos—he gets all his lyrics from her mind, even though they’ve never met. She is the daughter of a preacher who leads an extremely strict fundamentalist Christian denomination, and the husband of a man named Ennis, who is so obedient to that sect that he shows no desire toward her at all (I read him as ace until later in the book). As such she is extremely sexually repressed and the book dwells on her secret yearnings a lot. Penning rock n’ roll lyrics being her one outlet for these feelings, she eventually starts to listen to Volos’s songs on the forbidden radio and realizes that the lyrics are hers. She then takes her kids and runs off to L.A. to find Volos. After that point I started to like her character a lot more, because contrary to my expectations, she didn’t jump on Volos like a wild animal. Instead she kept her distance until she and Volos had grown closer emotionally. She didn’t feel immediately entitled to him despite her ideas of being “soul mates”.
The gender dynamics in this book are a mix of good and bad. As far as representation goes, there is only one female main character, Angie. Texas’s wife Wyona and Volos’s manager Brett are barely in the book enough to be considered, but one is a stereotypical patient mothering figure and the other is a crush-you-beneath-my-stiletto type. In a sense Angie’s character arc is about her becoming complete via Volos. That irked me, but on the other hand she is the one who makes the decision to leave her oppressive upbringing and surprisingly, she learns in the end that she does not have to be dependent on or defined by any of the men in her life, not even an angel.
Something I found interesting was that Volos and his male lover Mercedes are repeatedly described as androgynous or feminine, and Volos admits at one point that he is technically genderless and could have materialized as a woman. He purposely chose to be a man because he wanted the privilege that came with the label, and in the beginning he is all about defiance and power and sticking it to the man upstairs. But, his character arc is about learning that giving and submitting in the service of genuine love is nothing to be ashamed of. In this way there are a lot of intriguing gender themes hovering in the background, most seeming to imply that wholeness comes not through conforming to what others expect of you because of your shape or appearance, but who you are inside! (I think the cheesiness is rubbing off on me.)
Books like this are written to suck you in with melodrama, and Metal Angel succeeds in that for the most part. It’s never going to win any great literature awards, and if it weren’t for my love of the fallen angel trope, I probably would have put it down when the first mention of genitalia crossed the page. Let’s just say I haven’t been so hesitant to read a book in front of my acquaintances and coworkers in a long time, but secretly I want an edited copy because hey, there’s a reason some things even became cliché in the first place.
April 20, 2018
If I'd found this as a teenager, I would have read it until the spine broke and the cover fell off. As it was, it was id-tastic and an interesting story about faith and found family, but I could see the flaws in it too keenly to really love it wholeheartedly.
April 5, 2025
Cameron Winter as Volos.
I can see it. Fun and tawdry at first, but really ties everything together beautifully at the end. The asides on life and humanity are placed throughout but really come together in the end. Angel stories have a sorta will they won’t they with the whole God showing up thing. I think this was done painterly. The ending sealed the deal and I can imagine the dynamics and nuances of the music depending on the source character.
Definitely want to write a screenplay for this. I have already been taking notes about scenes and music. I have thoughts. This did not disappoint, I think the moments of revelation to music can be done quite well in cinematic form.
Hell yeah
I can see it. Fun and tawdry at first, but really ties everything together beautifully at the end. The asides on life and humanity are placed throughout but really come together in the end. Angel stories have a sorta will they won’t they with the whole God showing up thing. I think this was done painterly. The ending sealed the deal and I can imagine the dynamics and nuances of the music depending on the source character.
Definitely want to write a screenplay for this. I have already been taking notes about scenes and music. I have thoughts. This did not disappoint, I think the moments of revelation to music can be done quite well in cinematic form.
Hell yeah
March 22, 2021
Really good read. Very dark in some places, but true to human behavior. It's a be careful what you wish story. About different kinds of relationships and innocence with all its joys and problems. And rock and roll!
August 15, 2016
I cannot talk about this book enough. It was beautifully written and the story was intriguing and weird and wonderful.
Springer's writing is unique and special and I will always go out of my way to read her books.
Springer's writing is unique and special and I will always go out of my way to read her books.
January 26, 2008
It is wingfic with a rock and roll flavor -- there to be fun, and it serves its purpose as popcorn lit.
April 6, 2020
What did I just read? Stars for the utter bizarreness of this novel - it was a wild ride, flaws and all.
October 22, 2011
2nd read for Rocktober!
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews