Status Updates From Metal from Heaven

prose giving me an aneurysm but BUTCHFEMME REPRESENTATION IS MAKING ME GIDDY but lord i can't wait till it's over

Cranes don't murmurate btw. I mean of course in this book's world perhaps they do...but just so u all know murmuration is a specific word it's not just another term for flock or flight

desperate lack of an editor wtf. i love butches tho!

At 50%, we arrived at the actual intended story and the feral lesbians we were always supposed to meet. Wild. idk why the book is structured or paced the way it is, but it is quite clearly taking the crazy and disgusting opulence of Gideon the Ninth but with a marriage competition edged in bouts of violence for 150 pages instead of the lych stuff, vicious prose and all. I'm invested now but the insp is so obvious lol

My main botheration rn is that underneath the slow, detailed stream-of-consciousness prose, this is just radical socialism 101 and queer theory 101 verbatim. We are not out of high school yet. You can find these concepts discussed in much more unique and thought-provoking ways in other fantasy, like this book's own comp titles and the author's inspirations list. I would honestly rather just read Stone Butch Blues

I get how Different this book is, but I just don't care much. Probably intended as New Weird fantasy with most of the cast being gangster and revenge-seeking sapphics, mixed 1st and 2nd person POV. The slow political build is framed around the hoped-for Hereafter, this world's glorious anti-capitalist revolution that our lady characters are actively pursuing by any means necessary. Wants to be Arcane sometimes