Note: This is an older review to introduce Substackers to our house style (TCTIN). A majority of the books we review will be advanced review copies (ARCs) given to our parent companies, everafterbooks.uk and theubergroup.org.
The coolest thing I noticed about the fantasy fiction novel Metal from Heaven is how the main character (Marnie) ultimately chooses an imaginary relationship over a real one, and through this imaginary relationship transforms herself and her world forever (moderate spoilers follow).
In a far-off time and place, twelve-year-old Marnie Honeycutt works in a foundry with her family and friends, crafting everyday objects from a lustrous, toxic metal called "ichorite." Marnie was born near the foundry, and she and other children from the area experience strange visions and seizures whenever there's ichorite nearby. As the oldest of this group, Marnie's condition is the worst, but she still works at the foundry, seven days a week, to help support her family.
Finally, the workers go on strike, demanding to know what's happening to their "luster-touched" children. One bright morning, Marnie, her family, and everyone she's ever known link arms, sing songs, and march down the street in front of the foundry, where they're promptly massacred. Gunned down, one and all, by the foundry's enforcers. Except for Marnie, overcome by a seizure and trapped beneath the bodies of her loved ones. Where she discovers the metal she hates so much has granted her powerful, terrifying abilities.
In summary, Marnie escapes and spends the next ten years plotting revenge on the foundry's owner. And narrating this journey to her best friend — Marnie's dead best friend, Gwyar. On that fateful day at the foundry, Marnie loses track of Gwyar in the chaos and bloodshed, and assumes her best friend died with the rest of the workers. So from then on, Marnie talks to Gwyar in her head, as if she were alive and well. In fact, Marnie believes that everything she does — good and bad — is for Gwyar.
Marnie's relationship with Gwyar becomes a powerful force for her. It re-traumatizes Marnie, so she can never let go of what happened. It gives Marnie something to focus on instead of her own, deep-seated guilt, since she knows the factory workers died trying to help her and the other luster-touched children. And, most importantly, this prevents Marnie from accepting love, because she imagines her heart already belongs to Gwyar. Because, besides being Marnie's best friend, Marnie thinks of Gwyar as her first girlfriend.
It's probably not surprising that Marnie encounters Gwyar again, in the flesh. And in many stories, this would be the part where Marnie has to let go of the imagined version of her best friend so she can embrace (or at least cope with) the real, live Gwyar. The problem is that Marnie and Gwyar are on opposite sides of a war, shaped and fueled by the ichorite trade. This leaves Marnie with an awful choice: abandon her own principles to be with Gwyar, convince Gwyar to do the same, or attempt to find common ground.
After struggling with this choice for much of the story, Marnie comes to a grim conclusion: None of these options will bring peace to their world. Because even if Gwyar comes around to Marnie's way of thinking, the evil she represents will march on and may become even more destructive. Because in the end, as long as there's wealth to be had, people will do unforgivable things to get it, leading to endless atrocity.
Setting aside what Marnie decides to do, how does this impact her relationship with Gwyar? Again, in another story, Marnie might reject Gwyar in order to seize her own destiny and set things right. But Marnie does something different — she chooses the idealized, imagined version of Gwyar, instead.
Because this version of Gwyar represents how Marnie wishes the world worked, despite all that she's experienced. A world full of potential, where love lasts, undiluted by time and suffering. It's a world that grown-up Marnie realizes probably can't exist, but her relationship with this version of Gwyar is still powerful enough to sustain her through a final trial: to put an end to wealth itself, or at least drastically redefine it.
This is madness, of course. Wealth and its acquisition are expressions of human nature. Even Marnie can't change that. Most fiction doesn't even hint at the possibility, because few readers can imagine a world without the forces Marnie struggles against, which I'll summarize as "capitalism." This isn't my down-low commentary on the subject — it's just the truth. In the world of Metal from Heaven, the real enemy is capitalism, but in our world it's how I'm able to write these words and you're able to read them.
So Marnie is, as far as we're concerned, nuts. But if the forces arrayed against her, in all their horror, truly represent sanity, I can't fault Marnie for wanting a friend — even an invisible one. Especially an invisible one.
I really like your writing! Book sold!