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This book fought me. There were so many times I nearly put it down for good, but some online reviews said it got much better at about 50% of the way through so I slogged on. It does pull off something pretty cool at the end, enough for me to raise the rating from "did not like it" to "it's okay" but not enough for me to rate it higher or feel like the effort to get there was entirely worth it.

There are some great scenes! Punctuated by long stretches where I was so bored. How could a book about a lesbian highwaywoman seeking revenge on the industrialist who had her family and friends murdered when she was a child--only she survived the massacre--have boring stretches? And yet.

The writing is florid and sometimes nearly blurry. Metal from Heaven's main viewpoint character often sees the world somewhat off because she's deeply allergic to ichorite, a metal that she was exposed to a lot at the foundry she and her family had worked at that is now being laced into everything. When close to it or in contact with it, it hurts her body in many ways as well as overlays a nearly hallucinogenic slant to everything she sees. ( spoiler )

It might've been nice having more POVs than just hers.

This book throws a lot of superfluous details at you... then reveals much later on that not all of it was superfluous. Some transitions were abrupt and awkward. There are so many names in this--people, places, religions--that it can be hard to keep track of who is who and what is what, so an appendix would've been nice.

Some of the twists were very clever, but one major one absolutely failed at my suspension of disbelief. I was not able to go along with it.

Today while I was out, a food bank truck at a church was bringing down a pallet that had stacks of large boxes of avocados, maybe 30 or more, and somehow the boxes tipped over sideways. Some hit the street and sent individual avocados flying out across Caldwell and Eliot Avenues. Some boxes fell on top of other boxes and smushed them. In 95F heat and sun. I was so tempted to take a photo, but I figured this guy was already having the worst workday of his life without him seeing me documenting it and knowing I'd show it to other people. (I also feel bad for the people who would've eaten those avocados if not for this accident.)

I wonder how many avocados were salvageable.

Probably not the one that rolled several hundred feet and into the crosswalk at the intersection.

I can only hope someone got the idea to make guacamole out of the wreckage so they're not totally wasted.