#august clarke

[layaart]

I walked through the dark to the edge of the cliff, the big basalt-column fingers that held us up from the hungry crashing water. I sat down. [...] I felt my heart seize and I mashed it back inside my body. [...] The near moon and the far moon were both out. Full and gibbous. In the water they overlapped and made a sort of milky blurry hourglass shape. "May I sit with you?"

a scene near the end of Metal From Heaven, by august clarke

[winter-butch]

Metal From Heaven, by August Clarke

(I really appreciate that the main character is a stone butch, and that the author includes her stoneness in sex scenes. Very hard to find in media.)

[machinel1ke]

Since it's pride month I'm only gonna be talking about doomed yuri and yaoi. Everybody go read Metal From Heaven right now it's the best doomed yuri book ever. Also Firebreak if you're into doomed QPRs.

[bones-clouds]

books i read in 2026:

"metal from heaven"

august clarke

"hereafterists are champions of faith in all. we know that this evil is a machine made of history, it is created, it can be dismantled. we can try something else. we can make a way to be together without being above each other. everyone can use everything. no one can keep the devices used to make the world to themselves. no borders, no punishment for movement. no wage clock, no work as a method for managing the masses ’til they’re too exhausted to rise up and kill you."

[all-consuming-sand]

metal from heaven wormed its way so far in my brain i made a meme

ive never made a meme before i hope the three people in the world who get this enjoy my humble offering

[queer-book-character-tournament]

Queer Book Character Tournament Round One

Marney Honeycutt- Metal From Heaven

William Sitterson- The Legendborn Cycle

Riley Sowell- Summer Sons

Ballister Blackheart- Nimona

Voting ended onApr 15

Character, book, and author names under the cut

Marney Honeycutt- Metal From Heaven by August Clarke

William Sitterson- The Legendborn Cycle by Tracy Deonn

Riley Sowell- Summer Sons by Lee Mandelo 

Ballister Blackheart- Nimona by N.D. Stevenson

[gcantread]

July 2026 reads

[loved liked ok nope dnf bookclub*]

Immortal Game • Taipei Story • I Who Have Never Known Men • A Drop of Corruption • The Felicity Complex • The Incandescent • The Spy Who Came in From the Cold • Dreamland • The Intrigue • The Fire Next Time

Can you believe Try To Finish All These ARCs Month was a success? I read and reviewed four ARCs, an additional four books off the Bella's Book Club summer reading list, and two more I just felt like reading! And the ARCs... weren't half bad? Many had sex scenes and some had good food 😜🍲

Immortal Game [GR review] ★★★1/2☆ - Allison Saft is one of those authors whose story ideas I like in theory but never in execution. But I met her IRL this month and she was super chill so I decided, eh, let's give the Chess Lesbian rivals-to-lovers a chance. I'm glad I did, because I liked this one much better than Saft's other books! Improved pacing here.

Taipei Story [GR review]★★★★☆ - Funnily enough, R.F. Kuang falls into the same "never clicked with before" category as Saft for me. I suspected I'd like her writing better in a genre other than fantasy, and this book proved me right. (I mean definitely don't pay $650 for it but it's got great prose and voice going on.)

I Who Have Never Known Men ★★★★☆ - I'd seen lots of hype for this one, but wasn't prepared for how disturbing I'd find it. This was MY Backrooms. 10/10 showed me a terrible time

A Drop of Corruption ★★★★☆ - This series is so damn fun. I liked this even better than the first book due to the cool villain and Din's hilarious slut era (we love a sad cringe failman with a huge dick!) Can't wait for book 3 now! Too bad I'm like 27th on the holds list 💀

The Felicity Complex [GR review]★★★1/2☆ - Exactly the Good For Her™, Ex Machina-esque tale I was promised. Nothing wildly original, but a delightfully weird narrator here.

The Incandescent ★★★★☆ - An excellent @bellasbookclub summer reading rec! Loved the magic school worldbuilding and the teacher POV. Emily Tesh is batting 100 for me so far.

The Spy Who Came in From the Cold ★★☆☆☆ - I'd long wondered whether or not John Le Carré was for me, and now I can definitively say that he is Not

Dreamland [GR review]★★★1/2☆ - Saw Olivie Blake on a panel a few years ago and was impressed by all the intelligent things she had to say, so I was eager to read her work for the first time. This one was a tad overwritten/purple, but not bad. Really liked the main POV character/narrator and not just because she dropped out of the same university I did

The Intrigue [GR review]★★★1/2☆ - A solid noir tale from Silvia Moreno-Garcia. Nuance enjoyers will enjoy the nuance 👍

The Fire Next Time [GR review]★★★★★ - Absolutely floored by how good this was. Just. Every single sentence, wow. Even at the few parts that haven't aged well I found myself wondering what Baldwin would think of the modern shift toward intersectionality, and y'know, I think he'd get it. Gonna need to buy my own copy of this one for rereading purposes

DNFs: None.

July superlatives: here! (and here 😉)

Next up:

My ARC goals for August are such a random combination. We're looking at Winterveil, Christmas in Austenland, at least one of two different Jonathan Strahan anthologies, and Building 903. I also finally have The Adventures of Amina Al-Sirafi from the library, so fingers crossed I manage to read that one too!

previous months:

2024 • 2025

2026: january • february • march • april • may • june

[aroaessidhe]

metal from heaven fans i have character design sketches for most of the cast I would love if anyone has Thoughts Ideas or Suggestions (gay sketches as a reward if you read to the bottom)

i did..... not quite every on page character, but pretty much everyone who's there more than once and at least vaguely described (or like. I'd do gwyar if it wouldn't be a spoiler)

all the character descriptions I have recorded are here by the way !!

some of the characters are described a lot but most are like.....their face/hair but nothing about their clothes, or the other way around, so for a lot of them I just winged it - part of the reason I wanted to do so many characters roughly was so get a sense of the overall styles and vibes? august said they were thinking about john galliano for fashion so I took a lot of inspo from that and also a heavy dose of western vibes.....fashion is not my strong point though. truly just stuck it all in a blender and slapped it on.

and also for most of these it's sort of first-or-second-pass designs - basically just getting an initial feel rather than really solidly Designed. so likely to change. I could definitely push a lot of them further!!!

fingerbluffs/choir etc!

sisphe is described with having sunlight trapped in her hair and then also a dark curtain of hair and it's PROBABLY dark but I did imagine her blonde initially because of that. going with blonde hair as a kid that got darker to compromise...

her disguise outfit isn't really described other than gloves but I kinda matched it to marney disguise (below)

harlow took me so long to figure out getting her face like I imagined and also like how I described....I'm not sure still. i love her sm

amon is accidentally giving victor arcane. the character archetype + colour palette I guess. I specifically made it blue/black with pink highlights because of the tullian gender colours though..

tbh I still haven't figured out how their bandit hoods work. I think they pull over from the back of the head but I can't figure out how to draw that in a way that works so they're bandanas for now

not pictured but what are we imagining the lurchers like. just fun punky sff motorbikes?

aristrocrats !!

i am pretty happy with my marney and goss (though goss could be shorter...)

wanna do more vikare outfits

yann i. chauncey supposed to be quite boring and nondescript but also. sure does like Like A Random Dude in this lineup huh

basically all of the bottom row are only lightly described so I just went with the initial vague mental image I had tbh!

could I put more effort into giving them more cultural distinctions / make the areas they're from more visually distinct? yes probably. it's hard to get a sense of some of that when some of the places are within ignavia and some are like.. separate continents - and there's no map to sort it out in my head. (you may notice i wrote where they're from in blue by the names though)

description: 'detailed traditional tullian/drustish/etc embroidery' me: here's some vague scribbles

could deffo get some more body diversity in here

anyway genuinely very interested if anyone is like 'I imagined x to be completely different in y way' or fancasts or anything else! i am so open to and interested in making changes if other people have thoughts (and like if you're not an artist so can't draw it yourself) (or even if you are an artist but don't have the time and want to make me draw it instead. i know the feeling)

----

thanks for reading here's sketches:

I promise I will post these properly on my art blog sometime. also if anyone has ideas for little sketches like these, of any particular interactions or whatever....