Metallic Realms by Lincoln Michel Review

A wildly inventive and entertaining novel about a sci-fi writing group whose fictional universe and personal dramas begin to collide and collapse from the critically acclaimed author of the “timeless and original” (The New York Times) The Body Scout.
 

Perennially single, socially awkward, and drowning in debt, Michael Lincoln’s life has turned out nothing like the intergalactic pulp heroes of his youth. But these are pedestrian concerns—he has a greater calling, and that is to preserve for all posterity the greatest series in the history of the written The Star Rot Chronicles. Written collectively by Michael’s best (and perhaps only) friend Taras K. Castle and his misfit sci-fi writing group, the Orb 4, the stories follow Captain Baldwin and his fearless crew on their mind-bending adventures across the Metallic Realms, from solar whales swallowing suns at the edge of spacetime to interstellar love triangles. These masterpieces have gone tragically unpublished—until now.
 

But the most urgent story Michael must tell takes place in the more intimate (if no less dramatic) confines of literary Brooklyn. Behind the greatest multiverse ever created, there are the all-too-mortal people who wrote it. As Michael chronicles the personal melodramas of the Orb 4 as well as the funhouse reflections in their fiction, the line between real and unreal becomes dangerously thin, and the true reasons for the group’s fallout begin to emerge. As he labors away in hiding, Michael has just one to bring the Metallic Realms to the world. No matter the cost.
 

Metallic Realms is a genre-breaking ode to golden-age science fiction, friendship, creativity, and the power and perils of storytelling.

An incredibly meta and satirical novel, Lincoln Michel’s Metallic Realms is an ambitiously written story that defies conventional genre classifications. Featuring a collection of scifi-based short stories within a larger memoir-esque story, Metallic Realms recaps the highs and lows of the Orb4 writing collective group on their real and grounded struggles in creating cosmic literary art. Full of real-world metaphors, social commentary, and sharp jabs at the publishing and online communities, this book is an incredible experience written for hardcore SFF geeks and struggling millennials.  

Note: For greater clarity for those who have not read this book, I will be referring to the author by his first name “Lincoln” instead of my usual review format where I would use his last name instead. When I drafted this review, I felt it might be confusing and too easy to misread the character Michael and Michel back-to-back. 

Before I get into why I found this book so incredible, I feel the need to address some of the confusion about this book and offer some respectful advice for those potentially interested in it. First and foremost, Metallic Realms is a book full of satire, far-reaching scifi and fantasy references (and by that, I mean affectionately dragging fantasy), and general online geek culture. I write this a lot in my book reviews but in this case more so than usual, this book is NOT for casual readers or those deemed “normies”. The story within a story is layered with metaphors, witty sarcastic humor, and harsh criticisms of topics that will likely fly over the head of those not intricately familiar with or a fan of scifi culture. Secondly, retailers and book platforms do this book a disservice by categorizing it as a scifi novel which I believe sets the wrong expectation for the story’s narrative content. Written and intended to defy specific genres by design, if I had to classify this book one way or another, it’s probably closer to literary/contemporary fiction despite it being about all things scifi. While the short story collection Star Rot Chronicles written within the book is very much scifi in nature, the short stories are meant to reflect on the Orb4 members’ lives through symbolism and varied tone. This is NOT a book for those looking for a flashy space opera or any action-based epic tales. I read a negative review that questioned whether the author even likes scifi to begin with which is utter nonsense; the reader completely missing the point of the book and in fact falling victim to the book’s stated roasting of simple and close-minded readers. 

So with that aside, what is Metallic Realms about and who is it for? It’s tough to summarize, but in essence, it’s a story about millennial young adults in their late 20’s/early 30’s trying to write grand scifi art against the many difficulties that pull them out of their creatively inspired world. Set in a realistic version of post-Covid Brooklyn, Michael Lincoln (not to be confused with the actual author of this book Lincoln Michel) chronicles the rocky development of the collective writing group’s short story collection, the Star Rot Chronicles. Faced with complicated relationship histories, creative differences, professional success and subsequent jealousy, or simply finding a way to pay the bills, the story is told from Michael’s perspective as a fan of the group and roommate of its leader, seeking to record and release their stories at any cost. 

From the get-go, one of the book’s defining and often most polarizing elements is its character narration tone. As a character and narrator, Michael Lincoln is “one that many readers might find unlikeable or off-putting or hard to root for” (Michael’s 4th wall breaking self-description and Lincoln’s own words, not mine). Personally, I found his character to have one of the most distinctive and established narration voices and tone I’ve read in quite some time. Highly introverted, anxious, a bit neurotic and very quirky, Michael’s recollection of Orb4’s meetings and his escapism life are very inspired. For those that follow MBTI theory, the book and tone scream INTP. Throughout the book, Michael repeatedly makes well-meaning but severely misguided choices that are so logically justified in his head despite how comedic or horrifying they can be to a 3rd party observer. Yet for how troubled and misguided he often is, his character, along with the rest of the orb4 members, are incredibly relatable, their concerns and worries often hitting very close to home. 

Besides Michael’s quirks, Metallic Realms’s other distinguishing traits are its ambitious presentation and setup. The entire book is written in the second person perspective from Michael’s point of view in narrative form to prospective readers of his recollection of Orb4’s Star Rot Chronicles, post what is suggested to be the group disbanding. That alone is impressive enough but Lincoln takes the concept even further by including in full, ten Orb4 short stories. Episodic and largely anthology in nature, each short story is written by a different member of the group, followed by Michael’s analysis of its narrative content and connection to the “irl” circumstances of when it was written. Not only is each story influenced by the status and dynamics of the group, each writer has distinctive proses, interpretations of the Star Rot’s characters, and style of storytelling. For example, Jane’s stories have a very literary style reflecting her MFA background and autofiction approach to writing. Taras’s stories are more action-based, classic scifi material while Merlin’s lean heavier towards self-identity and reflections that align with their non-binary identity and interests in more abstract forms of art. Some stories are philosophically based like a reinterpretation of the Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas taken to a political and dystopian extreme while another is a vent piece that pokes fun at whatever the scifi equivalent of fantasy’s spice-heavy romantasy genre is. Even if one doesn’t necessarily enjoy the story, you cannot deny Lincoln Michel’s versatility and proficiency at writing, achieving five distinctively unique writing styles each with further variations based on the context of the short story. To his credit, he even purposely writes poorly when appropriately  in-character as Michael, on top of making the most of the unreliable narrator element. 

In addition to the impressive writing chops on display, Metallic Realms also features many other compelling themes and internal reflections on the current American society and psyche. The gatekeeping of creative and unorthodox ideas that don’t fit into the mainstream publisher vision, the compromise between settling for stability vs shooting for the artistic stars, familial expectations, even maxing out credit card debt to very entertaining results, all of these topics are well discussed through Michael’s passionate, yet often delulu eyes. Outside of the pursuit of publication, there’s going viral (and getting cancelled), conflict of literary loyalties, scifi vs fantasy debates, etc. Perhaps more respectable is the book’s portrayal of Michael and Taras’s childhood to adult friendship, loyalties, loneliness, and awkward expectations for young adults to know how to properly function as adults without any sort of guidebook to living. It is this last topic that creates the most tension in the story and where the book really hits its stride with its heavy-hitting content. 

What starts as a simple story about four aspiring writers plus the leader’s roommate grows into something more thanks to the book’s strong character writing and well-developed characters. Outside of Michael, the four Orb4 members have diverse backgrounds, identities, and aspirations along with their aforementioned variety of writing styles. However, given that the story is narrated by Michael, his character is given the most development. While the tone of the book is consistently witty and snappy with a good dose of crazed frenetic energy, there’s a clear underlying sense of sadness that permeates throughout the events of the story that helps keep the book grounded. Even when Michael is describing positive and exciting things that are happening for the Star Rot Chronicles with upbeat optimism, those reading between the lines will easily see the inherently lonely and dejected feel of an outsider looking in, Michael often unaware of his own feelings in the moment. One element that I found particularly poignant and impressive is how completely tone-deaf Michael can be when others around him are upset. With his intense love for the project and his one-track mind set on getting the Star Rot Chronicles published, his severely misguided yet well-meaning attempts to keep their creative spark alive are tragically off. Some other reviewers have commented that Michael is a hard character to read about or is ridiculously silly, but that is completely by design, even Michael realizing how far off base he was by the end of the book. 

While I could probably write a thesis on how brilliant this novel is from a literary standpoint, I will also admit that this book is not always an easy or pleasant read. Even outside of Michael, the Orb4 members are portrayed as being very human characters that make mistakes, argue with each other, lash out of pettiness, etc. Written as a pseudo memoir retelling the history of the Star Rot Chronicles conception, the fictional story sometimes feels like it’s progressing aimlessly at a slow pace. This is purposeful as a metaphor for how life and art have no clear path or direction. While I didn’t really mind these potential drawbacks, I did feel like the ending was a little too open-ended for my liking. The book sufficiently wrapped up and achieved Michael’s goal of getting the Star Rot Chronicles released, but I felt like I was left waiting for some kind of definitive dramatic moment to end Michael’s character story. What the book delivered was good, particularly Michael’s bittersweet reflections of all the sacrifices made to get the story out and his uncertain future, but I just wanted more to it or maybe a single epilogue chapter around Michael post-release. In the grand scheme of things, this is a very minor nitpick compared to how well executed the book’s satirical and literary commentary are, but it was still notable enough to slightly affect the subjective enjoyability for me. That said, I read the Owlcrate Edition of the book which has an exclusive bonus interview chapter between Michael Lincoln and Lincoln Michel that’s a fourth wall breaking riot. In a way, this meta sit-down interview format sort serves as a kind of epilogue that adds to the book’s ending, though I’m not factoring it into my review/rating for the book as the vast majority of readers will not have access to this short bonus feature. As a side note, I must also applaud Owlcrate for selecting and featuring this book in its scifi subscription as it’s a very bold and inspired choice. 

A true literary genre defier, Metallic Realms is an ambitiously crafted novel that’s incredibly unique in presentation. Filled with sharp commentary and tongue in cheek satirical content on top of its collection of stories within a story told in second person perspective to the reader, it’s amazing what this book is able to accomplish in just over three hundred pages. I personally loved the tone and frequently laughed out loud thanks to its hilariously subtle and smart humor. Though the narrative tone and meta-heavy focus may not be for the casual or unimaginative type of reader, this book is a one-of-a-kind pick for those looking for something that breaks the mold and dares to be different; one reader’s niche pick is another reader’s surprise homerun like mine. For fans of literary fiction, scifi enthusiast, or even millennial readers looking to commiserate in the struggles of adulting, Metallic Realms is one of the most unapologetically geeky and creative books you can go with!