Found as a child drifting through space with D09, Ana was saved by a fearsome space captain and the crew she now calls family. But D09 – one of the last remaining illegal Metals – has been glitching, and Ana will stop at nothing to find a way to fix him. Ana’s desperate effort leads her on a quest to steal the coordinates to a lost ship that could offer all the answers. But at the last moment, a Ironblood beats Ana to her prize. He has his own reasons for taking the coordinates, and he doesn’t care what he’ll sacrifice to keep them. When everything goes wrong, she and the Ironblood end up as fugitives on the run. Now their entire kingdom is after them and not everyone wants them captured alive. What they find in a lost corner of the universe will change all their lives and unearth dangerous secrets. But when a darkness from Ana’s past returns, she must face an impossible choice: does she protect a kingdom that wants her dead or save the Metal boy she loves?
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Heart of Iron
Ashley Poston
About halfway through it clicked that Heart of Iron is pretty much an Anastasia retelling. Which seeing as I loved the film as a child, I loved that it was a retelling. Although retellings often fall into the trap of predictability, Poston managed to write in enough surprises to have me second guessing. The Sci-Fi elements really pull you away from the classic telling, but then there’s snippets such as character names which remind you. The ending was so completely out of the blue, I didn’t expect that at all and I was so excited about it. It really made me want to read the next book, although I’m unsure if this a series or just a duology.
The pacing is always on the go, there’s always something pushing the story along. I disliked how many POV chapters there were as this isn’t a particularly long book, so it was slightly jumpy as we go between different people. But it did allow for action to happen when one character had nothing happening to them.
The world building was lacking for a sci-fi book. We spend a lot of our time on ships, so fair enough when we’re in space the world won’t be described on looks. But when we’re on planets and moons, there’s not a lot of description. I loved the garden with moon flowers (I think that’s what they were called? I may be wrong, although this leads back to world building). This scene was extremely beautiful and I loved being told about these wonderful flowers. But the rest of the book, lacked this much depth. For example, we have the Solani who can see peoples fates but this is only briefly touched upon. I also really struggled to understand how people lived in this world, because the Ironbloods apparently lived above the world in floating gardens. But it’s not really explained why or how that happened.
I hated the romance in this book. One was insta love, the other was just odd. I do not want to spoil anything so won’t go into details, but the relationship between Ana and Di, the robot, felt weird to me throughout. They’d known each other since she was a child similar to why I didn’t like The Queen’s Rising romance, and it’s with a non-humanoid which has more power than the other party, which is why I didn’t like Honor Among Thieves. And since I’ve read all of these books so close together, it really made it obvious to me that there were these problems that I don’t like. Obviously, this is completely subjective and other people may look past these.
The insta love on the other hand is more likely that many people will dislike it. Robb and Jax immediately have a connection, once they have brushed against one another in the ship. I was annoyed that there was no build up and they were always thinking about one another from first sight of one another. The book as a whole is extremely diverse. On top of this gay couple, there’s people of colour, and a side character lesbian couple. There’s also some crew members who suffer disabilities but still work and live on the ship just fine. And all of this isn’t even talked about. It’s been completely normalised in this world and no one seems to mention anything about it.
Minor Spoilers Below
The main characters were diverse and very differentiated from one another. I did struggle with the secondary characters as they lacked the depth they needed. Most of the crew except our main characters and the captain started to blend into one another. I think the main issue was that the secondary characters were created just to be killed off. Throughout the book, death is used as a plot device to make Ana feel guilty that people around her die. This is then used to show that bad things will happen to our characters, but because I didn’t know these characters well I didn’t have the emotional connection to care. This meant that when Ana and co were mourning, I was wanting to skip to next piece of action instead of feeling immersed in their sorrow.
Spoilers End
Overall, I did really enjoy the book even though it had problems. It’s a book you can read just to enjoy and you don’t need to think too much about it. The lack of world building and character depth isn’t too much of a killer when reading unless you’re specifically looking for those factors. It does have an extremely compelling plotline and manages to surprise you throughout with lots of actions scenes which drive you along.
POSITIVES
+ Anastasia retelling
+ Surprise ending
+ Diverse
NEGATIVES
– Insta Love
– Secondary characters lacked depth
– World building wasn’t great
I received Heart of Iron by Ashley Poston from the publisher via Edelweisss. This is an unbiased and honest review
