Heart of Iron Review

Hello Again,
I'm back with my marathon April posts, this time with another review. This review is of Heart of Iron by Ashley Poston. This book was from OwlCrate's March box and it's very pretty with purple stained pages and as always it's signed by the author. This was an interesting book, it was a variation of the story of Anastasia but set in a sci-fi universe. I love Anastasia, it's my favorite animated movie and the story of the Romanovs and the Russian Revolution has always fascinated me so I was intrigued by the get go.

Caution: this review contains spoilers

So Heart of Iron is a book told by differing perspectives like Game of Thrones or Six of Crows, where each chapter is narrated by a different character. You meet the main character, 17 year old Ana who is an outlaw on board a smuggling ship searching for coordinates to a ship to save her best friend. Di, her best friend, is something called a metal which is an  android. He's glitching due to a faulty memory core and the coordinates Ana's searching for may lead to a permanent solution. Most of the metals in their world have been altered to force compliance and Di is one of the very few illegal ones left. While stealing the coordinates, Ana crashes a party where the Grand Duchess is going to name a successor to the throne and his younger brother, Robb, helps Ana and Di escape, leaving with them. On the ship, The Dossier, you meet the Captain who raised Ana as her own as well as a rugged crew of smugglers. The group finds the lost ship but are attacked by metals that activate themselves when they're on board. Di sacrifices himself to save the rest of them and they return to the Dossier with his metal body. After leaving the ship, the Dossier is attacked by Robb's family who take them into custody but not before Robb attempts to upload Di's consciousness into the human-like android body found on the ship. When brought before the Grand Duchess, Robb reveals he believes Ana is the lost princess and when the Iron Crown doesn't rust at her touch (a trait carried only by the ruling family) she is declared the soon to be empress. Thrown into a world of intrigue, Ana is lured to the ruined tower where her family died in the fire during the uprising where Di in his new, human body finds her and they discover the advisor who created the metals killed her father and the rest of her family to cover up that her father had discovered the metals were people's consciousnesses uploaded into metal bodies after their deaths from the plague, a process that wipes their memories. Di ends up captured by the adviser and is wiped. After Ana's coronation Di and other metals attack killing the Grand Duchess, injuring Robb, and almost killing Ana (the target of the assassination) although they manage to kill the Adviser and escape. The book ends with Di in his human body being crowned emperor while the others recover on The Dossier. There are further books planned in the series.

To be honest the book started off fairly slow but I ended up really enjoying it. It was like a mix of Anastasia, Treasure Planet, and Firefly which are all things I really enjoy. I got very involved in the characters of Ana, Di, Robb, and Jax, the pilot and a star seer. It had grand adventure and the four main characters (the point of view characters) all had their own romances with Ana and Di pairing up and Robb and Jax. There are multiple relationships of various forms and I always like seeing diversity in books. I can't wait for the next book to come out (and this one only came out last month).

Anyway I read this book from April 11-20, 2018 and rated it a 4/5 stars on goodreads. I enjoyed it very much and I'm ready for the second one to come out. I'm also looking for a place to put the promo poster up on my wall.

Happy Reading!
Richelle and Emma