Review--Heart of Iron by Ashley Poston

Seventeen-year-old Ana is a scoundrel by nurture and an outlaw by nature. Found as a child drifting through space with a sentient android called D09, Ana was saved by a fearsome space captain and the grizzled 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 to save D09 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 spoiled Ironblood boy 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 the coordinates—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?

Heart of Iron is my first Ashley Poston book and I have to say it was one of the most unique stories of Anastasia I’ve read. I honestly can’t recall too many of them in my reading lifetime. I of course grew to adore the animated movie of the story, LOL!

The story is told in four points of view, so a little more than typical, but not the most I've ever read. We have Ana, D09, Jax, and Robb. Those first three pretty much are family of a kind, as Ana and D09 were found when Ana was seven and were taken in by a space pirate captain, Siege. A little background info, D09 is an android type robot with some human likeness you could say. He was found with Ana and is a guard of sorts for her, he’s her constant companion and of course, Ana is starting to have feelings for him, yet he’s keeping a secret from her and that is that he’s sort of dying in the computer sense.

Then we have Jax who has his own secret history that eventually gets revealed but he flies the pirate ship you could say and had other unique talents. Then Robb comes into the picture, he was just a boy trying to find out what happened to his father who disappeared 10 years ago. He wants to find the ship that his father was last on in hopes that it will have clues for him to follow. And ironically, that is exactly where Ana wants to go to help find some tech that could help Di—as she calls D09, for she does know that he is have glitches, she just doesn’t know how badly they are.

And thus the story takes off with these unlikely characters coming together—with other supporting characters too of course—in hopes of finding the answers they seek. And naturally, things go completely and totally wrong for them all.

It’s right about the time they leave the mystery spaceship that things turn in the direction of Ana being revealed as the lost princess, as it is heavily mentioned and you pretty much know this from the getgo since the book was pushed as Anastasia in Space.

In general, I really liked this one, yet as with most books set in space, I struggled with it too. There was just so much to know about this world and space and all the technological gizmos and workings it becomes overwhelming at times. Especially since there’s also the mysterious and dark history that has yet to be uncovered. I will admit all the treasonous and murderous plots and backstabbing royals did make for an interesting plot twist. 

There was not one, but two romances taking place in this one! We had the somewhat forbidden love between Ana and Di, which I kept trying to figure out how that would work since Di isn’t officially human being part android/robot. But naturally, forces are trying to tear them apart! And then we have the somewhat equally forbidden romance between Jax and Robb. It was never truly clear if royal society frowned upon same sex couples, but since they start out as enemies there was definitely that slow burning hate to love romance going between them that was just oh so enjoyable.

I’d say that the pacing to this one was somewhere in the middle of slow and fast. While it was a relatively decent paced novel, it was all the space lingo and futuristic gizmo talk and history that kind of bogged me down. While I didn’t full heartedly love this one, I will say that I really enjoyed it and can’t wait to start the sequel. Which I should be somewhat started by the time you all are reading this, if not full on starting! 

Heart of Iron was a fun read nevertheless despite a few issues I had with it, but that’s just my own weirdness when it comes to space novels. It was still a fun read and I look forward to reading the next one!

Overall rating 3.5/5 stars