Heart of Iron by Ashley Poston

Heart of Iron (The Iron Kingdom, #1)

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?

Reviewed by Ashley on

3 of 5 stars

Share
Actual rating: 3.5.

I was actually fully prepared to give this 4 stars because I enjoyed it a lot, but then I didn't like how things turned up in the end. I really didn't like who turned into a bad guy.

Ending spoiler:

Ana is in love with a robot, D09 and he totally loves her too. In the end though, he gets a virus that turns him into a bad guy. He ends up stabbing Ana (though not fatally) and is installed as the new emperor. So the robot she loves becomes the bad guy who they're clearly going to need to fight in the next book. Ugh. Do not like.

I LOVED the Anastasia angle though. That was one of my favourite parts. Because you know it's Anastasia-esque it's pretty predictable, but I loved it anyway.

There was some awesome LGBT+ in this book.

- Main girl character loves a robot.
- Main guy character is gay and falls in love with the other guy character (who isn't quite human).
- Main girl's surrogate mother is married to a woman.

Also, heads up: this is clearly book #1 in a series.

Last modified on

Reading updates

  • 21 August, 2017: Started reading
  • 23 August, 2017: Finished reading
  • 25 August, 2017: Reviewed