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A review by petalish
Heart of Iron by Ashley Poston
3.0
Review to come.Portrayed as a sci-fi retelling of Anastasia, this novel takes you on a swash-buckling adventure with Ana and the outlaw crew of the Dossier, as they try to find a way to fix her failing robot, D09, commonly called Di. Secrets are gradually unraveled and the stakes are risen, as An learns more about her past, and her best friend, Di.
For a book that has gone to print, there were a surprising number of typos throughout the book, and even some wrongly printed names that made a confusing world all the more difficult to navigate. The world building is one of the aspects that definitely fell short in this novel with so many things referenced with little to no explanation or context as to what they meant. I found myself having to re-read several passages and even chapters just trying to get an understanding of what is going down.
The story is told from multiple points of view, and at times the frequent shifts between them really seemed unnecessary, and I feel that the story could have benefited by dropping some of them. It was very jarring and it made it difficult to relate and connect with many of the characters.
The pacing slow at a number of points, but the ending certainly picked up the pace, but I found that most of the plot twists were predictable with little in the way of surprises throughout. Things progressed exactly how I thought they would, and that made it difficult for me to continue to the end.
What I did love though was the characters and the representation, the building relationship between Jax and Robb was adorable and fun to see. And I while I did love Di and Ana individually, I wasn't sold on the whole insta-love and I would have loved to have seen a bit more of a build there, and got a few more glimpses about what makes their relationship what it is.
For me, this was a 3 out of 5 stars. Maybe 3.5.
For a book that has gone to print, there were a surprising number of typos throughout the book, and even some wrongly printed names that made a confusing world all the more difficult to navigate. The world building is one of the aspects that definitely fell short in this novel with so many things referenced with little to no explanation or context as to what they meant. I found myself having to re-read several passages and even chapters just trying to get an understanding of what is going down.
The story is told from multiple points of view, and at times the frequent shifts between them really seemed unnecessary, and I feel that the story could have benefited by dropping some of them. It was very jarring and it made it difficult to relate and connect with many of the characters.
The pacing slow at a number of points, but the ending certainly picked up the pace, but I found that most of the plot twists were predictable with little in the way of surprises throughout. Things progressed exactly how I thought they would, and that made it difficult for me to continue to the end.
What I did love though was the characters and the representation, the building relationship between Jax and Robb was adorable and fun to see. And I while I did love Di and Ana individually, I wasn't sold on the whole insta-love and I would have loved to have seen a bit more of a build there, and got a few more glimpses about what makes their relationship what it is.
For me, this was a 3 out of 5 stars. Maybe 3.5.