Review: Heart of Steel by Meljean Brook

Heart of Steel (Iron Seas #2) by Meljean Brook

• Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: Berkley Trade; 1 edition (November 1, 2011)

Goodreads Description:

Return to the gritty, alluring world of steampunk with the New York Times bestselling author of The Iron Duke.

Growing up in the dangerous world of the Iron Seas, the mercenary captain of the airship Lady Corsair, Yasmeen, has learned to keep her heart hard as steel. Ruthless and cunning, her only loyalty is to her ship and her crew-until one man comes along and changes everything...Treasurehunter Archimedes Fox isn't interested in the Lady Corsair-just the captain and the valuable da Vinci sketch she stole from him. When it attracts a dangerous amount of attention, Yasmeen and Archimedes journey to Horde-occupied Morocco- and straight into enemy hands.

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Meljean Brook has written another amazing steampunk romance/adventure! I absolutely love the Iron Seas series. The book starts off with correspondences between Archimedes Fox and his sister Zenobia. It was difficult to get into the story reading the letters but once the first chapter started I quickly found myself engrossed in what was going on.

The last time Yasmeen saw Archimedes was when she kicked him off her ship in dangerous zombie infested territory. Of course, Archimedes always comes out on top so it is no surprise that their paths cross again. This time Archimedes intends to fall in love with Yasmeen. They are thrown together on an adventure because of an extremely valuable da Vinci sketch that was stolen from them. This story has quite a bit of action in it with zombies, airships, and assassins. I really loved that history and even some politics helped to make up the meat of the story. It isn't just a frivolous romance although the romance aspect of the story was quite nice. Yasmeen is tough and definitely has no plans of ever falling in love so Archimedes does not have an easy time cracking that shell. I think respect has a lot to do with the progress of their relationship. I think the ending was satisfying but I hope to read more about them in the future to see how they are faring together. Obviously their lives will be full of adventure and it would be great to see what trouble they can get into (and out of).

Although Archimedes and Yasmeen are interesting, Zenobia is actually my favorite character in the series. I was glad that she was present in the start of the book, and of course mentioned throughout. She is terrifyingly intelligent and I hope to eventually read about the man that go head to head with her. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that she will be featured in the next book. Another intriguing character is the Blacksmith. He is really only mentioned in the story but it gave a glimpse at his history. Learning about his past would be fascinating.

5/5

I received this book for review. Any opinions expressed are my own.