Heart of Steel by Meljean Brook
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
I loved this book!! It was absolutely brilliant. This is a must read for anyone with a steampunk fetish. (Also check out book one of this series, The Iron Duke (Iron Seas, #1))
SPOILER ALERT
This takes two of the secondary characters from book one (The Iron Duke (Iron Seas, #1)) and gives them their own story. When we left off in book one, Captain Corsair just threw Archimedes Fox over the side of her airship into zombie infested Venice. He landed in the water.
This story starts off with Captain Corsair visiting Fox’s sister to let her know about Fox supposed death and about the da Vinci artifact. She finds the sister being held hostage, kills the hostage taker, saves the sister and then offers to sell the artifact as long as she receives 50% of the proceeds.
Then leaving the sister, she goes to find the dealer who had spilled the information to the hostage taker about the da Vinci artifact. This leads her to the information that Archimedes Fox is still alive, Corsairs airship being blown up and the duo on the fast track to finding the thief.
This is an artifact hunting story that just blooms into so much more. The adventure is fun and fantastic. The characters are well written and the dialogue lives. The settings change as the airship travels the land. The romance is entrenched in the story itself and Fox is a man searching for love. He wants to experience it in all its glory and heartache. Corsair is a woman who wants to be respected and loved.
The sex in this book takes forever to happen, but you don’t care. The pages before the actual act are full of delightful temptation and agonizing anticipation. The sensuality is almost too much, but the climax is all the better for it.
My favorite scene is where Fox and Corsair are in their small room aboard the airship and they are bathing at the washing bowl. I can’t do the scene justice by explaining it here. I am at a loss of what to say to describe the pure sensuality of the scene. Read it and see what I mean.
This is my favorite of the two books in this series so far. I can only hope that we see more books to follow. You can read my review of the first book, The Iron Duke, here.













