Heart Of Dust

Rating: 4.5 stars

Doran O’Seanain lives amongst the soot and choking foulness of the Iole City coal mines and he’s losing the battle against the push for a better life. As Foreman, he’s led a two-year strike against the city’s oppressive and violent leader, Archon Bryson, and to some extent the strike has been successful. But Doran’s people, the coal miners and their families, are struggling and he isn’t sure how much more any of them can endure. The mines have taken everything from Doran and the only thing he has left is the desperate hope he might be able to make things better for others.

After an attempted rebellion goes wrong, Doran finds himself wounded and on the doorstep of Nathaniel Morgenstern’s apothecary. Nathaniel is kind and offers a level of peace that Doran has not known since his wife’s murder. But the man has secrets and in Doran’s life, secrets can get you killed. In the end, there may be a truth between them that is too terrible to endure. And with the Archon closing on in Doran and his people from all sides, death may come more swiftly than anyone expects.

So I discovered Heart of Dust while looking for books to fit our Self-Published Book Week here at Joyfully Jay. The plot sounded more than intriguing and I decided to try it and I’m glad I did. Heart of Dust is well written and hooked me from the first page. The author has done an excellent job of conveying the poverty and danger in which the coal mining families of Iole City are forced to live. Death is constant and suffering a way of life. But it’s the only job for the poor and the conditions are beyond horrific. Doran’s strike is well intended, but since the murder of his wife, Doran has struggled to be the leader his people need. His desperation and despondency are palpable and I found it impossible not to feel for him. Nathaniel is more mysterious and we know his secrets can’t be good ones. But when he and Doran are together, they have a natural chemistry that is both sweet and engaging. This romance is a slow burn to be sure, but if feels more realistic because of that.

The end of Heart of Dust feels a bit predictable and there are somewhat obvious reveals that lack the finesse of the first three-quarters of the book. Still, these climatic moments are written with a taunt edginess that gave them some depth. The secret between Nathaniel and Doran is a bit far-fetched and I feel as though given the nature of it, it would be impossible for these characters to move forward as a couple. But the author does a decent job of leaving things unsettled between them. There’s no automatic resolution and I’ll be interested in seeing how things evolve in the sequel, which is due out in 2019.

On the whole, Heart of Dust was an excellent read. There’s a palpable sense of time and place and the world building is strong without becoming excessive. Nathaniel and Doran are a complicated couple and their connection is built upon an unstable foundation indeed and I got the impression romance will be a hard fought battle for them despite their chemistry. I’m very much looking forward to the sequel to this book and I think anyone who likes their romances a bit more complex will enjoy Heart of Dust.

Moore’s entertaining futuristic romance tackles messy family dynamics and civil disobedience in a dystopian, semi-subterranean world. Bryson, the tyrannical archon, ignores concerns about the country’s highly lucrative but brutally unsafe coal mines and the miners’ extreme privation, so hotheaded and charismatic former foreman Doran Ó Seanáin and his Black Lung Gang orchestrate a massive strike. After an attempt to incite rebellion, a wounded Doran stumbles into the apothecary of taciturn but generous Nathaniel Morgenstern. Doran ducks the huge bounty on his head to visit his estranged adult daughter Grace, who’s living with the wealthy family her mother abandoned to marry Doran. He discovers she is engaged to the archon, a personal affront to Doran, who crafts a risky ultimatum for miners’ rights. Tensions among the gang leadership mount, and Doran’s increasing feelings for Nathaniel and frustrations with Grace cloud his judgments until the explosive conclusion. Moore’s worldbuilding could be slightly more fluid as she packs in Celtic mythology, a crypto-Jewish minority (to which Nathaniel belongs), and a complicated political situation, but her characters’ entangled relationships and Doran’s angst-free bisexuality keep everything feeling fresh. Shocking revelations and unfinished reforms pave the way for future books in this series that should appeal to fans of slow-burning desire and fights against oppression. (BookLife)

In the bustling city of Iole, built within a vast cave, the rich enjoy the rainbow colors of the sun’s light filtered through the prism of a great sacred waterfall; while the poor—who toil in the coal mines deep below the cavern’s floor—know only shadow and soot. Doran, leader of the Black Lung Gang, fights for the rights of his community against the arrogant greed of the city’s hereditary ruler, the Archon Bryson.

The mines have taken everything from Doran, and when his struggle against the Archon’s tyranny stumbles, he discovers an out-of-the-way apothecary’s shop, whose mysterious proprietor Nathaniel seems to offer him comfort he hasn’t known since his wife’s death.

This was good enough that, when I saw at the end there was a sequel, I bought it right away. H.L. Moore has created a dark, claustrophobic world that is both fantastical and oddly familiar in its Dickensian dystopia. Aside from calling to mind Dickens’s descriptions of the hellish landscape of England’s coal districts, I kept thinking about Terry Pratchett’s Discworld, with its crazy geography and references to a more familiar world. However, this story is darker and without any sense of satire.

I was also 2o percent into this book when I started to say to myself, “uh oh, where’s the gay character?” You see, that’s my raison d’être here, I review m/m, gay romance, gay mystery, etc. My alarm abated somewhat when Doran meets Nathaniel and we are told how drawn the widower is to the apothecary. However, that’s it. There is no introspection, no surprise: only lots of remembered grief over the death of Rhian and its destructive effect on Doran’s life. This is the stingiest “romance” I have ever encountered in all my years of reading m/m fiction. It is the merest scrap of promised something, hidden from everyone’s eyes but Doran’s (and the reader’s). Ugh. This is not what GBT men are looking for in a romance aimed at them.

What kept me reading was the quality of the writing and the compelling pace and detail of the narrative. Not quite Steampunk and not historical, Moore’s plot and characters seem out of time and place, yet vivid and intense. The author sets the stage extremely well, creating a cinematic sense of what Iole looks like and what it’s like to live there. Her characters—not just Doran, but the entire ensemble—pop off the page and suck the reader into the atmosphere of the place, from the smog-shrouded slums known ironically as the Diamond District, to the lavish mansions of the Bronze District. Light and dark form an ever-present contrast in Iole, and also serve as a metaphor for the contrast between the lives of the rich and poor.

Interestingly, Moore makes a point of noting that the aristocracy of Iole are all dark-skinned, while the slum dwellers of the mines are light-skinned, their pallor always marked with soot and coal dust. The poor all have Celtic sounding names, a clear reference to the Irish and Welsh coal miners of Great Britain’s industrial age, while other characters speak to an Asian-like empire called Xiang, a Teutonic country known as the Helvetic Republic, and a persecuted minority readily recognizable as akin to our world’s Jews.

This is a book rocked with moral greyness, right up to the shocking twist that tilts the story on its head. The story’s denouement is well-constructed and satisfying, but not entirely so. The supposed romance promised in the author’s presentation of the publication was not delivered, so the possibility of such a romance forced me to buy the second book. We’ll see if I’m disappointed again.