Review: The Iron Duke
- 1 hour ago
- 4 min read
By Gary Oswald.
Meljean Brooks’ The Iron Duke, the first book in the popular Iron Seas series, follows Detective Inspector Mina Wentworth as she investigates a dead body found in the Isle of Dogs, on the property of the Duke of Anglesey, the titular Iron Duke.
This is not however, the book you might think it is from that description. This is not a detective novel or a crime novel. Who killed the dead man (who turns out to be one of the Duke’s friends) is a plot hook, not a whodunnit. Mina doesn’t really do any detecting, she just gets involved in the Iron Duke’s feuds and follows him into battle to try and arrest his enemies. The genres which this book actually borrows from is partly romance, as Mina finds herself slowly more attracted to the brooding but secretly noble Duke, and partly action books as Mina and the Duke fight various enemies to find Mina’s missing brother and avenge the Duke’s friend.
I’d say this is begins as more of a buddy cop action movie but ends a romance. The last half of the book is full of are sex scenes, a plot about growing feelings being denied, and a climax where those feelings are accepted. But there are beats in the first half that don’t feel usual for a romance book. The first sex scene is one of dubious consent with both of them drunk and it ends only after he realises slightly too late that she isn’t actually into it. That is not the sort of thing mainstream romance often does; bodice rippers, in which the male lead rapes the female lead, have existed since 1972 but have always been a tiny, and controversial, part of the genre. Again, it is explicitly a misunderstanding and he does eventually back off, but it is still an unusual note for the genre.
And it also doesn't feel entirely like a romance or an action book because both the external threat & the external battles and the internal struggles & relations between the lead get their fair share of page time. Each genre normally tends to prioritise one or the other, but this feels like they have equal importance. And both worked for me, I found the romance more touching that I expected and the action scenes nicely escalated in scale throughout the book.
But what it does best is neither of those things. Because the setting of the story is of an England that has recently been freed from the control of the Mongolian Horde and is now facing the return of exiles from the New World.
There is a lot in the book about the conflict between those who suffered through the occupation and those who didn’t and the legacy of the violent acts committed during both the occupation and the revolution. Mina is a child of rape and as a result she is discriminated against because of her mixed-race heritage. And this book does incredibly well at making all of that conflict and culture clash and shame feel real and complicated (apart from the final villain who is unfortunately a paper-thin genocidal bigot with no complexity). This does a good job of feeling like a post-colonial society with all that implies.
Now the AH worldbuilding is, I would say, on the more fantastical side. The Mongolian Empire has conquered most of the world and has somehow mastered incredibly advanced mind control nanotechnology. Despite this, they have been unable to build boats or balloons, meaning islands and airships and the New World remain entirely free, which sure. England, we are told, was conquered when the Mongols sold them sugar which contained mind control nanoparticles inside, which again feels harder to do then simply building ships.
A certain amount of suspension of belief is perhaps required. But it is an original and interesting way of getting your steampunk dystopic post-colonial society in the UK, I suppose, and I genuinely enjoyed the book.
I also think it’s an important book to talk about on this blog. And that is because this sort of book, written by women for women and focused on two main characters and their interpersonal drama, and their numerous explicit sex scenes, with the supporting cast designed only to reflect that and the AH world building as a background setting to that main relationship, is the sort of book that I think most published AH released now is. It is certainly the dominant type of book in the steampunk genre.
And the reason for that, is that sort of book, is what Sarah J. Maas bought to high fantasy with A Court of Thorns and Roses and Anne Rice and Stephenie Meyer bought to paranormal fiction. Using romance tropes, the most popular book genre, within them and therefore bringing in the largest reading audience, is traditionally how smaller genres become bigger.
If the genre has a future big hit in it, this is the sort of the book that I suspect that hit will be.
Gary Oswald is the editor of the Grapeshot and Guillotines, Emerald Isles, and If We'd Just Got That Penalty anthologies.