In a city built on steam and silence, one broken invention could ignite a revolution.
Eastland is a monument to control — a soot-choked metropolis ruled by the Guild and their brutal automata legions. Beneath its gears and gold, the resistance rises: welders, scavengers, and outcasts forging defiance from scrap.
At the center is Link — a quiet mechanic with a dangerous creation: the Heartcoil. Power flows through its core, unpredictable and untested. The Guild wants it silenced. The city might not survive it.
As ash rains and factions fracture, Link must choose whether to remain a builder in hiding… or become the symbol of everything the Guild was built to crush.
For fans of Gundam, Iron Widow, and Mistborn, Heartcoil is a firelit tale of rebellion, sacrifice, and the cost of forging your own future.
In a city built on steam and silence, one broken invention could ignite a revolution.
Eastland is a monument to control — a soot-choked metropolis ruled by the Guild and their brutal automata legions. Beneath its gears and gold, the resistance rises: welders, scavengers, and outcasts forging defiance from scrap.
At the center is Link — a quiet mechanic with a dangerous creation: the Heartcoil. Power flows through its core, unpredictable and untested. The Guild wants it silenced. The city might not survive it.
As ash rains and factions fracture, Link must choose whether to remain a builder in hiding… or become the symbol of everything the Guild was built to crush.
For fans of Gundam, Iron Widow, and Mistborn, Heartcoil is a firelit tale of rebellion, sacrifice, and the cost of forging your own future.
The mist in Eastland didn’t lift. Not even when dawn cracked the soot-laden sky and splashed weak light against rust-choked towers. It clung to every broken gutter and iron girder, thick as breath from a dying lung.
Link adjusted the scarf across his face. The cloth rasped rough against days-old stubble and the healed-over split on his lower lip. Every breath tasted like old ash and frozen iron. He drew it higher, instinct more than habit—protection not just against the cold, but against being seen. Scars patterned his jawline, pale against wind-bitten skin. Marks of old burns and broken days. Eyes sharp, gray-blue and narrow, flicked between alley corners.
His fingers flexed unconsciously around the leather grip of his belt knife. Not out of need, but habit. Out here, instincts whispered louder than reason. Especially in the quiet hours, when the city almost pretended to sleep.
They had come far already that morning. The back alleys behind them stretched in choking silence, littered with broken crates and the skeletal remains of forgotten market stalls. Iron grates hung loose like broken teeth. Each step toward Ironvale's edge had brought fresh dangers. Twice, they’d ducked between shattered walls to avoid the soft clatter of automata passing overhead. Once, they had passed a mural so old the colors bled into soot — a child's drawing, faded to near-invisibility. Link had paused then, hand brushing the brick, before pulling Eve forward. Sentiment was death out here. They had learned that too many times.
Even silence had weight. A weight that pressed heavier every year.
He knelt now behind a leaning water cistern, its riveted seams hissing faintly from residual heat. The metal surface radiated just enough warmth to sting his gloved fingers as he steadied himself. Beside him, Eve checked her pistol with cold efficiency. Fingers, slim and oil-streaked, clicked through the motions without wasted movement. Her eyes, sharp and pale green beneath a tangle of cropped blonde hair, flicked up toward the skyline.
She wore layers pieced together from salvage: a patched canvas jacket cinched tight, frayed scarf wound twice about her throat, and rusted boilerplate tied loosely around one forearm like makeshift armor. Despite the grime, she carried herself with taut readiness. A faint scar curved along her jawline, visible when she tightened her lips. Link knew every scar she carried. They both wore Eastland’s teeth marks.
“You see it yet?” she asked, voice low, tight, and hushed.
Link shook his head. He could barely make out the silhouette of the Ironvale tram line through the haze, much less the automata patrol they were supposed to tail. Still, the Guild’s metal hounds would come. They always did.
He pressed his palm against the cistern's side again. Heat seeped through thin leather gloves. It was faint, but undeniable — the city still breathed. Not strong, not clean. But alive in the way embers refused to die. Around them, steam hissed faintly from cracked valves overhead. Distantly, somewhere deep in the city’s bones, gears churned in steady rhythm. That sound haunted him at night. The city's steady, uncaring heartbeat.
Eve exhaled slowly, watching the mist coil from her lips. "It’s never quiet without reason."
"Movement. Upper rail." She nudged him with a gloved elbow.
Link followed her gesture. A faint metallic clatter whispered from above. Shapes emerged—three automata in patrol formation. Standard Light Infantry units. Humanoid frames, brass-bodied and jointed like crude marionettes, hissed softly with each step. Steam vented from their backs, rising in curling tendrils that merged with the ever-present mist.
He watched them carefully. Their heads turned in precise, mechanical arcs. Single-lens eyes glowed faintly, scanning alleys and doorways without pause. Crude as they were, they were relentless. They walked with a weightless smoothness, balanced as though every movement had been calculated to waste no effort.
"Standard cycle," Eve murmured. "We can slip behind them."
Link nodded but hesitated. Something about the patrol’s cadence felt... off. Too precise. Too rehearsed. Years of watching, of running, made him trust instincts over logic. Still, they couldn’t wait. Free Steam didn’t have the luxury of patience when rations and shelter ran thin.
He gestured forward, low and deliberate.
They moved. Quiet, efficient. Link's boots crunched softly over frost-laced rubble, every step calculated. Eve ghosted beside him, her patched jacket rustling quietly. Up close, he caught faint details—a faded badge stitched onto her collar, the initials of some forgotten brigade. Her scarf was frayed, but she wore it like armor, wound tight and stiff with soot. She moved with a slight limp — a souvenir from an older raid, never properly healed.
Eve broke the silence briefly as they edged along the wall. "Looks like Markov's batch. Slow, stiff. Still dangerous."
Link grunted softly. "They’re Guild stock. Dangerous enough."
Their words died as they reached the service tunnel beneath the rails. Link paused. He listened—not just with his ears, but with his gut. The city spoke in sighs and groans. Automata hissed. Pipes clanked and strained overhead. Somewhere distant, a child cried out, only to be swallowed quickly by the void.
No alarms. No fast-approaching footfalls. Yet unease crawled beneath his skin like burrowed frost.
“Cut through here,” Eve whispered, tapping the tunnel entrance.
They slipped inside. The darkness pressed in immediately, wrapping them tight in greasy cold. Link’s hand found the wall, steadying himself against corroded iron. Water dripped steadily from cracked rivets above, staining his sleeve. They pressed forward in near-silence, broken only by the dull hum of steam lines vibrating through the walls.
“Feels wrong,” Link muttered quietly.
Eve glanced back. "Everything does lately. Guild's changing tactics."
Before he could answer, a sound—a harsh, staccato hiss—cut through the stillness. Eve froze mid-step, pistol halfway raised. Link didn’t ask. He knew.
A Hunter Class automaton clambered down the far wall. Multi-limbed, insectile, and twice the height of a man, it moved with predatory grace. Its sensor array pulsed faintly, scanning in rapid arcs. Unlike patrol models, Hunters didn’t broadcast their presence. They hunted. Silently.
The Hunter's body gleamed faintly in the dark. Its limbs were long and jointed like skeletal arms, ending in wicked claws designed for speed and grip. Brass plating had been worn down to dark gunmetal in places, giving it the look of a thing accustomed to pursuit. Every movement it made stirred up flecks of dust and rust from the tunnel walls, like a shadow bleeding into the stone.
Eve tensed. Link reached to his belt, fingers curling around the smooth casing of a disruption mine.
Too late. The Hunter’s array snapped toward them. A shriek like tearing steel split the tunnel as it surged forward.
“Run,” Link hissed.
Eve fired—steam-spitting slugs peppering the machine’s front—but the rounds glanced off reinforced brass plates. Link flung the mine. It clanged once, magnetized, then detonated in a plume of superheated steam. The Hunter staggered, hissing violently, but didn’t fall.
They sprinted. Link’s muscles burned as he vaulted broken pipes, heart hammering against his ribs. Eve followed, limping heavily—her teeth clenched tight against a hiss of pain. Her face was pale, strain etched deep across her brow, but she forced her legs to move. There was no other choice.
Ahead, moonlight spilled from a grating. Link lunged up first, grabbing Eve’s arm and hauling her through just as the Hunter slammed into the wall behind them, its clawed limbs rending steel and showering sparks.
They collapsed onto frost-slick cobblestones. Eve coughed harshly, wiping grime and soot from her cheek with shaking fingers. Link’s hands trembled—not from cold, but from the closeness of death. He could still hear the Hunter's screech echoing faintly through the tunnels.
“That’s new,” Eve panted, pushing matted hair from her eyes.
“Yeah.” Link’s gaze stayed fixed on the grating. The Hunter didn’t pursue. Orders, maybe. Or territory limits. Either way, they were still alive.
For now.
Eve leaned back against the wall, her breath clouding in the freezing air. Her eyes—reflective, pained—searched the mist-choked sky above. "Next time, we need better routes."
Link’s jaw tightened. He knew what she meant. The Guild adapted faster now. Every night, Eastland grew tighter around their throats. No alley felt safe. No route felt unwatched.
He wiped sweat and soot from his brow, sitting for a beat longer. His breathing slowed, but every muscle still thrummed with residual tension. From his belt, he unhooked the empty mine casing and inspected it silently.
"That was the last one," he muttered quietly.
Eve nodded grimly, flexing her sore leg. "No more mistakes then. Next time it corners us, it finishes us."
For a moment, neither spoke. Only the sounds of Eastland filled the silence—distant shrieks of steam, faint groans of shifting metal, and the heartbeat of the city pushing on. Somewhere nearby, dogs howled in chorus. Not friendly dogs. Not safe dogs. Even they knew something had changed tonight.
Link finally stood. “Come on. Let’s get back to the lines before the patrols loop.”
Eve hesitated briefly, then pushed herself upright with a faint grimace. Together, without another word, they slipped into the mist. Their figures dissolved like echoes swallowed by the hollow city.
The mist pressed down again, heavy and smothering. It swallowed their words, their shapes, their defiance.
Without another word, they vanished into it. Like ghosts that refused to die.
This book is a challenge to review. It is not for everyone. It shouldn’t even appeal to me, but I loved it, and I am in awe of the writing style.
This is essentially an epic prose poem in a personified Steampunk setting, the ultimate “man versus environment” conflict, because the city itself is a major character.
And, since usually excess description gets in the way of the story, how could I enjoy a novel that was mostly description? But this book is filled with the poetry of decay. It is imbued with the myriad smells and sounds of rot and rancid oil, falling buildings, leaking steam pipes and shorted electrics, sweat and human fear.
This writer handles the English language better than most of the poets who present their volumes for review, showing the superior power of poetry to evoke emotion. One can picture it as a black-and-white surrealistic film from 1920.
The tale is steeped in metaphor at many levels. The biggest comparison is that of human spirit to mechanical strength, and the concern that each will fail under stress. The difference is that humans can respond by becoming stronger.
Meanwhile, technical jargon flows like spilt oil, but always within the scope of our ability to understand the action.
We also get brief glimpses of the point of view of the other side in the battle: not sympathetic, but at least understanding. This should lessen the suspense, but the way this author presents the characters, our split viewpoint merely confirms the idea of a never-ending conflict in the human psyche: freedom versus control, and the danger of becoming the authority we struggled against.
Unfortunately, the brevity of the terse action information sometimes leaves us uncertain about what is happening. There are gaps in the plotline and many unexplained events. For example, the Heartcoil appears out of nowhere on page 66, already in play, and we don’t even know what it is. Likewise the Ghostframe.
There are also a couple of strange, repeated sections, and given the experimental nature of the writing, I can’t tell if they are purposeful or in error.
The only structural complaint I have is the sameness of tone. This is a dreary, destructive universe, and we could use a few more of the relaxed, human-to-human moments that flash between the two main characters.
Highly recommended for fans of emotional and poetic writing.