From the minds of debut writer Joni Hägg and superstar artist Stipan Morian (20th Century Men), with colorist Ropemann and Eisner-winning letterer Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou, comes the most thrilling steampunk adventure of the winter.

A steampunk Santa tale reimagined through frostpunk grit and revolutionary fire, blending Finnish and Balkan mythos into one unforgettable story!

The Coalition is a city of wonder in the deep north, but it is ruled by the cruel Governor Glass and his factory lords. Coal is the lifeline of the city, and for honest workers like young Peggy Stones, life can be hard because of the nefarious quota. To get extra coal at the end of the year, you must be bad, every day! Peggy’s life is thrown into chaos when she is imprisoned and sent into exile, which begins a harrowing journey to the ends of the world to find answers that could change the world!

This comic is a little hard for me to rate, because at times I enjoyed myself while I read it, and sometimes I had a hard time understanding what was going on, so I ended up skimming instead of reading Our Soot Stained Heart closely, which I feel bad about. (Be forewarned, because I skimmed, I might’ve gotten the plot wrong in this review.)

I really like some of the concepts in the comic: the city of Coalition being a coal-dominated city where every able worker is pretty much forced to dig for coal to meet a quota that nobody actually seems capable of meeting.

Governor Glass seems like an evil Jack Frost character even though he doesn’t go around making snow and ice–ice has actually consumed his body and he looks really freaky. Then you have a steampunk Santa, aka Nicholas, known as the Baron, who has made his home in Felltown with a woman and a bunch of elves.

Peggy (who is sometimes referred to as Margaret, I think, but am not sure) is a coal worker who has been a “good girl” in a city where if you behave badly, your behavior is awarded with more coal.

She participates in a revolution of sorts and journeys further north where she encounters Nicholas at Felltown, and we learn of a weird backstory where Nicholas and the former Governor Glass were excavating a mysterious crown in the icy, mountainous depths. I don’t understand the significance of the story other than to say the crown corrupted Glass and turned him into the weird iceman obsessed with coal in the Coalition.

I don’t know much of what else to say about this. The artwork and coloring is wonderful and well-suited for the setting, and I like the character designs. There are some cool ideas with the revisioning of Santa Claus, but there’s not enough backstory for me to understand everything. I don’t have much of a sense of Peggy, and if the comic explained who Marie was, I overlooked it because I skimmed.

I think I’m going to settle on three stars for this one. It had enjoyable moments, but overall I was left feeling a little confused. I hope other readers will find something wonderful about this comic.