''The buildings grow.
And the city expands.
And the people of the land are starting to behave abnormally.
Or perhaps they’ve always behaved that way, and it’s normality that’s at fault.''
Hearts of Oak is a 2020 Speculative Fiction novel by Eddie Robson. Set in a nameless city-state constantly under construction, the Jigsaw Puzzle Plot follows Iona, the chief architect for as long as she can remember, as a series of strange events cause her to question her life. Who is the young woman asking her for private tuition, and why does the material of her hat fill Iona with melancholy? Meanwhile, the king mulls over his own problems - the recent building collapse, plans for several new buildings, and how best to improve the lives of his subjects. In all such matters, he is counseled and coached by his closest adviser, a ginger cat named Clarence.
This novel provides examples of:
- Amnesiac Resonance: Victor takes to programming the wooden citizens quite easily and guesses that his original job involved something similar.
- Balcony Speech: The king gives one of these at one point to assure his subjects that he is alive and well.
- Bigger on the Inside: the cage around the city is specifically described this way, expanding to create new space as necessary.
- Big Labyrinthine Building: Iona thinks of her own house this way - her employers insist on upgrading her home as a reward for her work, so several floors of it are more or less unlived in and still new.
- Body Surf: The Poramutantur are incorporeal beings that latch onto organic beings passing through black holes, then create strife wherever they can, taking over another body if killed or discovered.
- Cats Are Snarkers: Clarence has his moments.
- City in a Bottle: The city turns out to be within a large sphere within an alien structure.
- Divided We Fall: Discussed as being the preferred tactic of the Poramutantur, once it's in a host body.
- Doomed Moral Victor: Iona tricks the Poramutantur, trapping them both on a ship she has set to break up inside a wormhole. She takes solace in choosing her own way out and eliminating the threat the creature poses.
- The Fog of Ages: Iona and several other characters have been inside the life-preserving environment around the city for so long that their memories of life outside have faded, only stirring again consciously when Alyssa is introduced to their lives.
- Forgotten First Meeting: The human characters have all met before and were part of the same crew before the crash.
- Kindhearted Cat Lover: The king genuinely cares about doing the right thing for his citizens, even if he's not very sure how to go about it.
- Lotus-Eater Machine: The cage around the city keeps the humans alive and healthy indefinitely, eventually causing them to live so long they can only remember their lives inside it. The way they see the wooden citizens as human is also implied to be part of the effect.
- Saving the Orphanage: Iona carefully designs a new building for the forestry department so that a nearby residental building would not need to be demolished to make space; however, when it is decreed that the building needs to be bigger, the residential building is listed to be demolished anyway.
- Shaped Like What It Sells: The new forestry department Iona designs is very reminiscent of a tree or flower.
- Sheltered Aristocrat: The king seems not to leave the tower much and relies on his reports (and counsel from Clarence) to keep abreast of the happenings in the city.
- The Tower: King's Tower, home to the king.
- Trespassing Hero: Iona investigates Victor's home after learning they have not been to work for four days.
