Iron Widow Review

Tws: a lot. A lot, a lot.

The boys of Huaxia dream of pairing up with girls to pilot Chrysalises, giant transforming robots that can battle the mecha aliens that lurk beyond the Great Wall. It doesn't matter that the girls often die from the mental strain.

When 18-year-old Zetian offers herself up as a concubine-pilot, it's to assassinate the ace male pilot responsible for her sister's death. But she gets her vengeance in a way nobody expected—she kills him through the psychic link between pilots and emerges from the cockpit unscathed. She is labeled an Iron Widow, a much-feared and much-silenced kind of female pilot who can sacrifice boys to power up Chrysalises instead.​

To tame her unnerving yet invaluable mental strength, she is paired up with Li Shimin, the strongest and most controversial male pilot in Huaxia​. But now that Zetian has had a taste of power, she will not cower so easily. She will miss no opportunity to leverage their combined might and infamy to survive attempt after attempt on her life, until she can figure out exactly why the pilot system works in its misogynist way—and stop more girls from being sacrificed.

General Impressions

I. Am. IN. AWE.ofthisbook!!!

Honestly, if you are a lover of fantasy, in the middle of a reading slump, need more queer reads, Ao3 level romance, stories written and led by Asian women or just need something that is pure escapism and loveliness with great world-building and characters that will make you FEEL...pick.this.up.

I won't go too much into the plot even though I thought it was great or the writing which I liked a lot. What made "Iron Widow" so special for me was that this was a book filled with all our favourite romantic and fantasy tropes but none of the cliches. In fact, it felt as if the author themselves was aware of what readers were used to and tired of seeing so they artfully deconstructed every overused character arc, giving us instead some of the most satisfying scenes I read all year.

After years of reading and, let's be honest, loving characters, particularly heroines that are caring and loving and able to be violent to protect others, Wu Zetian is an incredible breath of fresh air for being able to be those things but never choosing others at her own expense, a fate that a lot of great female characters are still having forced upon them again and again. Thank you Xiran Jay Zhao for giving us a woman that cared about her own damn life and not making her a psychopath or a villain and at the same time not making her a self-sacrificing fool with a sense of loyalty or love to her abusers.

Zetian's anger, drive, belief in herself and ease at removing obstacles from her way are groundbreaking not because other authors before them hadn't written women with those qualities, but because Zetian employed them for HER own good, not her family, people, friends or love interest. She refused to mother the people around her or sacrifice herself, most of all and I loved that, not because there is something wrong with self-sacrifice but because it is groundbreaking to see a character that has been told all her life, all she is is something to be used by others, to believe to her core that she has value for herself and she can and will beat everyone around her, in the pursuit of her happiness.

Zetian IS the GOAT and she spends most of this book in a wheelchair. In fact, physical disability features heavily across the book and in multiple characters, particularly women and a lot of the male characters also struggle with traumas of their own. That was particularly obvious when it came to the Iron Triad and how none of them was clean sexualized sheets, but people who had lived complicated lives and had talents and hurts of their own, which their partners nurtured and were nurtured by in return. In the middle of so much action and change, the different romantic couples and then the triad were able to persevere and find their way to each other because they communicated and that was such a healthy and lovely thing to see in a fictional setting instead of a lot of unnecessary angst followed by a kiss that erased all problems.

"Iron Widow" also features a lot of heavy themes with various degrees of importance to the plot but it is able to hit the mark with each one from domestic violence, marital violence, misogyny, racism, discrimination, body image, how we are specialized into hate, media manipulation, corrupt politics, reproductive rights and so many more feature across this book in a wonderful show of world and character building.

The only thing to notice in this book is how it is obvious at times that this is a debut work and Zetian's humble upbringing clashed in how she often simply knew how to do things and was never shown researching anything on the page but those are details in the face of everything else. I can't even imagine the powerhouse this author will become in the next few years but I'm sure I'll be glued to every page the moment each one of their books comes out.

Conclusions

Read this. It's awesome. I can barely wait for the sequel because that ending sure did leave Zetian pissed and that girl's rage is legendary. Her enemies shouldn't have gone there...but I'm so glad they did.

Rating: 4.5/5