hardcover, 384 pages
English language
Published Sept. 20, 2021 by Penguin Teen.
Science fiction and East Asian myth combine in this dazzling retelling of the rise of Wu Zetian, the only female emperor in Chinese history
The boys of Huaxia dream of the celebrity status that comes with piloting Chrysalises - giant transforming robots that battle the aliens beyond the Great Wall. Their female co-pilots are expected to serve as concubines and sacrifice their lives.
When 18-year-old Zetian offers herself up as a concubine-pilot, her plan is to assassinate the ace male pilot responsible for her sister's death. But on miraculously emerging from the cockpit unscathed after her first battle, the Iron Widow sets her sights on bigger things. The time has come to take on the entire patriarchal military system.
Interesting subversion of certain tropes and well crafted telegraphing. It didn't hit quite right for me, probably because I'm currently in an argument with the "special boy/girl" model of fantasy.
Iron Widow is a sci-fantasy story that incorporates various genre tropes, but they are covered in a fresh and interesting skin. I appreciated that certain recognizable beats were, at least so far in the story, subverted or not followed through. Despite that, and probably for personal reasons rather that book-related ones, I was not invested and didn't have that anxiety and delight that I feel with the best stories.
„Iron Widow“ ist ein lauter, wütender Aufschrei gegen Unterdrückung und missbräuchliche Systeme, die Teile der Bevölkerung als bequeme Ressource verheizen, ohne sie als Menschen zu sehen. Gewürzt wird das ganze mit queeren Charakteren und bombastischen Kämpfen zwischen Mechas und Aliens in einer kreativen Reimagination Chinas.
Content warning Spoilers beneath a break at the bottom!
It’s fine! Nice light bombastically melodramatic reading, though with a lot of content warnings (I do like that they’re at the front of the book). I’m a sucker for mecha, especially weird, slightly more organic mecha, and this generally scratched that itch. The prose style doesn’t quite work for me and I don’t… think that it’s especially well written? But I’m giving it 3 cos I did enjoy it and was happy to suspend judgement of quality in order to have a nice time. The main character manages imo to be a Tough Female Character Who Hates Emotion and also very easy to root for, and it has some nice juicy twists of the sort that are fun to encounter in a YA novel.
Spoilers now:
There seemed to be a lot of potential for a genuinely complicated and difficult political situation, where the main character wrangled with complicity and compromise a little more, without a big heroic/villainous moment at the end where she gets to keep all of her power through essentially the ‘I am the House’ ending option in Fallout New Vegas. It was a fun power fantasy ending, but it felt like a way to avoid wrangling with more complex politics. But themes of complicity are not neglected, it seems to be deliberately focusing more on personal relationships and identity, and after all this kind of thing might come in more in the sequel that the book is very much aiming toward. Also all else unchanged it would have been a fairly miserable book without a moment where the beaten-down protag finds a way to somehow break out of the system she hates.
Additionally it must be said that the scenes of intimacy before they fade to black are just not great. There’s no real awful bits but, at least for me (which is a big disclaimer), I wasn’t even entirely sure what they were trying to tap into with the sensory description.
I would also have liked to see a little more of the time between Zetian meeting Shimin and hating him, and her being angry at him in a I’m-mad-I-have-feelings-for-you way. We get snippets of how his violence reminds her of her father and grandfather and makes her want to flinch and make herself small, and she confronts him about the deaths of women that he’s complicit in, but when she gets closer to him it didn’t come off to me as a serious and dramatic change in opinion, only as her feeling the same attraction and empathy for him since almost their first meeting. Which is allowed! It just feels like it dilutes the initial situation of, from her perspective, very justified fear and anger. I would have liked to see them trust each other less quickly and their relationship as something they each had to put more emotional work into. But, yknow, I kind of don’t want more time spent on the love triangle, so this works.
A nice way to spend a few tired hours :)
I found my self making time to listen to this audiobook by doing things like taking the dog for extra walks. So that in itself is a pretty good review.
The protagonist is an interesting character, who is quite relatable. I'm not sure I would make some of the choices she does, but I haven't lived her life either.
From a genre point of view, it was (for me) closer to fantasy than "hard" science fiction. That might depend on how familar one was with traditional Chinese Chi theory. I'm not even familiar enough to say how close the book is to tradition.
Some of the twists are not quite as surprising as the author might have intended. It is very much set up for a sequel, which I understand the author needs to make some more money to write. So I hope my USD13 helps (or whatever small share …
I found my self making time to listen to this audiobook by doing things like taking the dog for extra walks. So that in itself is a pretty good review.
The protagonist is an interesting character, who is quite relatable. I'm not sure I would make some of the choices she does, but I haven't lived her life either.
From a genre point of view, it was (for me) closer to fantasy than "hard" science fiction. That might depend on how familar one was with traditional Chinese Chi theory. I'm not even familiar enough to say how close the book is to tradition.
Some of the twists are not quite as surprising as the author might have intended. It is very much set up for a sequel, which I understand the author needs to make some more money to write. So I hope my USD13 helps (or whatever small share the author actually gets).
Content warning CW: Abuse of all kinds, death, misogyny, footbinding
Comp Titles, if you don't know, are where you get that "X meets Y" and if you are like me, get you mad when you read a book because it was nothing like what you imagined when you smooshed those things together.
Comp titles are basically required to sell books. There's a lot of detail I could go into here, but it's better to think of them as "has elements of X" and "Has elements of Y".
This, if you may not know, was at least pitched to ME as "Pacific Rim meets the Handmaid's Tale" I am sorry to say I have not seen Pacific Rim, but I know it's a mecha movie with kaiju and people liked it.
Okay. The problem is, if you're like me, you're a little Tired of the Handmaid's Tale. Do not imagine the Handmaid's Tale. This is a futuristic fiction (once again they have mechs) and is very clearly, NOT an analogue of the US.
Basically our Protagonist Wu Zetian, (yes named for that historical empress) has a problem for YA fiction. She's very "unlikeable". Not to say I DIDN'T LIKE HER. On the contrary, I LOVED her. But basically in YA fiction (and I think elsewhere too, but this is the closest thing I have to expertise) you'll see in reviews "ugh this Bitch was so unlikeable because she did a bad thing that a male protagonist would have been allowed to do".
Let me be clear: Zetian does a LOT of fucked up shit in this book. That's partially the point, this is a fucked up system. It basically requires a fucked-up response (at least in this book). But I personally quite liked Zetian once I understood her.
And let's talk for a moment. There is "technically" a love triangle, but as many of you probably know, this goes into poly territory. And while I at least don't Think I'm poly, I thought it was handled well, but ask someone with experience in those relationships.
Anyway if you need a con about this book, I can give you one (that is not the book's fault)
The sequel is not out until 2023, and yes Xiran Jay Zhao is writing something else right now, entirely because they understandably want to be paid for their writing so they can, you know, eat: ( nitter.net/XiranJayZhao/status/1511894731764109316#m )
I do encourage you to read it now anyway, because while it does end with a sequel in mind, it's a good ride, and I've honestly seen more pressing of cliff-hangers.
