Iron Widow is one of those 2021 debuts that possibly everyone has already heard about it and is (rightly!) excited about, so let us stoke the fires some more with our reviews of this glorious beast of a book. There’s a music mix, too!
And if you want to do yourself a big favour, go ahead & follow Xiran on twitter already!
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.
Iron Widow
Xiran Jay Zhao
Rep: Chinese-coded cast, bi mcs, polyamory
CWs: gore, murder, torture, mentions of rape, threats of rape, misogyny, femicide, suicide ideation, abuse, alcohol addiction
Release: 21st September 2021
Charlotte’s Review
I started reading Iron Widow within seconds of being able to access an ARC. I finished it barely hours later. And now, three months or more down the line, I still haven’t a clue how to review this book. I was fully consumed by this book, I loved everything about it. In fact, I loved it so much I don’t have the words for it. I think, first and foremost, I just had a whole lot of fun reading it.
You’ve probably heard by now the general plot: Handmaid’s Tale meets Pacific Rim, male-female pairs team up to pilot Chrysalises, giant transforming robots, and to fight aliens. The only problem is, whenever they do so, the girls end up giving their lives from the strain (or so everyone is told…). Zetian, looking to avenge the death of her sister, takes on the role of pilot, only to end up killing the male pilot herself, setting into motion the events of the story.
Frankly, the best part of this book was the characters. Zetian, Shimin, and Yizhi are all, for want of a better phrase, absolutely unhinged and they’re a joy to read about. They’re vengeful and imperfect and you spend the entire book rooting for them and them alone. I am completely and utterly obsessed with them. No other characters in the months since I read this book have inspired this same feeling in me. At any given time, I’m thinking about these three and their relationship. It’s just that kind of book.
But the book also combines excellent characters with an action-packed plot. There’s never a moment when it feels like the plot isn’t moving forward. It may have been, on occasion, light on the worldbuilding because of it, but the pace of it more than made up for that. From page one, I was wholly engaged with what was happening and was desperate to continue reading to find out more. And the ending? Well let me just say… you’ll only want 2022 to come all the quicker.
It’s a plot that’s also very cathartic, I think. When I said earlier that the characters are unhinged and vengeful, that vengeance is directed at those who have oppressed and marginalised them. Hence the catharsis. You want them to win, you want them to take that revenge.
On the whole, then, I think this is going to easily end up as one of my favourite reads of 2021. I’ve read several 5-star reads this year, it’s true, but none of them have quite stayed with me in the way this one has.
Anna’s Review
Irow Widow is the feminist agenda, actually.
It’s almost impossible to pinpoint one single thing that ensures Iron Widow is such a spectacular novel, and that’s because all the ingredients are equally amazing. Let us start, though, with arguably the most important part: the characters. The three of them are what carries the story, and they could not be more different from each other, while still sharing some of the same goals & values. Those goals? Vengeance. And possibly world peace, so to speak.
First of all, we have Zetian, a truly groundbreaking protagonist. The whole book only happens because Zetian wants to avenge her older sister’s (pointless and predictable) death. But the author doesn’t simply let the readers know that this is Zetian’s heart’s desire; instead they spend a lot of time explaining the circumstances, making sure that the readers realise it’s misogyny that killed that girl.
Frankly, misogyny as a concept, embodied by some of the most powerful men in Iron Widow & by the core principles on which its world is built, is the real villain of the story. Some of those misogynistic principles are boldly borrowed from actual Chinese history (like little girls getting their feet bound so they can’t walk and thus remain completely depended on their husbands; and also “beautiful” in their eyes), some are only grown on the echoes of it (like the pilots seats, inspired by the philosophy of Yin and Yang but taking it so much further, to create something ugly).
Villains can be defeated, though, and Wu Zetian takes great pleasure in cutting every impersonation of misogyny down, both in a literal, physical sense & by breaking societal norms. No spoilers, but every chance she gets, she spits in the face of power built on suffering of marginalised people. It’s no exaggeration to say she takes everything the society has taught her about how women should behave, she takes her own disfigured body & she molds it into a great weapon to fight injustice with, to avenge her sister and countless other girls.
But Wu Zetian is only one part of the trio that every reader will surely become obsessed with. There are also two boys, absolutely nothing alike. A scholar and a pilot; a civilised man on whom people place hopes & dreams and a brute warrior who shouldn’t be thought about too long. But of course, like with almost everything in Iron Widow, those are just the appearances.
In reality, just like Wu Zetian, both Li Shimin and Gao Yizhi will fight to the death for what they believe in. It’s no wonder then that all of them fall in love with each other. And it’s not simply a case where we get a polyamorous relationship at the very end, just to avoid a love triangle. Instead, it all happens naturally. Each of the characters falls for the other two at their own pace, and even more importantly: they talk about the implications of loving more than one person. There is no jealousy, but instead one boy gently explaining how Wu Zetian loving someone else as well, doesn’t mean she loves him any less.
Their love isn’t a separate entity, running alongside the main plot. On the contrary, their love makes them stronger, in a very literal sense. Their love allows some of the main events in the book to unfold. Their love is the center of the story, in some ways.
There’s also something to be said about the very evident gentleness of Gao Yizhi who still, when the time calls to defend/avenge Wu Zetian, can be absolutely ruthless, even to his own blood, compared with Li Shimin being perceived by everyone as a feral dog while actually being the living incarnation of that one Richard Siken line (“We have not touched the stars, \ nor are we forgiven, which brings us back \ to the hero’s shoulders and the gentleness that comes, \ not from the absence of violence, but despite \ the abundance of it”).
And, of course, no review of Iron Widow is finished before mentioning the ending. The story does a complete 180 spin in the most exciting and satisfying of ways, and creates the setup for a sequel of monumental proportions. If you have ever read Ender’s Game, then you might have some idea of what kind of a mind-fuck we’re talking about here. (Not that I’m recommending Ender’s Game.)
Iron Widow is, to quote the classics, absolutely unhinged. Which is to say it’s one of the very few novels out there that allow their female (nonbinary?) protagonist to gain full ownership not only of her body, but of her destiny; to be merciless and vengeful, and cold-blooded; to kill people in order to achieve her goals. All that ensures that reading Iron Widow is an experience unlike any other, and even months later you will still want to scream about it at the top of your lungs.
So, have we convinced you that you want to read this book?
