Book Review: Iron Widow [no spoilers]

Iron Widow
Xiran Jay Zhao

To say that I was hyped about this book is an understatement. I have been lowkey screaming about this book to anyone who will listen in the months leading up to its publication. I even make a TikTok about when my copy came in on hold at my library. A killer beginning, but a lackluster predictable finish brings this book from a promising 5 stars down to 4.25 for me.

It isn’t very often that a book byline on the front cover accurately reflects the content within, but E.K. Johnston’s “A primal scream of a book” is an accurate blurb. If you’ve been feeling the embers of your feminist rage die down lately, this book will stoke them and then add some accelerant within the first 8 chapters alone.

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.

Goodreads blurb

Zhao does an incredible job building Zetian as a stark anti-hero, filled with blood lust and righteous anger– and she is not afraid of getting her hands dirty. It’s no spoiler that this protagonist has a body count, but so does almost every other character we meet that’s a pilot. The big difference between Zetian and other YA protagonists I’ve read is Zetian has absolutely premeditated on how she will exact her revenge. And don’t think for a second that she falls into “not like other girls” mentality either; everything she does is for the other girls. For herself. For all the women in her life. There is little room for nuance in Zetian’s philosophy, though she does grow a bit in maturity over the course of the novel. Her anger is never subdued though, and I loved every moment.

For those who might make the leap to equating anger with profanity, it is used so sparingly that the one maybe two times it comes out are almost a disappointment. There is some additional world building critique to be had with the vernacular Zhou chooses for this speculative setting that hovers between fantasy and sci-fi with stark groundings in mech anime. If you’re familiar with and enjoyed Gurren Lagann, you will feel right at home in Huaxia. However, there isn’t a fully crafted slang vernacular for this world, so phrases like “dork” and veiled pop culture references, stuck out in a way that disrupted my ability to stay in the mental theater.

The fight scenes, this is a mech book after all, were skillfully written and I had a great idea of what was happening without feeling like too much was over my head. The pacing of battles (and the book, really) was phenomenal, as well and the right amount of build up and length of fights. Something I enjoyed with Zhou’s writing style is allowing things to happen off page, especially in the beginning portions, and using a few sentences to bypass where other writers might have gotten mired by trying to have every scene written down, and it also kept me engaged as a reader since those paragraphs usually had intellectually pay off instead of waiting for dialogue to happen.

More pay off, not to mention groundbreaking content in YA for this reader, were the relationship(s) presented here. This is the first actual, proper, love triangle. Most of the time, when reviewers mention that it’s usually with disdain, but that’s because they’re applying the wrong moniker. What we refer to as love triangles, is more of a love vertices — for it to be a triangle, the other love interests must also be interested in each other. It’s been talked about on the internet prior to this about the polyamorous representation here in this book, and if you’re a fan of Cristoff’s line in Frozen 2 “my love isn’t fragile” you will see incredible depth to the male characters here that Zetian allows into her heart.

For some readers it may be their first exposure to the concept of non-monogamous relationships, and I think Zhou handled it incredibly well, and none of the ways the characters speak about it feels unauthentic to their voices, or the ways people will likely have questions about it.

Unfortunately where the book began to fall apart for me was the ending. It might be the fact that I am a fairly well-read person, but the climactic reveals were predictable for me. For a teen reader dipping their toes into this genre for the first time, I can absolutely see how this story will feel profound or mind blowing to them. I will not say I have read this plot before, since every author’s take on it will be special, but certain liberties have been taken here that push this book squarely into the YA genre when I initially thought it may have been marketed wrong based on the beginning.

Suffice to say, this book will have wide appeal with politically engaged teens, especially non cis-males. I have a reading buddy on this one, and I am very intrigued to hear his thoughts on just about everything contained within the covers. I also think that for any other teen reader, this novel will feel…. well, novel and likely will have 5 stars from them. It is certainly not for every reader though. There is a very appropriate author’s note providing a content warning about topics I didn’t quite get to cover here:

Please be aware that this book contains scenes of violence and abuse, suicide ideation, discussion and references to sexual assaults (though no on-page descriptions), alcohol addiction, and torture.

Author’s Note, Iron Widow

The right readers will likely find this book since the author is a little internet famous over on Ye Olde TikTok, as well as a booktuber on YouTube I believe. It’s a book that pulls no punches, and I’d say is suitable for mature readers. I wouldn’t recommend this book to anyone younger than 8th grade though. I’m very intrigued to see how the sequel takes things, and especially how Zetian’s anger will be sustained.