I have a slight confession. I haven’t been excited about a book in a long time. Sure, there have been plenty of books I’ve enjoyed lately, but not many that I’ve been genuinely excited about. You know that feeling when you can’t put a book down because it’s just too good to not keep reading? It’s a great, thrilling feeling, and I just haven’t really gotten to enjoy it much lately. After treating myself to a day off Friday (freelance life, amiright?), I decided to pick up a book for fun, just for me. Settling on Iron Widow by Xiran Jay Zhao, I prepared myself to read for about 15 minutes then delve into TikTok for an inevitable doom scroll session. Then those 15 minutes passed, then 30, then an hour, then two. I couldn’t put down Iron Widow. I didn’t want to.
Zhao describes Iron Widow as a mixture of Handmaid’s Tale and Pacific Rim, with a dash of Chinese history thrown in, and for the most part that’s completely accurate. The novel follows Wu Zetian (loosely based on China’s only Empress) as she enlists in the army that killed her sister. Zetian wants to seek revenge for her older sister, who died as a concubine at the hands of one of the country’s greatest pilots. Oh, I guess I should mention that there are giant mechs called Chrysalises, and that only boys are allowed to pilot them. Girls can be there, acting as a battery, but more often than not the male pilot’s consciousness will consume the girl, killing her as soon as the battle’s done. Pretty high stakes for any girl who dares to sign up to die. Zetian thinks that at the very least, her family will get a nice monetary reward for her death, but there’s also a possibility she can kill the pilot who murdered her sister.
YES. (@XiranJayZhao/Twitter)
Honestly, all of that gets wrapped up fairly quickly, as Zetian’s own power steps into the limelight. From there, she meets the country’s most ruthless criminal and is forced to work with him in order to find out more about the government’s schemes. Most interesting throughout the novel is Zetian’s drive to reach her goals, and her attitude while doing it. Even though the worst has happened to Zetian – she’s lost her sister, her family doesn’t really care for her, she’s stuck in an awful patriarchy – she still manages to keep some of her sense of humor, leveled with the intensity of someone with nothing left to lose and everything to gain. I’m probably not describing it well, but the tone of Iron Widow really worked for me, mostly because Zhao’s writing is the perfect blend of page turning action and character interactions.
Zhao also has a wonderful YouTube channel where they show off cosplays and dive into interesting bits of Chinese history, and their presence online is just as charming as their tone in Iron Widow. The novel felt like a condensation of what Zhao’s content is about: combining pop culture with history in a way that’s both entertaining and exciting. They don’t shy away from uncomfortable topics, and they don’t get hung up on them the way some novels do. *Slight spoilers for Iron Widow to follow*
At some point in the novel, Zetian, Li Shimin, and Gao Yizhi all realize that they’re in love with each other. While I’ve read many a YA novel that struggles through a love triangle, I’ve never read one where that love triangle is simply solved with polyamory. In this case, it’s not just two men fawning over a woman, either. Yizhi and Shimin both realize that they love each other, just as they love Zetian. There’s a short passage where Yizhi explains that he believes people are capable of plenty of love, and that it’s a complicated emotion that’s been held up by society’s standards, then…they just sort of go with it. The relationship between Shimin, Zetian, and Yizhi – as well as their individual relationships with each other – is a comforting aspect of Iron Widow. It grounds the characters and the reader when the stakes of battle seem too high.
*End spoilers*
We stan a Yu-Gi-Oh fan. (@XiranJayZhao/Twitter)
There’s a lot to like in Iron Widow, but I don’t want to outright spoil the novel for you. For me, reading highly depends on what kind of groove I’m in. If I’m on a roll, I might enjoy almost any book I read, but if I’ve been struggling to make it through a single book, I need just the right thing to pull me out of a slump. Iron Widow was such a fun book, that it definitely helped me enjoy reading again after a dip in interest. It didn’t feel like a chore to read, and it managed to be both exciting and thoughtful at the same time.
Everyone didn’t love it, though. A quick scan of the book’s Goodreads’ reviews brings up criticisms from readers who thought that Iron Widow portrayed a version of feminism focused on violence and murder. While Zetian does do quite a few murders throughout the novel, and while I didn’t necessarily get all of them, it’s important to remember the trauma she’s endured and the breakneck speed with which she’s had to adapt to not only being a Chrysalis pilot, but falling in love (twice), and discovering that her entire worldview has been based on lies. In a lot of YA fantasy, I think it’s easy to see the characters as unwavering, static bastions of morality. They always do the right thing, even in the face of danger, but… that’s not how it is in real life, is it? If you’ve spent your whole life feeling powerless, wouldn’t you potentially go a bit mad with new abilities that change your circumstances drastically? I’m not here to defend Iron Widow, or to suggest that people criticizing it for a narrow portrayal of feminism are wrong, but I do think that many YA books could use a little more moral ambiguity, a little more of a gray area.
Iron Widow isn’t a perfect novel by any means, but it was exactly what I needed right now. I finished it eager to talk about it with others, excited to be excited about reading again. If you’ve read Iron Widow, let me know! I’d be happy to talk about it with you.