Reviews with content warning for Sexual content - Iron Widow

I couldn't put this book down! A blending of Chinese history/mythology with Voltron and Hunger Games style sci-fi elements led to a really unique story that still felt familiar to Western sci-fi fans. In a futuristic world bombarded by aliens known as Hundens, male/female pairs pilot giant mechs called Chrisalises. However, the females are concubines to their male counterparts in every sense, including using their life force to power the mechs. After Zetian's sister died as a pilot's concubine, she volunteers to become one as well to enact her revenge. She quickly becomes a powerful pilot in her own right, as an Iron Widow, and decides to enact revenge on the system that sees women as nothing more than objects.

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hello_lovely13's review against another edition

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adventurous dark reflective tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.25

The content of this is adult, but the writing style is YA for a majority of the book. The premise was completed within 100 pages, and I was never clear on Zetian's end goal after that (it was either short-term or vague). The pacing was too fast for me, and I wished we could ahve lingered on specific topics and experiences (i.e.: exploring gender identity). Because it was so fast, I wasn't fully attached to the relationships. However, I was angry when

Li Shimin "died" (thankfully it was a fake out)

. The last quarter of the book was strong because I finally believed in the brutality of Zetian (I kept comparing it to She Who Became the Sun and was disappointed). I was not expecting the twist at the end, and am not sure if I like it or not (it was WILD). Next book will tell me.

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r3ader's review against another edition

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dark emotional hopeful inspiring sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.75

This was... an experience. A book that is filled with pure female rage and feminism. A book that shocks you, that makes you angry, sad and happy. An ending making you wish to be able to read the next book INSTANTLY. Still, something was missing for me to give it the full 5 stars.
I'm looking forward to part 2 and seeing how it will all play out.

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astrangewind's review against another edition

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adventurous dark fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.25

I’m so genuinely disappointed that Iron Widow was not as good as I thought it was going to be.

“Way of the Fox,” the first of four parts, is flawlessly executed. Wu Zetian is a firecracker of a character - she is single-minded in her goal

to kill Yang Guang

, utterly uncaring about her family’s wellbeing and throwing aside her love for Yizhi, throwing away even her life. It’s this deep, feminist rage that characterizes Zetian early on and differentiates her from other “strong female characters” in the YA dystopia genre.

When she’s ultimately successful in her task, her violent anger so complete that all she can do is laugh into the cameras, I get chills.

I want Zetian to succeed. I want her family, her country, every man who’s ever wronged her to suffer. This opener promises a novel full of righteous fury, of taking what belongs to her and all the women and girls of Huaxia, of vengeance.

This is a promise that the remaining three parts breaks.

I don’t know what happened here. It’s only speculation, but it seems to me like the author ran up against a deadline before they finished editing. It doesn’t read like a first draft, but it doesn’t read like a final one, either. In contrast with “Way of the Fox,” the rest of the book is disjointed, unsubtle, agonizingly dull at times, inconsistent. The “plot twists” come out of nowhere, and then they’re overexplained; because the foreshadowing is so weak, they require severe, barely-believable retconning.

Everything that follows “The Way of the Fox” in terms of plot makes little sense. Zetian had accomplished her goal - that makes sense. As punishment, she gets paired with Li Shimin, the Iron Demon, a huge, frightening boy who killed his family, with an incredibly high spirit pressure - yeah, okay. Then...

they become really invested in the war and do everything they can to convince the army to stage a counterattack against the Hunduns

? I feel like I must have missed something. Neither Zetian or Shimin was ever portrayed as taking an interest in the war; in fact, they both are very clear about wanting the violence (against the girl pilots) to stop. It’s not even clear what Huaxia thinks the Hunduns have done. They, what? Took over a province? Yeah, okay, I can see Huaxia being mad about it, but it’s common knowledge in Huaxia that the Hunduns never even attempt to breach the Great Wall - this is stated explicitly. There’s no clear reason why a counterattack is a good idea, or even why Zetian, Shimin, and Yizhi want it to happen. And even after Zetian survives piloting with Shimin, there’s no obvious reason why the army would want someone as dangerous as her to survive. Why did they not try to stage an assassination

beyond Xing Tian’s rogue attempt, which wasn’t even state-sponsored

? And her plan to just say out loud to all of Huaxia that girls are sacrificed on purpose? The author should know that that never would have worked, even in fiction. The whole “war” angle is uncompelling.

Speaking of... Zetian is so furious about girl pilots being sacrificed that she doesn’t mind sacrificing herself and her family to stop it. But she doesn’t mind literally committing genocide against the “mindless” Hunduns. She doesn’t mind

squashing Xiuying and Zhu Yuanzhang,

crushing the army vehicles

. Zetian does have feelings and a moral code, so it’s inconsistent for her character to just kill indiscriminately (unless the target is a young girl).

At the end, when something in Zetian snaps, it makes sense for only the young girls to give her pause. But it doesn’t make sense what actually convinces her to try to take over the whole of Huaxia. It’s so... bizarre.

Iron Widow claims itself as a feminist work, but it’s not. Beyond “The Way of the Fox,” most of the “feminism” reads like it’s been copied and pasted from a Tumblr post. People don’t talk like that in real life. At the very beginning, the author takes great pains for describe Zetian as kind of ugly - the first scene is of her getting her monobrow plucked. She’s tall and chubby, despite her family telling her that she needs to lose the weight to be pretty. But then, later on, she talks about how hot she is. It’s not necessarily un-feminist for a female character to be either ugly or hot. But, uh, how is she both? Just wondering. She’s supposed to be independent, but she gets saved multiple times by men out of nowhere. I thought she could defend herself - so why can’t she? It’s not just Zetian, either; the other female characters are shockingly one-dimensional. Xiuying is a mother character; Qieluo is a bully. Even Zetian’s Big Sister is only described as the obedient, pretty, dead daughter. Here’s a quote that I wrote down because it was so insane: “My pain is solely due to being born a girl [...] But for [Shimin], it’s complicated.” (p. 314). You’re telling me you’re a feminist, and you write this bullshit? Come on!

I think there are some things that Iron Widow does well. The scenes related to sexual assault / harassment are accurate without being unnecessarily descriptive. Zetian’s response to being alone with Shimin - and even having sex for the first time - are an accurate portrayal of PTSD. All three main characters are bisexual and kind of in a polycule with each other, which is one of the departures from a love triangle you can choose. (But I think that the author has no idea of the communication required to maintain a polycule because these three cannot communicate well.) I think that

the planet not being their native planet

is a good concept in general, because you kind of forget the sci-fi elements of the book by that point.

To summarize: I’m bummed that Iron Widow couldn’t maintain itself. I am not inclined to continue the series, and I don’t think I would recommend it to anyone else. In an alternate timeline, the author had enough time to finish editing, and Iron Widow is the next Hunger Games. Alas, we are not in this timeline.

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sahayatee's review against another edition

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dark emotional inspiring tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.5

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pastelhxrmony's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

Picked this up because I watch Xiran Ray Zhao on YouTube. It took me a little bit to get through this. I don’t think this book is very bad but it’s not the best either

Things I liked

Loved the concept and story
Female rage
Insane ending with a great plot twist
I don’t know if I’ve read anything that made me feel so many emotions so strongly at once
Second half

Things I didn’t like

Poor writing; the writing is a big reason it took me so long to get through this book. The writing felt a bit childish at times and a little odd
I can tell the themes the author wanted to convey but again, because of poor writing, the execution didn’t quite make the landing
First half was kinda difficult to get through but things picked up in the second half

Most of my gripes stem from poor writing choices so I won’t list off everything. It’s also hard to remember some of the early parts because it had been a few months since I had started reading. I will most likely read Heavenly Tyrant when it comes out and I hope improvements can be made

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findleydunn's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional hopeful inspiring reflective fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.75

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pipe_dream's review against another edition

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adventurous dark fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

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