Reviews tagging 'Xenophobia'

Iron Widow by Xiran Jay Zhao

149 reviews

hplreads's review against another edition

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adventurous dark mysterious sad fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

An incredible mecha war adventure. Inspired by Chinese historical figures and novels, Iron Widow takes a feminist lens to traditional gender roles and asks how would the military industrial complex use young people to their advantage in at times the cruelest and most inhumane ways.
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catshirecat's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional tense fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

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bisexualwentworth's review against another edition

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

5.0

I can’t believe I waited this long to read this book, but I’m also very glad that I won’t have to wait very long for the sequel. This was so much fun. Xiran Jay Zhao perfectly combines Chinese history, scifi chaos, and feminist rage into a compulsively readable novel. It is also exactly what is says it’s going to be, and this is so rare that I have to give Zhao and their team massive credit for that.
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themdash's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional tense fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

Really wonderful concept and hints of incredible world-building, including a GREAT twist at the end… but it’s dragged down by uneven pacing, lack of detail, immature writing style, and jumps in characterization (Zetian’s feelings about Shimin seem to completely change overnight). I’ll continue the series, but can’t recommend it.
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katie0528's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional mysterious 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? No

4.75

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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ixris's review against another edition

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adventurous dark funny 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

4.5

What if pac rim met the hunger games and starship troopers in a back parking lot and had a gender fist fight. 

Very fun. Top tier writing. I have one complaint and it's about how short-lived the best shape got to be. 
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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,
or
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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juan_adhd_reading's review against another edition

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

4.5

Listen, I'm not gonna pretend that this book doesn't have its flaws, particularly regarding prose, dialogue, and world-building. Yeah, it can sometimes feel a bit underdeveloped or even juvenile (I think it could've benefited greatly from being written for adult audiences instead of YA). But at the end of the day I do NOT care, because this book was insanely fun!!! It's an action-packed revenge story that blurs the line between sci-fi and fantasy with magically controlled giant mecha suits fighting against aliens. It basically feels like reading anime. The protagonist, Wu Zetian, starts as a morally grey femme fatale type of character who plots to avenge the murder of her big sister, and throughout the story, we can see her descent into a fully unhinged tyrannical villain. I LOVED IT!!!
There is a plot twist at the very end of the book that completely redefines the events of the story, and some might feel like it came out of nowhere, but I believe there are some clues scattered throughout the book that actually foreshadow it. We know that the war is not what it seems, because the army has been lying about everything from the very beginning, from the accuracy of Spirit Pressure testing, to why women are always placed in the Yin seat instead of men.


Overall, I really enjoyed this story, even if it took me a little time to get into it. I CANNOT WAIT for the sequel!!!
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simsplayer30's review against another edition

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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

5.0

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