Book Review: Iron Widow by Xiran Jay Zhao
“You’ve been living a dream for long enough! Welcome to your nightmare!”
-Wu Zetian, (Iron Widow by Xiran Jay Zhao)
Iron Widow, the young adult sci-fi novel by Xiran Jay Zhao, set to release on September 21, 2021, is billed as Pacifc Rim meets The Handmaid’s Tale. We follow our protagonist, eighteen-year-old Wu Zetian, across a dystopian, China-inspired landscape as she goes from unknown farm girl to despised outcast to reluctant but powerful celebrity, absolutely annihilating the patriarchy in her wake.
There is little doubt in my mind that Iron Widow will be getting the Blockbuster treatment. The story lends itself perfectly to the big screen, from the giant mecha-robot battles to the opulence of the capital city in Zetian’s world. The story is a reimagining of China’s only female empress of the same name, a woman who defied all odds and stopped at nothing to climb her way to the top. The Wu Zetian of the novel is a worthy homage; she is smart, cunning, brave, ambitious, follows her own morals despite the overwhelming pressure to conform to the majority opinion, and has no interest in following in the footsteps of the downtrodden women in her life. She is the anti-Mary Sue.
Zetian lives in a distant future in a land called Huaxia, where aliens have invaded and are attempting to take over the planet for its abundance of a Qi, an energy-like substance that powers all life. Zetian’s people believe the aliens intend to drain the planet’s life force and so they engage in battle with the aliens where young pilots use their own personal Qi to power giant mech suits called Chrysalises to stave off the huge, bug-like invaders. The problem is, these mecha suits require a boy-girl pair to pilot, both must be under the age of 21, and the girls tend not to survive the encounter as the boys’ minds,universally accepted to be more powerful, often consume the girls’ so completely that their hearts cease to beat.
When Zetian’s older sister is sold into the army and gets killed the regular, old-fashioned way by a celebrity pilot, Zetian herself enlists, preparing to give her life avenging her sister’s death. However, she is called into battle with the very pilot that murdered her sister before she gets a chance to enact her plan and she shocks the world when she emerges from the Chrysalis, very much alive and dragging the lifeless body of her male pilot.
Zetian is thrown into a world of secrets, corruption, and betrayal, a world where she is simultaneously despised and desperately needed. A simple frontier girl who had never seen the city suddenly becomes the most powerful woman in her world, where she is in a unique position to overthrow a centuries-old oppressive society, and overthrow she does.
Iron Widow is a heart-pounding, sci-fi/fantasy blend that puts feminism front and center with a beautifully complex main character. Zetian is angry, rightfully, and powerful, but she’s also scared and unsure and mourning the idea of the family she never had. She grew up emotionally and physically abused, and she is disabled due to having her feet broken and bound in a traditional Chinese foot-binding. She occasionally walks with a cane and later in the book uses a wheelchair. Zhao handles this representation with deft and grace, providing the world with a much-needed strong, badass disabled character.
In addition to the disability rep, Iron Widow features a positive, healthy polyamorous relationship with three bisexual characters and is full of Asian characters written by an Asian author. Some might argue that the polyamory wasn’t fully fleshed out, as only the very beginnings of the relationship occur on page, but Zhao is planning a sequel to Widow which will hopefully expand on and develop the relationship further.
Speaking of a sequel, the epilogue of Iron Widow is nearly as action-packed as the whole of the book. It is left up to wild interpretation and twists everything that seemed to be happening throughout the entire novel. While the hook is undeniable and will undoubtedly entice people hungry for the next book, it’s perhaps a bit gimmicky to turn nearly everything known about the world and its inhabitants on its head in the last pages of the book. My advice regarding the epilogue: if you’re happy with the book’s ending and don’t feel the need for a sequel, skip it. If you’re dying to find out what happens next to Zetian it’s unmissable, but be prepared to be left with more questions and fewer answers than you started with.
Iron Widow is a force to be reckoned with, a storm of rage and passion and feminism that will without a doubt be cherished by young adult readers looking for a unique, fresh take on the sci-fi genre.
4.8/5
Content warnings: physical abuse (graphic), torture (graphic), death (graphic), rape (implied, off-page), sexual assault (non-graphic but pervasive throughout), sexism, grief
I received this ebook for free from Netgalley and the publisher, Penguin Teen. This in no way influenced my review, which contains my honest thoughts.
