Iron Widow: An Unfortunate Letdown

The Iron Widow is set in an alternate medieval China called Huaxia that’s plagued by deadly aliens called Hunduns. Large, superpowered mechas called Chrysallises are built out of Hundun husks and are controlled by pairs of male and female pilots. Male pilots are revered in Huaxia as celebrities while their female counterparts are often reduced to human batteries and are ultimately killed in the process of controlling the Chrysalises. The stage is set for 18-year-old Wu Zetian, a girl from the countryside and a historical reimagining of the only female empress of China. At the beginning of the book, Zetian receives news that her sister, a former “concubine pilot,” was killed and offers herself up to the pilot system in hopes of assassinating the man who was responsible for her death. However, Zetian surprises Huaxia by not killing the pilot in his sleep as she expected but draining his life force via psychic link in the cockpit of a Chrysalis. She’s branded an Iron Widow, a female pilot who is able to sacrifice boys to power the Chrysalises instead of the other way around. As punishment from the government, she’s paired with Li Shimin, a prisoner locked up for the murder of his family, and the strongest male pilot in the country. No female pilot has ever survived in a Chrysallis with him. Zetian, desperate to not let go of this newfound power, is now forced to accumulate even more infamy in the public eye to narrowly escape attacks against her life and possibly free the girls of Huaxia from the systems of oppression that kill them.

What initially drew me to this book was its unique premise. Sci-fi re-imaginings of historical events and figures was something unheard of for me and it checked off all my boxes: I love science fiction and I love history. Iron Widow didn’t shy away from the high-tech glamour or bloody brutality it promised and I still believe it’s one of the most creative reads in the YA genre.

Despite the letdowns, there were definitely things I enjoyed about Iron Widow. The worldbuilding was so rich and innovative, and I love how seamlessly Chinese culture was woven into it. The Chrysallises, with their gorgeous appearances modeled off of mythological creatures, were the highlight of the book for me. The book itself was one of the best paced books I’ve read recently, the main arc never felt rushed but also kept me engaged through the whole story (However there’s a specific side plot that I felt had no buildup which I will elaborate on later). Both plot twists were really solid and didn’t feel like they came out of nowhere or detract from the story. Iron Widow also had some really great representation: the three main characters were all bisexual and were all involved in a romantic relationship with each other. Polyamory is so rarely depicted in YA so it was a refreshing and welcomed addition.

The things I liked were quickly overshadowed by the parts of the book I didn’t gel with. One small gripe I had was that the Hunduns don’t really get described or are given any physical attributes except an outer shell. I found myself turning the last few pages of Iron Widow, still not exactly sure what these creatures looked like. This did take away a little from the fight scenes since I wasn’t able to visualize what was happening in my head. Another aspect of the narrative that gets very little description is surprisingly Zetian’s sister. For the crux of Zetian’s story surrounding her late sister, we don’t learn much about who she was besides the fact that she was incredibly pretty and cared for her family, or why Zetian and her were even close. She often comes to Zetian in nightmares to give her advice and it’s explicitly stated many times that Zetian dearly loved her but it isn’t really shown. If she was just a dutiful cog in the machine like the other women in her family as implied, why would Zetian mourn her loss when she willingly allowed her mother and grandmother to be killed with the rest of her family at the end of the book? How was her sister there to support her when her mother failed her? While going into her personality in depth would have been too much for a book focused on Zetian’s journey, a little bit more insight into their bond and why Zetian cared so deeply for her would have been nice.

While I commend Zhao for including a polyamorous couple in their novel, the romance arc fell flat to me. Zetian’s love for both the love interests, Li Shimin and her childhood friend Yizhi, was an aspect of Iron Widow that was heavily marketed, so I went in with really high expectations. Zetian and Yizhi’s relationship gets a little bit more forgiveness as they have an established connection when the book starts. Li Shimin’s relationships with both of them, however, was a letdown for me. Since both characters had never met him before the events of the book, his bond with them needed time to be fully fleshed out. This is coupled with the fact that he’s a murderer, clearly has some sort of trauma relating to past relationships, and Zetian has an absolute hatred for male pilots and the pilot system as a whole. Li Shimin falls for Zetian after about 3 chapters of interaction, talk about insta-love! From there, Zetian and Li Shimin never really had a moment to truly bond as they were both constantly under mental or physical duress throughout the book. I understand that the book’s main arc didn’t center around romance, but three separate romances needed to individually be developed and made compelling for the audience and for me personally, only one side of the triangle was.

I think the biggest offender in this book for me was the ending because it felt like it erased everything it was building up to and actively goes against its original message. A team of Chrysallises go into the Zhou province to destroy the Hundun nest and reclaim the land. The Chrysallis that Zetian and Li Shimin pilot, called the Vermillion Bird, is attacked by another Chrysallis and Li Shimin is supposedly killed. The pilot of the attacking mecha and a friend of Zetian’s throughout the book, Ma Xiuying, reveals to Zetian her actions were motivated by strict government orders and the threat of her two children being killed. Zetian quips to the audience that she should have never underestimated a woman's ability to manipulate and proceeds to crush the mecha, killing both Xuiying and her co-pilot/father of her children. This scene left a particularly bad taste in my mouth for me because it just felt so out of character for Zetian nor did it make sense narratively. Zetian mentions when she first meets Xuiying’s children that it was probably unwise for her friend to have kids in the first place as piloting is a high-risk job and even considers the fact that she might have been forced into bearing children by the piloting system. The book has also spent it’s time showing both Zetian and the audience that everyone suffers under the corrupt piloting system in different ways, not just the concubine pilots; Li Shimin and male pilots like him are forced into battle knowing that they’re responsible for the deaths of women. With both of these things considered, the scene in Zhou province should have revealed to Zetian that even female pilots in “Balanced Matches” (being paired with a male copilot who can’t kill them) like Xuiying get manipulated by the government. Instead, Zetian orphans the children whom she criticized Xuiying for having due to the fact they might end up parentless and doesn’t think twice about what Xuiying and her partner must have been going through. Why does Li Shimin get Zetian’s compassion for being abused by the system but Xuiying doesn’t? Why do some people get a pass for growing up in an oppressive society but not others?

To make matters even worse, when Zetian and Yizhi storm back into Huaxia’s capital to name Zetian the new Empress, one of the first things Yizhi threatens to do is kill anyone who gets in their way while Zetian doesn’t counter this claim. “Anyone” would include women, the people Zetian has stated multiple times that she’s wanted to save. Plus blind obedience influenced by the threat of harm to you or your loved ones was the ruling strategy of the old government that the book has been repeatedly telling us is horrible. This moment would have been fine if Iron Widow had been Zetian’s villain origin story about a girl who was broken and manipulated by an awful system and grows more bitter and desperate for control that she ends up just as brutal as the government she was fighting against. But it isn’t framed like that and we as an audience are supposed to cheer for this supposed moment of “female empowerment.”

All in all, Iron Widow by Xiran Jay Zhao had it’s ups and downs. While the concept was rich and intriguing, the execution especially towards the end left the overall message a little muddled and left me a little unclear on character motivations. I’d still recommend this book to others because I think it has charm and I encourage others to form their own opinions on the direction the plot took. I think a part of me still desperately wants to like this book so I’m willing to give it a ranking of 3.5/5 stars.