#i could not find a nongrainy picture of the cover anywhere i swear

[bashsbooks]

Iron Widow Book Review

★★★★★ ~ 5 out of 5 stars

Due to its popularity on Tiktok and Tumblr, I have long heard rumors about Xiran Jay Zhao’s Iron Widow. I tend to be skeptical about social media hype, but after a friend recommended it to me personally, I added it to my to-read list, forgot about it for like a year, and then promptly remembered it when I was figuring out what books to read for my 2023 reading challenges. And as soon as I started reading, I was like, “Oh shit. I should’ve read this sooner.” 

Iron Widow lives up to the hype. Actually, it smashes through the hype and goes way past what I expected. Set in a futuristic alternative universe based on Chinese history and mythology, Iron Widow follows Xu Zetian as she volunteers to be a concubine-pilot, a deadly but supposedly necessary role required to power Chrysalises, which are basically giant supersuits used to fight off aliens. Concubine-pilots usually die in the process of powering Chrysalises, though their families are heavily compensated for this sacrifice. At the beginning of Iron Widow, Zetian is desperate to get vengeance for her sister was forced to become a concubine-pilot by their family - and then murdered by a male pilot before she could. (Interestingly enough, piloting the Chrysalises is not deadly for men - usually.) So Zetian volunteers with the ulterior motive of killing her sister’s murderer and quickly finds out that everything she knows - about the piloting system, gender and social dynamics, about the war - is a lie. 

Although the patriarchy is a primary antagonist in Iron Widow, not every man in the book sucks  sucks; in fact, Zetian manages to find not one but two love interests in Gao Yizhi, the son of the richest man in the country, and Li Shimin, a man who murdered his whole family (for good reasons, he’s valid) and is only being kept alive because he’s the best damn pilot in the war. As a hater of love triangles and a lover of fellow bisexual men, I am pleased to report that Yizhi and Shimin are also very interested in each other. 

Iron Widow contains such a nuanced and fascinating take on how the patriarchy fucks over everyone. Zetian is understandably upset with the way women are treated, but she learns over the course of the novel that things aren’t all sunshine and roses for men, either. This does not diminish her passion for fighting for women (and indeed, it is never really poised as a competition of who has it worse; it’s pretty clear that it’s by-and-large worse for women), but it allows her to see men as fellow humans rather than inherently The Enemy. 

Zetian is also disabled, having had her feet broken and bound from a young age to turn them into ‘lotus feet’, which are considered beautiful in her culture. She has trouble walking, even with the aid of a cane, and she constantly feels pain in her feet. This is a central aspect of her character, not an afterthought, and it’s woven into the novel thoughtfully. It parallels and interweaves with the novel’s exploration of gender and gendered expectations - much like Zetian cannot be reduced to the caricature of womanhood expected of her, nor can she be reduced to a caricature of her physical disability. Instead, the integration of these aspects into her character are complex. Her successes are not in spite of her womanhood and her bound feet, but because of them, and that makes her all the richer as a protagonist.

I love Iron Widow, and I’m happy to recommend it with a full 5 out of 5 stars. Its sequel, Heavenly Tyrant, comes out in August, and I can’t wait to read it. Xiran Jay Zhao, Iron Widow’s author, is here on Tumblr (@/xiranjayzhao) and they have already posted some Heavenly Tyrant memes to tide me over until then. (And if you like authors commenting on their books outside of the text, then I recommend following their Tumblr after you’ve finished Iron Widow.)