#or at least don’t call it a retelling y’kno

[ash-and-starlight]

Hello, I saw you say in your 2024 short book review that Iron Widow sucked? May I ask your reasons? I've had this book in my hands multiple times and thought of buying but never did, and by what you said, and accounting for us seemingly having similar tastes, I think you might give me a good idea about what to expect from the book and whether I'd like it?

So yes just. Your thoughts on Iron Widow and why it sucked would be awesome if you could find time for it

Have a nice day!

udhghh ok honestly the reasons are so many and i cant even string them together correctly so i really just recommend going on the goodreads page and reading the one star reviews bc they all illustrate point for point why i think it sucked so much. like ok reason one is that its simply not well written. like its marvel level jokey "oh he's right behind me isn't he" kinda writing. Reason 2 is that the plot is just all over the place nonsensical, there are in-universe things that you're just supposed to accept at face value but just make zero sense once u think about them for longer than 5 seconds. It professes itself to be a girlboss feminist narrative and its the furthest thing from feminist u could ever find. wu zetian sees herself (and is framed by the narrative) as the only hashtag woke hashtag empowered woman that exists and goes on thinking every other girl she meets is a dumb whore. this never gets disproved. she never changes her mind. (which is not WRONG per se but at least dont market it as a #feminist book just for clout). Also like. i was expecting for the heroine's story to bear some resemblance to the hystorical wu zetian's story and uhh idk if this changes later on but so far their stories dont rlly have a thing in common. AND i like the author a lot i think they're super knowledgeable & must've done a ton of research for this so why,,, did they decide to basically discard all of it,, and also it should've gone through a few more drafts,,, one beta reader at least- anyway the things that i DID like were the qi based mecha system. that was conceptually rlly cool and i always love a mecha situation. and the fact that the love triangle got resolved in an ot3 (..... not that i liked any of the characters enough to care...)