Iron Widow (Iron Widow #1) by Xiran Jay Zhao | Review

The boys of Huaxia dream of pairing up with girls to pilot Chrysalises, giant transforming robots that can battle the mecha aliens that lurk beyond the Great Wall. It doesn’t matter that the girls often die from the mental strain. When 18-year-old Zetian offers herself up as a concubine-pilot, it’s to assassinate the ace male pilot responsible for her sister’s death. But she gets her vengeance in a way nobody expected—she kills him through the psychic link between pilots and emerges from the cockpit unscathed. She is labeled an Iron Widow, a much-feared and much-silenced kind of female pilot who can sacrifice boys to power up Chrysalises instead.​

So going into the book, I did not know it was going to contain a poly relationship. So when the two boys were introduced, I was scared that it was going to be another love triangle thing, and I absolutely detest those (unless it’s done well, like in the Infernal Devices by Cassandra Clare). It’s usually because I find myself really rooting for one side of the triangle, but at the same time, it’s painfully predictable who the main character is going to choose. The contest is always between the childhood friend nice guy (Gao Yizhi in this book) and the mysterious, violent seeming bad boy that the main character meets a bit later on (Li Shimin here). So when I saw our MC Zetian go down this path, I was like please don’t make her choose, please don’t make me choose. Lucky for us, I didn’t have to choose between these fine gentlemen and both the MC and I got to have both the “murder boy” and the “sweet boy” (lol). Now I could simp over Shimin and Yizhi forever but I’m not going to bore you with all that. However, you will have to bear with me while I gush over Zetian because she is the love of my life and I would not hesitate to get down on one knee (she’d probably step on me though, not that I’d complain 👀).

So where do I even begin when describing the absolute queen that is Zetian. I guess I’ll start with one of my favorite quotes (I say one of because if I were to list them all we’d be here forever and I’d just be copy pasting the entire book on here).

“There will be no redemption. It is not me who is wrong. It’s everyone else.”

“This body of mine is not big enough to contain the scale of emotion coursing through me. How could I feel a rage like this, and not be able to tear the sky open and scorch the earth?”

If that doesn’t tell you what kind of character she is, I don’t know what will. She is so unapologetically brutal and I love that about her. She does not make excuses for those who have harmed her and does not hesitate to punish them in the cruelest way possible, which honestly I respect her for that kind of commitment. The story is set in a very patriarchal world where she’s been crushed and treated horribly just because a girl (her feet were crushed and bound as a child in order to follow a tradition of women having small feet). So when she finally breaks free of the shackles her family and society has placed on her, she goes absolutely feral (as she should honestly). Once she realizes the true extent of her power and knows that no one on any position of power can make her yield again, she takes advantage of that and obliterates everyone. She knows they need her to save their world and so she makes them bow to her. And yet all her actions come from a place of bad experiences and anger. She is so so full of anger and in her I see the rage of every single woman wronged.

“It was my grandmother who crushed my feet in half. It was my mother who encouraged me and Big Sister to offer ourselves up as concubines so our brother could afford a future bride. It was always the village aunties who’d sit around gossiping about which girl hadn’t been married off yet, despite complaining nonstop about their own husbands. And then they’d congratulate new mothers for being “blessed” to have a boy, despite being female themselves. How do you take the fight out of half the population and render them willing slaves? You tell them they’re meant to do nothing but serve from the minute they’re born. You tell them they’re weak. You tell them they’re prey. You tell them over and over, until it’s the only truth they’re capable of living.”

This brings me to another point. This book is so refreshingly feminist, at least from my perspective. It’s not shoved in your face, but it’s there in every subtext and theme. The society as a whole functions on the subservience of their women and Zetian is rage personified. She is angry at the injustice of the fact that only the female pilots die during and at the fact that the pilot who killed her sister is heralded as a hero. She wields her anger in powerful ways and will literally tear the world apart in order to right all the wrongs done to her and to girls in general. And as angry as she is with the oppressive men in her world, she is even angrier with the women who uphold the system that causes them pain, and yet they choose to pass on that pain to other women like some sort of twisted heirloom of injustice.

“The entitled assholes of the world are sustained by girls who forgive too easily.”

This brings me to how she is totally unapologetic and unforgiving. Her family treats her horribly and so she does not forgive them, which I feel is totally acceptable. Sometimes the wrongs people do against you are not worthy of being forgiven, even if they are family. This book shows that the whole narrative that you are supposed to forgive your family no matter what they do to you is absolute nonsense (lol don’t feel like using a stronger non pg-13 word). And it’s not like she doesn’t understand the restrictions and limitations of the women in her family but she is angry with them for not standing up for her, for forcing her to conform to the same awful and unjust traditions that they had to follow themselves.

“Countless times, I watched my father turn my mother into a nervous wreck by simply transforming himself into a dark cloud of a presence. He wouldn’t use any curses or shouts, but he’d set his bowl down a little too loudly, or slam doors a little too harshly. She’d step cautiously around him as if he were a bomb, worrying about her every move for fear of setting him off. Without uttering a single word, he’d teach her to twist herself into knots to prioritize his needs and wants, in some strangling hope of quelling the pressure in the house and returning things to normal.”

She acknowledges that the men in her family have authority over everyone and that her other is the non confrontational type, but sometimes she wishes that someone chose her over her brother, that someone listened to her and gave her importance in her family beyond her value as a sellable bride. She says “a mother who has failed me so thoroughly is no mother of mine” and this absolutely broke my heart because while she was well within her rights to disown her family after the way they treated her, one could tell that her words came form a place of pain and anguish.

This book isn’t all violence and rage because there are a certain amount of really cute wholesome moments. Zetian, Shimin, and Yizhi create their own little family because none of them have really been loved and valued by their biological families. And so we get awesome quotes like

“When you cherish someone for how amazing they are, you don’t pluck them from their roots just to watch them wither in your hands. You help them bloom into the incredible thing they’re really meant to be.”

I feel like I’ve definitely gone over my quota of quotes that were supposed to be in this thing but since I’ve already gone over, why not go some more. After all, moderation is not something I’m known for (lol). But yea, time to give Yizhi and Shimin some love since I’ve been rambling about Zetian the whole time. Yizhi is a sassy rich kid who kind of feels like he’d be the cinnamon roll of the group, but he most definitely is not. He’s got a sharp edge to him that isn’t really apparent until you take a closer look at him. The real cinnamon roll here is Shimin, which you wouldn’t really have thought of in that way because he is a death row inmate (for the murder of his father and brothers). You would think he’d be the bad boy of the group but he’s the biggest nerd. Dude has his favorite novels memorized and he “reads” them in his head when he doesn’t have access to them (big mood though to be honest).

I also like the way he refutes the whole “boys will be boys” and “boys do certain things because they can’t control themselves and therefore it is not their fault, they’re just a victim of their own desires”.

“That’s not a matter of losing control. Every guy who does something like that knows exactly what he’s doing. There is always a moment where he consciously decides that he will ruin someone’s life to feel better about his own. Always.”