A review by deeb_reads
Iron Widow by Xiran Jay Zhao

adventurous dark tense fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.5

But if I don't detach myself from this fear, they will pummel me with it, choke me with it , enslave me with it.
What would be the point of sticking around then?

I will start off with a disclaimer. I really, really wanted to like this book. Xiran Jay Zhao is one of my favorite YouTubers, and I've been rooting for their career as long as I've watched their channel. As a concept, this book should work-- a sci-fi fantasy novel based on Pacific Rim, Chinese history, and classic Chinese literature, with a morally complex badass character and great representation of queerness and polyamory for a teen audience. There are certainly some high highs, but the uneven writing and characterization make this book less enjoyable than I would have liked.

The first thing that bothered me about this book was the writing style. At times, the narration contains awkward "infodumps" of setting information or even includes them in dialogue. Especially in dialogue, they come off as stilted and take away from the emotional realism of the scene.

"There are only three Iron Princesses in all of Huaxia!" Tears tumble from my eyes, hazing my view of her. "And their spirit pressures are in the thousands! It's just a low-odds fantasy that gives girls delusions of surviving!" 

Characters, especially Zetian, sometimes just flat-out say the book's themes or thematically important information regardless of whether it makes sense in the scene's context. Zhao could have easily just included this information (that the Iron Princesses are used as propaganda to convince girls to enlist) as subtext, and this fact is referenced multiple times in the book. Instead of letting readers figure these things out, it's stated overtly in the text, as if Zhao is worried we will miss it. 

The tone also suffers from a common problem in YA, where authors try to make their writing come off as casual and snarky, but it doesn't make sense with what should be a more serious scene or in-universe setting. Characters toss around casual slang and jokes like Joss Whedon's superhero movies, even when it seems tonally inappropriate or out of character.

Overall, I loved the concept and setting, and I thought Zhao did a decent job with the plot twists at the end. I love a Chinese traditional medicine-inspired magic / technology system, and her world was interesting and decently fleshed out. The plot is fast paced, and I was on the edge of my seat with the story. The final blood bath at the end moved a little too fast for me
Yizhi goes from like spoiled nice guy to just like. Killing his dad with qi powers, also Zetian kills her family instead of allowing them to be executed, and it's like barely dwelled upon
. I also would have liked a little more clarity on the various types of qi powers, their colors and abilities etc-- I could never remember which ones did what, tbh. On a more micro level, I also had trouble picturing what things looked like. The Hunduns, the chaos monsters that the characters spend the whole book fighting, look like... spiders? bugs? Big blobs on tiny legs? Still not totally sure. 

Again, as a character, Zetian is very interesting in concept. However, I've very rarely seen antiheroes pulled off well in YA. Katniss in the Hunger Games has a whole sort of antihero arc in the last book, but it is after two and a half books of character development to where this seems natural and makes sense for her. At some times she was pretty badass, like her whole revenge plot and her physical endurance despite having bound feet. However, throughout the book she kind of flip flops between her tendency to mouth off and do what she wants regardless of the social consequences, or play along to be strategic. Despite the times where she openly mocks social norms, she rarely suffers much meaningful social stigma, which seems unrealistic for such a strictly patriarchal society. At other times, she seems to realize that keeping her head down and picking her battles is wise, but then a few scenes later starts impulsively mouthing off again. 

Zetian's morality similarly seems to flip flop. At times, she seems genuinely concerned about social issues, especially patriarchy and poverty. However, towards the very end of the book, she seems to totally flip and view her own power as the most important thing in her life, without even attempting to put a gloss of morality on it. 

This is my admittedly graceless strategy: annihilate every center of power, so everything will collapse into chaos and people will have no choice but to obey the new most powerful thing-- me.

This character shift doesn't seem to be well developed, and it undermines the more interesting aspects of political drama and intrigue that precede it. The real-life Wu Zetian was known for her intelligence, strategy, and capable administration, which Zetian the character starts to develop towards the middle of the book as she and Shimin figure out how to work the media and find unsavory allies. However, this final scene seems to undo all of that interesting work, portraying Zetian not as a cunning mastermind but a brutish killer.

The other two side characters, Yizhi and Shimin were... fine, I guess. I liked Zhao's acknowledgment through Shimin of the harms that patriarchy inflicts on men as well, adding some nice complications to the thematic center. It certainly is welcome to have a "love triangle" resolve itself into a throuple with good communication and healthy relationships. They seemed nice as characters, but I wasn't hugely sold on the chemistry between either of them and Zetian.

Overall, loved the concept, but my enjoyment was undermined by the uneven writing quality and characterization.
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