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A review by rensreading
Iron Widow by Xiran Jay Zhao
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
hopeful
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.75
SPOILERS AHEAD!!!!
first of all, when people say this is feminist rage, they should also mention its not the modern-day feminism we’re used to and that the beginning is riddled with inner misogyny as well. it gets better and definitely resembles something more like modern-day feminism at the end but i still would have liked more elaborate reviews on that angle before reading.
wu zetian is bloodthirsty and i love it. she’s suicidal in the beginning, willing to risk everything to avenge her older sister and shed light on the unspoken horrors of the piloting system. i love that. what i didn’t really love was how much misogyny she had absorbed without even realizing it. she judged other women who were grasping at the only hope their society had shoved down their throats since birth and believed herself better because she rebelled against it all. “im not like other girls, i fight back” vibes. she ends up maturing and realizing women are not the ones solely to blame when it comes to their assimilation to the misogynistic society they’re forced to live in. yes their actions are their own, but zetian recognizes that the behavior and thought process are learned, just the same way she learned. the difference is she decided early on to fight back against it, no matter what it cost.
gao yizhi. oh, yizhi. the fifth child out of twenty-seven of one of the most powerful and disgusting men of chang’an. he definitely isn’t all sunshine and rainbows or the boy next door he projects himself to be. he’s bloodthirsty when needed, especially when it comes to his people. i think he’s the type who doesn’t like getting their hands dirty but absolutely will when push comes to shove. or when he’s lost one part of his soul and the other part is now being threatened by the man who (probably) forced himself on his mother then killed her later. i expected him to be the one to kill his father for sure. if it wasn’t zetian, it was going to be him. for a moment, i did think he would try and appease his father and leave zetian behind—they had just lost shimin after all—but yizhi surprised me. he surprised everyone. killed his father and forced everyone to recognize zetian as empress after they both lost a big part of their hearts. gods. he obviously has a mysterious past and definitely did questionable things for his dad, but im willing to wait and see about it. i doubt it would be enough to make me dislike him though. i think the only thing that caught me off-guard about yizhi was how kind he could be when his father was a piece of flaming shit.
last, but definitely not least, li shimin. the tortured, murderous man with an incredible amount of spiritual power. the man zetian is being forced to “marry” so to speak. a man addicted to alcohol who has lost a true match before and turned to the bottle to forget his grief for her and the other countless girls the army has forced him to kill. shimin, a young boy who used his strength and his body to pay for an expensive and prestigious school to further his education and ruined his eyesight in the process. a boy who studied under the dim lights of a fighting ring every night just so he wouldn’t fall academically behind. shimin, a man who killed rapists, his brothers, his father, and his family for the only person who ever bothered being kind to him. who let himself open his heart to a girl he was told was his match, not knowing those same people who put them together were dooming her. a man who was tortured into fighting again, forced to develop an addiction to alcohol and only fighting against it after meeting the one woman who could change everything. the one city boy who never found him lacking and fought him to get better. shimin who watched zetian and yizhi, knowing they loved each other and tried his best not to let it get to his head because the situation wasn’t any fault of theirs, nor his. the same shimin who laid himself on the wire so his loves could survive. i cried when he hit 0. i didnt want to believe it but i didn’t start hoping he was alive until that confirmation in the epilogue.
and gods, that epilogue. it makes so much sense that the hunduns were the indigenous people of the planet and not the humans. i had a feeling nothing was what it was cracked up to be and was proven right. the story was amazing either way though. plot twists were kind of obvious but i still liked watching them unfold. the cliffhanger though? that’s just a personal thing for me to be annoyed about it. realistically this is a 5 star rating but i have to bump it down to 4.75 for the cliffhanger alone.
first of all, when people say this is feminist rage, they should also mention its not the modern-day feminism we’re used to and that the beginning is riddled with inner misogyny as well. it gets better and definitely resembles something more like modern-day feminism at the end but i still would have liked more elaborate reviews on that angle before reading.
wu zetian is bloodthirsty and i love it. she’s suicidal in the beginning, willing to risk everything to avenge her older sister and shed light on the unspoken horrors of the piloting system. i love that. what i didn’t really love was how much misogyny she had absorbed without even realizing it. she judged other women who were grasping at the only hope their society had shoved down their throats since birth and believed herself better because she rebelled against it all. “im not like other girls, i fight back” vibes. she ends up maturing and realizing women are not the ones solely to blame when it comes to their assimilation to the misogynistic society they’re forced to live in. yes their actions are their own, but zetian recognizes that the behavior and thought process are learned, just the same way she learned. the difference is she decided early on to fight back against it, no matter what it cost.
gao yizhi. oh, yizhi. the fifth child out of twenty-seven of one of the most powerful and disgusting men of chang’an. he definitely isn’t all sunshine and rainbows or the boy next door he projects himself to be. he’s bloodthirsty when needed, especially when it comes to his people. i think he’s the type who doesn’t like getting their hands dirty but absolutely will when push comes to shove. or when he’s lost one part of his soul and the other part is now being threatened by the man who (probably) forced himself on his mother then killed her later. i expected him to be the one to kill his father for sure. if it wasn’t zetian, it was going to be him. for a moment, i did think he would try and appease his father and leave zetian behind—they had just lost shimin after all—but yizhi surprised me. he surprised everyone. killed his father and forced everyone to recognize zetian as empress after they both lost a big part of their hearts. gods. he obviously has a mysterious past and definitely did questionable things for his dad, but im willing to wait and see about it. i doubt it would be enough to make me dislike him though. i think the only thing that caught me off-guard about yizhi was how kind he could be when his father was a piece of flaming shit.
last, but definitely not least, li shimin. the tortured, murderous man with an incredible amount of spiritual power. the man zetian is being forced to “marry” so to speak. a man addicted to alcohol who has lost a true match before and turned to the bottle to forget his grief for her and the other countless girls the army has forced him to kill. shimin, a young boy who used his strength and his body to pay for an expensive and prestigious school to further his education and ruined his eyesight in the process. a boy who studied under the dim lights of a fighting ring every night just so he wouldn’t fall academically behind. shimin, a man who killed rapists, his brothers, his father, and his family for the only person who ever bothered being kind to him. who let himself open his heart to a girl he was told was his match, not knowing those same people who put them together were dooming her. a man who was tortured into fighting again, forced to develop an addiction to alcohol and only fighting against it after meeting the one woman who could change everything. the one city boy who never found him lacking and fought him to get better. shimin who watched zetian and yizhi, knowing they loved each other and tried his best not to let it get to his head because the situation wasn’t any fault of theirs, nor his. the same shimin who laid himself on the wire so his loves could survive. i cried when he hit 0. i didnt want to believe it but i didn’t start hoping he was alive until that confirmation in the epilogue.
and gods, that epilogue. it makes so much sense that the hunduns were the indigenous people of the planet and not the humans. i had a feeling nothing was what it was cracked up to be and was proven right. the story was amazing either way though. plot twists were kind of obvious but i still liked watching them unfold. the cliffhanger though? that’s just a personal thing for me to be annoyed about it. realistically this is a 5 star rating but i have to bump it down to 4.75 for the cliffhanger alone.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Addiction, Alcoholism, Body horror, Child abuse, Confinement, Cursing, Death, Domestic abuse, Gore, Misogyny, Sexism, Suicidal thoughts, Torture, Violence, Blood, Grief, Suicide attempt, Murder, Gaslighting, Alcohol, War, and Injury/Injury detail
Moderate: Body shaming, Fatphobia, and Sexual violence
Minor: Rape
content warnings for this book include: violence, suicide ideation, alcoholism, torture, referenced sexual assault, child abuse, bound feet, mutilation, body horror, murder, death, domestic violence, gaslighting, sexism, and misogyny