A review by fe_lea
Iron Widow by Xiran Jay Zhao

fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No

0.25

 The moment I started reading this book, I had a feeling I wouldn’t like the writing. I had hoped that I would still have fun thinking it would be like those trashy movies or tv shows that were so bad they’re so good, but unfortunately this one was just bad. I know I should have DNFed but I was reading this for a readathon and was determined to finish it. 

I found the book to be a mess. It felt like a list of character traits, tropes, plot points with no proper story to thread them all together. The world and politics were barely explained. The two male leads had no personalities outside of their usefulness to Wu Zetian. I remember the throuple being hyped so much back then but they had no chemistry. It was like the two male characters fell in love with her separately and then suddenly one of them started helping each other (it was not explained why character A was suddenly so concerned for character B but it was convenient for the plot I guess) and then boom, all three of them are kissy kissy and in love with each other. 

And then you have Wu Zetian. She’s obviously better than everyone else. She’s the only who saw the world for what it was: that they live in a highly patriarchal society and women are oppressed. She hates women but who cares? She’s going to liberate them from oppression and misogyny anyway. We spend the entire time in her brain and yet we got nothing from her aside from the fact that she’s cool, she’s great, she’s better than everyone, and that patriarchy makes her mad, oh so mad. Did you see the suffering that she went through when they bound her feet? Did you see how patriarchy has killed her sister? Now look at her humiliate and decimate these dumb men! The author wanted us to love Wu Zetian so much they forgot to give Zetian depth and personality. 

As for the writing, I could hear Xiran’s voice loud and clear in it that my brain sometimes replaces the audiobook narrator’s voice with Xiran’s. I swear the prose sounded like the author’s tweets and tiktok videos. 

The commentary on feminism and colonialism were poorly executed and shallow you’d think they came from twitter discourse, which is funny because I have seen some of Xiran’s tweets and tiktoks and they were able to make their points on colonialism come across clearly but how come I couldn’t see the same in the book? What happened? I just couldn’t understand how a book in this state got published. The concept was cool but man the execution was so bad.