Gaslight, Gatekeep, Girlboss - Iron Widow by Xiran Jay Zhao (Review)

 A/N: This review contains mild spoilers for Iron Widow by Xiran Jay Zhao. This is your spoiler warning. 

Apart from reading books on the metro and pretending to be an intellectual being, my second favorite pastime is to squint across cars to check for books that other people are reading and proceed to judge them. (Not me being a terrible person and judging people for reading It Ends With Us but you would be surprised with how many people I’ve seen, actually reading it in public places.)

And you wouldn’t be surprised to see me parading this beautiful cover all over the place as I read it in February. I have major respect for the cover artist, it is one of the best covers I’ve seen on a fantasy novel in a very long time. I hope they were human and they were paid well for it. The book itself is something I had conflicting emotions about and let me tell you why.

Iron Widow is the story of a peasant girl- Wu Zetian, living in a frontier village in a futuristic world of Huaxia who sets out to avenge the death of her older sister by volunteering to be the concubine of the pilot- Yang Guang, who killed her. It’s a sci-fi fantasy story drawing inspiration from Chinese mythology and the story of the first and only empress of China, so you get the feminist aspect of it. If you’re looking for a mythology-heavy story this is not for you, it does not delve much into myths and just references it a little bit.

The book is divided into four parts: Way of the Fox, Way of the Bird, Way of the Snake and Way of the Dragon, and you understand why as you read. This detail was something I really liked. The story starts with Zetian, or Tian-Tian as she shall be referenced by me (a nickname her mother gave her as a kid) volunteering to be the concubine pilot for Yang Guang after saying goodbye to her crush- Yizhi and her family who couldn’t care less as long as they make good money from her work. She achieves her vengeance with no problems and gets thrown into prison for taking out a high-class pilot. (This is not a spoiler btw, it is mentioned in the blurb too)

Now the problem is that she’s too strong and of course the patriarchy that runs the empire of Huaxia does not find that acceptable. So she's sent to be the concubine pilot for Li Shimin who is stronger than her in the hope that it kills her. But instead of dying she becomes as strong as Li Shimin. And together they start this love-hate relationship of trying to kill each other using sheer willpower while also overthrowing the sexist government. And in this mess, Yizhi - previously crush and now the love of Tian-Tian’s life, gets involved and that creates the love triangle of the century. 

Yizhi loves Tian-Tian. Li Shimin has a crush on her and Yizhi seems to have a thing for Shimin too. And then Tian-Tian realizes that she has a thing for the muscly, misunderstood man a.k.a Li Shimin. That was the most triangle shaped love triangle I have seen in a while and I loved the way the author resolved it.

There’s so much drama, their lives are always at risk. Even the strategists who are supposed to be on their side and help them win the battles are trying to get them killed. Tian-Tian has no shame and is evil to the core which I found absolutely fascinating. She bad-mouths everyone, is incredibly selfish, throws her parents to the wolves, kills people, has a major ‘I’m not like other girls’ attitude and also simultaneously uses her unhinged, wily womanly charms to her advantage by reclaiming her body and the narrative. This was a very refreshing take on the dystopian protagonists character development.

I think it’s about time that I explained the fantasy part of this whole book. The magic element in this world is derived from a person’s spiritual energy also called as qi. This energy is influenced by their nature i.e how yin or yang they are. The qi gives them the ability to control mechas which are basically the husks of Hunduns - a race thought to have invaded earth and taken over the entire world. The Hunduns are the ones they’re at war with as they try to reclaim the province of Zhou. Now, only boys are allowed to pilot these mechas and girls are used as a battery source to enhance their qi energy to fight better, in the process of which the girls almost always die. 

The chance of them surviving relies on the probability of their spirit pressure matching that of the boy to form something called a Balanced Match. And in case of that, they mate for the duration of their short-lived lives and fight together as almost equals. These pilots are ranked in the Human Liberation Army (as they call the army that is fighting to reclaim their lost province) according to their spirit pressures as Duke-class, Earl-class, Colonel-class, Prince-class and King-class. Li Shimin is the only King-class pilot but he’s not acknowledged as such because he happens to have committed patricide. 

My problem with the book is that the world-building wasn’t very thorough. The magic system wasn’t quite explained properly and was very confusing to figure out and seemed very convenient to the plot whenever required. Tian-Tian is not a trained warrior but she defeats enemies based on her experience of watching these intense battles on television? Plus she doesn’t quite learn to control her power and how she can control her power is never explained- it is dismissed as something she seems to do out of instinct and not logic. And what bothered me the most is the final battle where there’s multiple plot twists that come out of nowhere. There’s no buildup, no subtle subtexts or red herrings. The author just throws it at you and expects you to deal with it. My other concern was how childish some of the characters sounded. It was hard to believe that Tian-Tian was eighteen, until the ages were mentioned. I strongly believed that she was fifteen years old because the book is categorized as YA. And the most absurd character is Sima Yi- the things he says do not sound like things an old army strategist might say on a day-to-day basis.

Don’t get me wrong- I do appreciate the book and the author Xiran Jay Zhao deserves praise for the story, the way patriarchy and its misogynistic ideals are addressed in the book. I look forward to their work in the future. As someone who has been following them on social media, I had high expectations from their debut novel. I can’t wait to read the sequel and the new middle-grade fantasy series that came out last year. 

I’d like to leave you with a few pearls of wisdom from the book:

For eighteen years, my unibrow has saved me from being sold into a painful, terrifying death.

Today is the day I’m releasing it from its gracious service.

(The iconic first line that made me read the book.)

Maybe, if things were different, I could get used to this. Being cradled in his warmth and light. Being cherished. Being loved.

But I have no faith in love. Love cannot save me.

I choose vengeance.

(Tian-Tian has her priorities straight. Major respect.)

"If you tip off the army in even the slightest way, I will kill myself when they lock me up, and then I will haunt you.”

(This was after she kissed her crush goodbye. What an icon.)

“I can’t believe your attitude,” she says, louder. “We’re here to serve a Prince-class pilot. Are you really going to get all cleaned up, only to leave that ugly pin in your hair? Could you be less obvious about being peasant trash?”

“We’re all peasant trash!” I snap under my breath, whipping my glare back to her. “Including him! No rich people let their sons be drafted!"

(A self-aware girlboss.)

“You’ve been living a dream for long enough!” I yell at the cameras between bursts of maniacal laughter, raising my arms. “Welcome to your nightmare!”

(I loved this scene. Zetian is just evil.)

The Sages, the council of old, wrinkly scholar-bureaucrats who spout nothing but “morals,” “harmony,” and “family values” while governing Huaxia, will have nothing good to say about what I’ve done.

Too bad. I am exactly the kind of ice-blooded, rotten-hearted girl he fears I am. And I am fine with that.

May he stay unsettled.

“Yeah, we’re not the ones who want you dead, you unhinged bitch!”

Sima Yi says, sounding winded.

(Sima Yi saying weird shit- evidence 1)

“With bound feet, you learn the value of the bonds between family.”

My grandmother’s voice saws through my head like a rusty knife. “No one can do everything alone. We all must rely on one another.”

Yeah. Now I have to let strange men touch me when I want to go anywhere. Thanks, Grandmother.

He lifts my chin with the side of one finger. Warmth flutters through me like the air-rippling heat from a fire. “You’re not something I could ever come across again.”

“Oh, shit.” My voice teeters toward an edge, high-pitched and airy.

“You really do love me.”

(She’s always so eloquent.)

He points his thumb at Yizhi. “He happened to be wandering near your bunker and took a black eye to save your girl. Then he stayed outside all night to make sure she was safe, even after I posted soldiers at your door. He’s a good kid. Thank him.

Don’t scheme about punching his other eye.”

(Sima Yi saying weird shit- evidence 2)

“The army is not responsible for anything that happens to you, okay, Rich Boy?” Sima Yi unlocks the door to Yizhi’s—our new quarters.

(Sima Yi saying weird shit- evidence 3)

“Yes, because love doesn’t solve problems,” I say. “Solving problems solves problems

“Rich Boy, get her! Go, go, go!” Sima Yi drags Li Shimin off the bed and charges for the door.

There’s only a brief flash of bewilderment in Yizhi’s eyes before he scoops me up.

“You can’t shoot me; I’m from Central Command!” Sima Yi shouts, ramming through the soldier standoff.

“You can’t shoot me; I’m rich!” Yizhi slips through the opening created.

(Sima Yi saying weird shit- evidence 4)

Yizhi taps the comm line on his wristlet shut. He looks back at me with a cock of his head. “Looks like I just inherited one point four billion yuan.”

The closest I can come to describing my current feelings is the look on Qin Zheng’s face in the yin-yang realm: brows twisted, eyes scrunched, mouth open.

Then he shakes his head, blinking. “Hold on, how has inflation been?

Is that still a lot of money?”

A/N: This is probably the longest review I've written in a while. If you made it to the end, thank you for your patience. If you skipped to the end, you’re a fascinating creature and I don’t understand your intentions. I hope it was as fun to read as it was to write.

Thank you for reading the fifth installment in my ‘Women of Words’ series where I read feminist literature by a new feminist author each month. (Again to be clear, I’m not picking authors based on their gender identity, I’m picking books that are feminist. The name is a consequence of me being a child who loves acronyms.)

To read the previous installment, here’s my take on The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison.