Reviews with content warning for Death of parent - Iron Widow

Reviews tagging 'Death of parent'

Iron Widow by Xiran Jay Zhao

159 reviews

marissasa's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional hopeful inspiring mysterious reflective sad 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? Yes

5.0

Wu Zetian is the most iconic female protagonist I have ever read in a book and I adored every page of her rise to power and descent to madness. She is rage-filled and outspoken, determined and unrelenting. I never stopped rooting for her to overcome her challenges, which were all imposed on her by the patriarchal government and misogynistic society. Xiran's writing is casual but powerful and it made Zetian's characterization even more distinct as we viewed the world through her eyes. On top of all this we got not one but two bisexual love interests who end up in a polyam relationship with her, each of them supporting each other and destroying everything and anything that threatens to bring harm to one of them? Yeah, iconic.

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ramiel's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional funny mysterious reflective tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

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aardwyrm's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional fast-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? Yes

5.0

Lived up to the hype. And that's a lot of hype. Excellent worldbuilding, tension, and character work, tight pacing, evocative prose throughout, all the while invoking a half dozen genres and histories and inverting them all. And it even remained a YA book proper throughout, which does mean, yes, the plot beats themselves were fairly predictable and the characters sketched for their audience, but a great deal of skill goes into understanding the assignment to that degree.

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bluejayreads's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional tense

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

I had some reservations about this book going in that had nothing to do with the book itself. The author is a YouTuber that my husband watches (he’s the one who told me about this book), but I haven’t seen any of their videos. I knew nothing about the book besides its back cover. What had me worried is that I put it on hold at my library, which told me that based on the number of people ahead of me it would be about a 17-week wait. Five weeks later, I got a notification that it was ready to borrow. As I told my husband, either it was so good that people were devouring it and finishing it fast or it was so bad that people were giving up quickly.

Luckily, the former was the case. This book is fantastic.

It was also very hard to read at many points. Misogyny is something I find it hard to read about, especially when it gets extreme, and everything in the world of Iron Widow is built on misogyny. There is foot-binding in this world. The only use of daughters is selling them off to be wives or die in battle. Chrysalises are the only defense against the invading aliens, and when a man and a woman get into one, only the man will survive.

Zetian is angry and she has every right to be. Her family only cares about the money she can bring in through either a bride price or a war death payment for dying in a Chrysalis. They are only sad about her older sister’s death because she was murdered outside of a Chrysalis and therefore her family didn’t get the payment. Her father and grandfather are violent and abusive, her mother and grandmother are cowed, and she knows they do not love her. If they want to sell her to her death anyway, the death penalty for killing the male pilot who murdered her sister won’t be anything worse.

This acceptance of death made her absolutely fearless, and I loved it. The perfect girl is beautiful and silent, moving slowly on her bound feet, obeying every order and taking insults and abuse without complaint. None of the men Zetian encounters have any idea what to do with a girl who has accepted she’s going to die and therefore sees no point in trying to avoid the wrath of men. She is an absolute delight of fury, and I love it when books let girls embrace their rage.

I don’t know if Xiran intended this, but Zetian’s bound feet were relatable disability feels. I don’t have bound feet, but I do have a chronic pain condition that especially likes to screw up my hips, knees, and other joints required for walking, and I absolutely related to the frustration and anger and feeling of being limited that comes with every step hurting, needing a mobility aid like a cane to walk longer distances, and knowing that it will never be fixed. I have no idea how much of what’s in the book is accurate to actual footbinding practices, but it was definitely relatable to my experience of mobility- and pain-related disability.

The themes in this book aren’t really subtle, especially the whole thing about a misogynistic society. I absolutely loved the progression of it, though. Zetian knows that there is misogyny in the world and that she and her sister have no worth outside of supporting, serving, and dying for men simply because they’re women. She starts the book blaming individual men, with the goal of murdering the individual man who murdered her sister. But the book takes her along a journey from “individual men are the problem” to “the system is the problem” as she learned more about the individual men and the system.

And if you’re not here for themes – well, I think you’d be missing out on a lot of what makes this book great, but you do get epic mecha battles, magic with a thin veneer of science used to fight invading aliens, psychic fights in a mental realm, good old-fashioned fisticuffs, powerful prisoners with hearts of gold, underdogs teaming up to give the people in charge a gigantic middle finger, a love triangle that ends in the best way possible, and several amazing twists (only one of which I suspected).

This review is already getting long, and I haven’t even mentioned the rich and complex world-building, the amazing twists, the rich atmosphere, the fantastic relationships between Zetian and the two love interests in the triangle, the minor themes about women who participate in their own oppression, and all the other wonderful things in this book. It’s fantastic. Everything about is dark and gorgeous and burning with fury and flame. I adore this book.

I also recommend checking out the author’s website. There’s character profiles, fanart, and even memes (mild spoiler warning for how the love triangle shakes out, though).

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smoothgoat's review against another edition

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adventurous dark mysterious tense fast-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? Yes

5.0

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nytephoenyx's review against another edition

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dark tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

This book was so exciting and I loved it. I loved a lot of different things about it, and there were only two very limited things I did not like. There was so much action and so much research (and I would expect nothing less from Xiran Jay Zhou) and such interesting characters and !!! I am so glad I stumbled across this one. Thank you, Xiran Jay Zhou, for writing a thread about historical inaccuracies in Mulan which blew up on Twitter and led to me finding your book announcement. You are very good at social media and I like your writing.

Rather than let this review go paragraphs long, I’m going to take this bullet-point style. So! Things I liked:

Content warnings were at the beginning of the book.
A non-historical disclosure was at the beginning of the book (Zetian is inspired by Empress Wu).
Our protagonists are not heroes in any sense of the word.
Love triangle that actually works (polyamorous rep!)
Tian’s anger through the book never subsides.
There is an actual, in-story reason why Tian and Shimin reconcile so quickly and it makes sense.
When Xiran Jay Zhou writes about unpleasant things, they do not hold back.
The characters never feel the need to explain themselves and I kind of loved that.
The physically intimate scenes were tasteful and non-intrusive. Way too much YA lets romance overthrow the plot, but not this book!
The writing balances description, dialogue, and action really well. It’s a debut, but doesn’t feel like your traditional “they’re still learning” debut. This book is polished and ready to go.
The chapters are short so it’s easier to find a place to take a break, assuming you’re not so sucked in that you binge read the whole thing, which would be very possible.
I appreciated the world and setting – it’s an Asian-inspired fantasy/sci-fi/action book and it feels both extremely original and yet somewhat familiar. Anime fans should love it. And for the rest of us, it’s a refreshingly different read.
There were multiple twists at the end I definitely didn’t see coming.

Those are a few of the reasons Iron Widow is such a compelling novel and why I enjoyed it utterly. I really liked Tian, Shimin, and Yishi. Even Sima Yi, who had his own growth arc, was interesting to watch. I’m struggling to pull together eloquent, comprehensive thoughts about Iron Widow because I genuinely liked it so much. I liked how there was dark revenge and murders early in the book – an author not afraid to make things messy is my favorite kind of author. While I didn’t like the interactions between Tian and so many of the other male characters, I can appreciate their necessity in painting a picture of exactly how misogynistic this society is (answer: very, very, very).

And I genuinely, genuinely liked the romantic relationship in Iron Widow. I don’t think I’ve ever read a book with polyamorous rep before, and I am not polyamorous myself so I can’t speak to its accuracy, but I felt it was respectfully executed. To get a real feel for the success of both the polyamorous and Asian rep, please seek out reviews from those communities!

I do have a couple small criticisms, but they are quite small. Every once in a while I’d come across a paragraph while reading that seemed so out of place, almost like it was written by a different person. The voice was slightly different, or modern-sounding dialogue would pop up, and it would briefly shatter the illusion. It really didn’t happen often – twice specifically I recall shaking my head like “wait, what happened to the voice?” – but I did happen.

My second criticism would be the speed at which things changed regarding Shimin. Not his relationship with Tian – that made since as they were in one another’s heads and that breeds empathy. Rather, most of his struggle to overcome his addiction as well as the love story between Shimin and Yishi felt rushed. The pace at the end of the book in general picked up quite a lot, and I’ll credit this to be part of the problem. As a reader, I’d have liked to see more gradual development for Li Shimin, but it was not so fast that it made his character unenjoyable.

My friends, I highly recommend picking up a copy of Iron Widow and giving it a try. Xiran Jay Zhou will transport you to another world, then they will ruthless batter your heart. It’s delightful.

Content Warnings

brianavmaddox's review against another edition

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adventurous dark medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

1.25

It has bland & 1 dimensional characters/plot. There’s too much info dumping and it’s heavy handed with the misogyny & dark themes without examining the nuances of either with complex characters or plot lines. The character motivations need to be fleshed out a bit more - who instilled Zetian’s strong-willed feminist mindset? A teacher, relative, or friend? Her big sister (which would’ve been an even greater motivator for her eventual revenge). If her sister did teach her such values, it would be helpful to have a dream or flashback sequence of them spending time together and Zetian learning from her sister & building a sibling bond with her. It could’ve had more specifics on why her sister when as a concubine pilot instead of getting married and some hints or specifics of her death (was it in battle? Did she get beaten to death at home/outside of battle?) How is this meant to be a feminist book when the main character seems to hate women? There’s a line between fighting for equality in a society that you’re forced to participate in, and you just being an edge lord who hates everyone & wants to kill them for whatever social justice movement fits the bill at the time. It needed to have a few more edits and revisions to get a more in depth and nuanced plot and character arcs.

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caseythereader's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional funny sad tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

- I AM GOING TO SCREAM ABOUT IRON WIDOW FOREVER! Queer screaming! Feminist screaming! Vengeance screaming! Epic mecha battles screaming!
- This book is heavy, given that it's set in a world steeped in misogyny and violence. You will rage right along with Zetian as she blazes her way through the system, hanging on to every twist, turn, and fight. Even if you see some of the twists coming, you can't turn the pages fast enough.
- Plus, all three main characters are lowkey queer, and for blessed once we escape the dreaded YA love triangle. I cannot wait for the sequel to see what other boundaries, tropes, and systems come crashing down.

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cerilouisereads's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional funny inspiring tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

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arttichokedipp's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

First book of the year, first 5-star of the year.

This is everything. Everything I find wrong with YA, gone. Everything I dislike about fantasy, gone. Everything I dislike about scifi, gone. Only the good parts remain and it is so, SO good.

Particularly, for those who have negative feelings about love triangles, never fear.

I hate love triangles because things would be so easy if they ended in polyamory half the time that it would cut the book in half. This one? THIS ONE DOES. Not only does the girl get with both guys, who are totally cool with that, but they get together as well. The triangle is the strongest shape, as you'll see.

My only complaint is there's a sort of "bury your gays" situation, but I'm hoping based on the epilogue that it's not permanent.

10/10, I'm so glad I stumbled upon their YouTube videos and decided to pick up their book when it came out.

(Edited because I messed up their pronouns. So sorry!)

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