Reviews tagging 'Torture'

Iron Widow by Xiran Jay Zhao

1069 reviews

adventurous dark tense medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: Complicated
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Characters / Relationships:
I loved them! Zetian is an amazing main character, snarky and strong, but not invulnerable, and it's both fun and interesting to follow her through the events of the book. I did feel like she was written in a very compelling (and not usual) way.
And talking about unusual: the relationships between the characters were amazingly well done! I loved how Zetian and Yizhi started out in a relationship (you rarely have books with characters already being together but it was done really well!) and the way Shimin was introduced and the relationship the three developed was amazingly well done!
Also a lot of fun, drama and other things (without falling into the overly annoying "Will they won't they?" tropes)! SpoilerIf anything, the three way relationship / "true love triangle" between the three is very cute and I liked the chemistry between all three of them a lot!
Even the side characters were interesting - I couldn't understand all people's motives but most made sense, even if I hated them. Still, they are a lot less important to the book than the three main characters. And here the author nailed it, in my opinion!

easily 5/5, the best part of the book by far

Atmosphere / Writing Style
I really liked both the way it was written as well as the atmosphere created, both during fun and serious times. And there are serious times. Dark ones. Take the warnings in the front of the book seriously.
The setting (somewhat Sci-Fi with "mechas", but also with fantasy elements) was unusual but even I (who never knew either Pacific Rim or Handmaiden's Tale, something this book is often described as a mixture of - although I did watch Xiran Jay Zhao's youtube videos about the original Wu Zetian. Which are not spoilers btw.) really felt like I understood what was going on in the world while Zetian lived through the plot.
Also, it was gripping enough that I literally read it in a day. Got it in the afternoon, was done at night. Really well done in that regard.
5/5

Plot / Logic
Now, that's the thing that made me have to remove a star, despite the book otherwise being amazing.
The main plot is totally fine as it starts out and I really do like that the Zetian is not able bodied and that her disability is actually an issue and gets addressed multiple times in the books without being the focus or all there is to know about her. But I did feel that the last chapters were really rushed.
(heavy ending spoilers!) SpoilerThe plot for me lost it's logic the moment the last attack was supposed to happen, and in the end I cannot tell you the situation the world is in anymore. Shimin is kidnapped, but Zetian now rules the world? Also a bunch of people died in really quick succession? Some thing I was able to guess way too early (like the Hudruns not actually being evil) and I got a bit frustrated at times that no one seemed to see it and some things, like that weird betrayal of the tortoise mecha came completely out of the blue and I still didn't really get it. They seemingly were blackmailed but also didn't really care that much to look for alternatives? Although they originally seemed to be nice? And then they were also dead.
In general I feel like in the last 50 pages so many things happened that it easily could have been a second book... And this soured the whole experience for me a little, as the ending (obviously) is the last thing you see from a book...
It's not so bad that I wouldn't want to know how things will go on, but it was pretty weak in my opinion.
3/5

Enjoyment / Total Score:
Despite the aftertaste of the ending (and as far as I understood there will be at least 1-2 more books to come, so it's not that bad I assume?) the rest of the book really was great. I was laughing a lot while reading, but also feeling for the characters in emotional moments, feeling for Zetian as she started to hate, love, pity people around her...
So, except for this small hitch I really loved the book and I would still definitely recomment giving it a read! Especially because there is great cultural representation going on as well, what with basically every character being Asian. Something that is seen very rarely in popular books.
Very much worth it!
4/5

Expand filter menu Content Warnings
adventurous funny mysterious reflective tense medium-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

Expand filter menu Content Warnings
adventurous 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: Yes

I really liked it, but wasn't sure I was going to up through the first half. Fits very firmly within its genre, with some interesting innovations. I enjoy the focus on Chinese culture and how that flavors a lot of the decisions made. 

The ending
is definitely a fun shock in-universe but isn't super surprising if youre genre savvy.


Also
I find it a little too bury your gays, but I have hope that arc gets redeemed. </spoilers>

Expand filter menu Content Warnings
dark emotional 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

Expand filter menu Content Warnings
intothestarrysea's profile picture

intothestarrysea's review against another edition

DID NOT FINISH: 68%

I really wanted to like this book. Conceptually, it had a lot of great things, and the MC was unhinged in an amazing way. 

But man, the misogyny. And I don’t just mean the evil patriarchy in the book. I mean in the way her sister is fridged and then almost never brought up again, as if she didn’t exist except as plot motivation. I mean in the way the MC has 0 female friends and there is not a single female character she has a positive relationship with. I mean in the way the MC wants to end the killing of girls but is 100% okay with slaughtering boys. I mean in the way this book doesn’t pass the Bechdel test. I mean in the way
some guy makes her strip naked and read a contract on camera, and she says whatever, humiliation is just a state of mind,
effectively invalidating all the women (and people) who have felt shame and humiliation from that same thing. It kind of blames them for feeling shamed. 

It was a good idea, and in many ways, it actually felt like the hunger games. It just didn’t hit the mark for me. 

Expand filter menu Content Warnings
dark emotional sad tense slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Complicated
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

this was a good and somewhat educational read. however, i struggled with the worldbuilding and the "magic" system. i found myself lost at some points. 

Expand filter menu Content Warnings
adventurous dark fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven: N/A
Strong character development: Complicated
Loveable characters: Complicated
Diverse cast of characters: Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus: No

First, I'd like to justify my choices above. Then I'll deep dive into my full review of this book. There will be general spoilers in this review, and I will hide major spoilers.
So, I can't realistically say either way that the book was plot or character driven. It was probably a mix, but both were weak. 
The character development was probably there for... I'd say at least one character, at a push two or three. 
Personally I didn't mesh / particularly like or root for any of the characters (more below). 
Diverse characters?
If you count having two bisexual male protagonists as diverse, then yes. But other than that, I wouldn't say the cast of characters is particularly diverse

Character flaws? Oh boy, I can't. I can't even. What this author thinks are character flaws don't actually hinder the characters at all. 

So, let's start with the positives. I was stoked to read a mecha book, being a huge mecha fan. I really liked that the book was influenced by Chinese culture, folklore, and history - honestly that aspect of the book earned it a full point from me. Using things like qi and meridians and animals that are sacred/part of Chinese legend, absolutely chef kiss from me on that. If this book goes any way towards getting people more engaged with and interested in Eastern cultures, that's a wonderful thing. I also liked the mech system in general, and the fact that the qi was basically a good way of explaining something of a "magic system" that was inherent to the plot, towards the end. I think perhaps it could have had a little more explanation, but only to round it off a bit. Other than that this was one of the stronger elements of the whole book and felt like the most polished aspect.

Other than that... let's focus on the other puzzle pieces we have here.

I felt the prose in general made this book stand out as a debut novel. I have no idea whether the author is a seasoned writer or not, but their prose is at times clunky and awkward. They're using verbs in a "quirky" way, not necessarily a "creative" way, but for some reason the editor and publishers haven't streamlined much of this at all. The descriptions aren't usually the ones I wanted - the book focuses a lot on battle scenes, I can think that there's at least 4-5 battle scenes during the book. Granted, the majority of the events take place on the front lines of a war, but it seemed to me as I got halfway through that the author used "the invasion alarms sounding" as a get-out clause to avoid many character development scenes or relationship building scenes. I also wasn't a fan of the endless adjectives, and also the tendency for the author to use 10 words where 2 would do, just to seemingly write around a cliche or a standard way of writing something. Didn't work for me.

The MC somehow knows what a "glitch" is (somewhere towards the end of the book she describes the landscape as looking all the same - as if they were running through a glitch). I have no idea how a peasant girl who doesn't have access to a tablet/technology for the first 19 years of her life understands what a glitch is or what one looks like. Unless it's one of those things just everyone kinda knows about - implied scifi knowledge? IDK, it stood out like a sore thumb to me. So while the MC did have a voice of her own, she was also pretty damn well lyrical with her explanations of things, in a way that sometimes took away from the rash and angry nature of the character. 

The themes in the book were also clunky, awkward, and glaringly obvious. Nothing subtle here about the feminist overtones. In no way am I saying that inclusion of feminism is a bad thing  - but the approach here was amateur and I'm not really sure what sort of feminism we had. The war-mongering, man-hating kind I guess. Our protagonist has absolutely no precedence for the types of feminist thought she has, other than "my mother and grandmother and sister and generations of women before me have had to endure this gruelling, toxic world where we are subservient to men". Ok, fine. It fits with the world and maybe it'll make more sense when the sequel comes out.
It's implied that the women, who usually have higher spirit pressures, are culled/controlled, because this means there are less balanced matches in the world. It's not unusual to have an army following orders that actually screen what's truly going on, but the fact we got the plot twist in the second to last chapter felt cheap.


Slavery/subservience/breaking free of thy chains/deception/trusting/trauma/alcoholism/ and to a certain extent capitalism are all touched on, but to me they seemed more like the cherry on top of everything (or what people like to call an afterthought) than actual deep themes the author was keen to explore. Sure you can taste the cherry and enjoy it, but without it the dish is more or less the same, and it's added more for aesthetic and appeal than anything with more depth. 

The pacing was.... something. 

Look, I have no doubt that this book is popular, and certainly has some positives - I know everyone is excited that it has bi representation and also polyam representation. I do sort of wish we could have representation of polyam without the people within that relationship dynamic having to already be outcasts of the world/going against the grain. 

I wonder how much this book honestly looks like it's original manuscript, and how much was stripped out, because by all accounts the author does say that they intended for there to be "more domestic scenes" which probably would have helped a lot towards character development. The only character who really shone at all for me was Shimin, because he's obviously a product of his trauma. But I felt the characters were messy and sometimes the justifications for what they were doing were so instantaneous or badly explained that I barely had time to register what was going on. The author didn't really let the protagonist feel much aside from constant anger or pain. Also, giving your protagonist a physical disability is not inherently a good character flaw. She can't walk, yet the solution to this is usually that she's scooped up and carried by a strong man. Zetian isn't that introspective to be honest, and she operates a bit like a one-woman army. Her motivations remain more or less strong and she does stick by her convictions, but by the time the polyam sparks start flying she's forgotten 50 pages ago that she's annoyed at herself for being so pretty and headstrong that all the men around her want her. She's described as being chunky twice, but it's sort of a throwaway comment both times (also how the eff would a peasant girl become softer-figured?) and struck me as the author just wanting to have an "unconventionally attractive" female protagonist, while still making her very beautiful. 

MC is a mary sue, and the only other flaw I see in her is that she is willing to sacrifice to achieve her goals. I don't know where that is going to get her when she has nothing left to sacrifice. 

But does all of this really matter, when it's blatant commercial fiction? Idk, I guess I just prefer my asian-influenced scifi robot mecha futuristic fiction to be a little more clever and well-written. 

P.S. Not sure what initially labelled this as "too dark to be YA" in the eyes of the publishers, or what makes anyone think that it's similar to The Handmaid's Tale (other than women being a subservient class?). There is for sure some imagery later in the book that could be disturbing, but you have teens reading The Road; you tell me which one is more mentally disturbing? 

Expand filter menu Content Warnings
challenging dark tense medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: Complicated
Loveable characters: Complicated
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: No

If you're into mecha science fiction and feminism, THIS BOOK IS FOR YOU.

For me, a person who's favorite genre is not science fiction with a lot of world building, the plot and all the fighting action scenes bored me to be honest. On the contrary, did I find the romance and exploration of themes such as feminism, sexuality, polygamy, gender roles etc. FAR more intreguing. However the romance and interpersonal conflicts and relationships wasn't as explored as I might would have hoped in a book almost the length of 400 pages. That is a main reason why this book dragged a little for me. In addition was the writing a little too dense in my opinion and the pacing a little off.

But still considering all of this, I need to state that this book is an impressive debut from a young person.
I will call this an original and severely interesting idea that could have been executed better.
Of course is the star rating also influenced by my personal taste in genre and theme. 

Expand filter menu Content Warnings
dark emotional inspiring reflective sad 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: Complicated

I am absolutely in shock with this book. THE ENDING?! I am unable to wait for the second book. I need it now.

Zetian is the perfect morally-grey-badass protagonist. I am in absolute awe of her.
Also the romance in this book, even with it being a sub-plot, was so intricate and refreshing that I was 100% obsessed.

If you like Pacific Rim, read this book.
If you like Attack on Titans, read this book.
If you are a woman, read this book.
If you like masterpieces, read this book. 

I will forever recommend this book to everyone I like. 
5/5 stars ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️

Expand filter menu Content Warnings
adventurous dark emotional tense fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: Complicated
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

Expand filter menu Content Warnings