A review by asriram
Iron Widow by Xiran Jay Zhao

1.0

This book had a lot of potential, and was one I was excited to read. Unfortunately, it then squandered that potential by being extremely boring. The prose was simplistic in a way that made it unengaging, the characters were all extremely flat outside of the protagonist Wu Zetian, and the plot was, while not predictable, extremely formulaic. All interesting gender-based commentary was scrapped in favor of a relatively boring black and white morality. While there was some interesting worldbuilding elements, that is not enough to make this story worthwhile reading.