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thetruestsam 's review for:
Iron Widow
by Xiran Jay Zhao
Starting off with the positives, and they're pretty strong positives; it's a fun story with an interesting premise. A fun new take on the love triangle concept. The characters have strong motivations and their actions are dramatic and bold. A big feminist message with an emphasis on chinese culture and a disabled main character, which makes it stand out compared to a lot of other books. The version I had also had some pictures of the different mechas throughout the book which is a cute touch that I'd sometimes go back to look through. It's also a pretty quick read.
The bad side: it feels like a Wattpad fanfic for Chinese History x Pacific Rim x Hunger Games. I can't speak on the Chinese History aspect, but it doesn't have the grand scale of PR or pull on heartstrings like HG, so it just kind of makes you think of these other stories that did it just a bit better.
There's far too much saying and not enough showing. I don't need the main character spelling out every little thing she's feeling at every second, let your actions speak for you. Maybe that's the 18-year-old kid perspective.
I also spent almost the entire book thinking along the lines of "okay so there's a big kaiju theme in this world, what's the metaphor here" and there just... wasn't one? The twist relating to them doesn't happen until the literal epilogue, which is clearly setting up for the next book, but there was no lead-up to the twist at all (from what I could tell, but based upon my previous point, I don't think she'd leave much between the lines for us to guess at).
And the characters don't have very strong individual storylines. The main character was supposedly so incredibly driven by her dead older sister but that feels like it's only really there as a reason to start the plot, like a weird distortion of fridging her. Her first love interest spends the whole time being like "I'm docile and pretty but MAYBE there's a darker side to me lurking underneath but that's a problem for future books." The second love interest has character growth and real plot to him, but then the plot just ends and there's no real closure to his storyline and not enough reaction to it. There's an advisor that starts off being "I'm an asshole and annoying and you should hate me" to "okay I'm really on your side, I'll back you up as much as I can" to "I actually do not care about you at all. Not really betraying, just being passive." Another advisor is brought in somewhat later on and it picked out as a horrible person and so killing him is supposed to be a big moment but there's almost no weight to him at all besides a bit of character-related trauma. The emperor at the end is like "how dare you treat me like a woman... okay you're power-hungry and kinda a baddy, sure I'll just sit back and help."
Still, it was fun. Probably would've been better if I had kept my thinking to surface level consumption.
Characters: 2/5
Worldbuilding: 2/5 at start, 4/5 in the epilogue
Plot: 4/5
Writing: 2/5
The bad side: it feels like a Wattpad fanfic for Chinese History x Pacific Rim x Hunger Games. I can't speak on the Chinese History aspect, but it doesn't have the grand scale of PR or pull on heartstrings like HG, so it just kind of makes you think of these other stories that did it just a bit better.
There's far too much saying and not enough showing. I don't need the main character spelling out every little thing she's feeling at every second, let your actions speak for you. Maybe that's the 18-year-old kid perspective.
I also spent almost the entire book thinking along the lines of "okay so there's a big kaiju theme in this world, what's the metaphor here" and there just... wasn't one? The twist relating to them doesn't happen until the literal epilogue, which is clearly setting up for the next book, but there was no lead-up to the twist at all (from what I could tell, but based upon my previous point, I don't think she'd leave much between the lines for us to guess at).
And the characters don't have very strong individual storylines. The main character was supposedly so incredibly driven by her dead older sister but that feels like it's only really there as a reason to start the plot, like a weird distortion of fridging her. Her first love interest spends the whole time being like "I'm docile and pretty but MAYBE there's a darker side to me lurking underneath but that's a problem for future books." The second love interest has character growth and real plot to him, but then the plot just ends and there's no real closure to his storyline and not enough reaction to it. There's an advisor that starts off being "I'm an asshole and annoying and you should hate me" to "okay I'm really on your side, I'll back you up as much as I can" to "I actually do not care about you at all. Not really betraying, just being passive." Another advisor is brought in somewhat later on and it picked out as a horrible person and so killing him is supposed to be a big moment but there's almost no weight to him at all besides a bit of character-related trauma. The emperor at the end is like "how dare you treat me like a woman... okay you're power-hungry and kinda a baddy, sure I'll just sit back and help."
Still, it was fun. Probably would've been better if I had kept my thinking to surface level consumption.
Characters: 2/5
Worldbuilding: 2/5 at start, 4/5 in the epilogue
Plot: 4/5
Writing: 2/5