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A review by stuartjrodriguez
Iron Widow by Xiran Jay Zhao
1.0
I am so disappointed, because this novel could’ve been so damn good.
Based on the premise, I was really excited to dive into this one. And for sure, the mechs are awesome! The writing is decent at points, but there’s also a lot of “Anakin, you’re breaking my heart!”-level writing in here, too; the plot revelations in the novel’s final third are laughably cheesy; and the characters—heroes and villains alike—possess near-zero nuance. The villains are all comically one-sided portrayals of cruelty, and even the novel’s “heroes” feel like they alternate between two surface-level emotions at most (“I’m so broken and sad” which almost immediately segues into “I’m violently angry and will murder everyone who made the world what it is”), which... is not how people operate and maybe not a great way to portray people who’ve suffered intense emotional trauma?
Personal lowlight might’ve been Really wild! Literally lol’d when Zetian said, “It is not me who is wrong. It’s everyone else,” embodying a Simpsons meme on the page. Hilarious. Not sure you can convince me at this point that Zetian isn’t the real villain in this novel.
Based on the premise, I was really excited to dive into this one. And for sure, the mechs are awesome! The writing is decent at points, but there’s also a lot of “Anakin, you’re breaking my heart!”-level writing in here, too; the plot revelations in the novel’s final third are laughably cheesy; and the characters—heroes and villains alike—possess near-zero nuance. The villains are all comically one-sided portrayals of cruelty, and even the novel’s “heroes” feel like they alternate between two surface-level emotions at most (“I’m so broken and sad” which almost immediately segues into “I’m violently angry and will murder everyone who made the world what it is”), which... is not how people operate and maybe not a great way to portray people who’ve suffered intense emotional trauma?
Personal lowlight might’ve been