beeetlebum 's review for:

Iron Widow by Xiran Jay Zhao

2.5

dark tense medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: No

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: N/A

Flaws of characters a main focus: No

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Clearly a lot of people enjoyed this book, so maybe this is a personal issue. But everything just fell a little flat to me… I thought the world building was lacking, the characters (especially Zetian herself) had little actual internal development and basically only revolved around a certain trope. The feminism was also a little meh. Nothing wrong with some feminine rage, but it really did feel as if every other line was intentionally placed to leave the reader with an “dammnn!!!” effect and the relationship of Zetian to other women in this highly patriarchal structure was superficial at best. I understand that Zetian is not supposed to be a model of a perfect feminist but her ruthlessness and her anger felt to me less of an actual part of her character and rather an instrument to make her seem the most badass most powerful most sexy main character that the reader is supposed to go like “yasss girl, go slay the patriarchy!” at. This also ties to the most jarring issue I had with the book: I could barely go two pages without cringing—either at the prose itself or at the girlbossness of it all. I can forgive a lot of things (including all the aforementioned criticism) and still have a good time reading but if I’m cringing, it’s very hard for me to enjoy even the story parts which technically still were intriguing.

I did of course enjoy the positive poly representation and the imperial chinese references/setting—I just wished it would have been more fleshed out. There were a lot of fun ideas, personally though I did not feel connected to either the characters, the relationships or the world and ultimately had to force myself through the last 40% of this book.