Thursday, September 9, 2021

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Iron Widow by Xiran Jay Zhao

 



Full Disclosure:  This book was read as an e-ARC (Advance Reader Copy) obtained via Netgalley from the publisher in advance of the book's release on September 21, 2021 in exchange for a potential review.  I give my word that this did not affect my review in any way - if I felt conflicted in any way, I would simply have declined to review the book.


Iron Widow is the debut novel of author Xiran Jay Zhao, one with a pretty killer hook: what if you had a young adult novel that's a cross between Pacific Rim, A Handmaid's Tale, and the story of the first/only female Chinese Emperor in history?  Not that adding giant mecha into tales based on dark but real historical events fails to work often (see Tochi Onyebuchi's fantastic "War Girls"), but still the combination of all these things could easily have gone pretty poorly - being boring or tone-deaf at worst.  That is absolutely not the case with Iron Widow.

Instead Iron Widow is an absolutely tremendous piece of YA Sci-Fi, placing its tremendous heroine in a misogynistic world that she is determined to not let consume her.  The book deals really well with issues of patriarchy and misogyny and how it's reinforced by both men and complacent women, while also featuring a girl who will absolutely not bow to anyone and will not take such treatment without the possibility of getting revenge.  Oh yeah, and there are giant mecha, pacific-rim style, a strong love triangle, and a plot very much inspired by Chinese history that all meshes together really well, up until it ends on a hell of a cliffhanger - this is the first book in a duology, and I will look forward to the concluding half.  

Trigger Warning: Suicidal Ideation, References to Sexual Assault (not on page), Abuse by Family Members, Alcohol Addiction, and Torture. --------------------------------------------------Plot Summary------------------------------------------------------
The alien Hundun ships launch their assaults constantly on the world of Huaxia, and the only way to defeat them is through the power of Chrysalises, giant transforming mecha that channel their pilots' qi into tremendous power, which can only be piloted by one male and one female pilot together.  Of course the mental strain of copiloting tends to kill nearly all girls - the concubine pilots - pretty much immediately, but who cares about that, right?  The male pilots are the celebrities to be admired, not the girls.  

Wu Zetian cares.  Disliked by her abusive family for her refusing to cowtow like women are supposed to, Zetian hates the way the world refuses to let women, especially peasant women like herself, have their own lives - basically giving them the choices of letting their family sell them to the army as a concubine pilot or to sell them to a rich family to be a wife and child raiser.  She especially hates the way the system killed her sister, who was the one-time concubine to celebrated pilot Yang Guang, and killed the first time she entered a Chrysalis.  

And so Zetian hatches a plan: she will let herself be sold as a concubine for Yang Guang herself, so she can get close to him and kill him in revenge.  But Zetian could not have anticipated that how well her plan for revenge would go, and how it would give her the possibility in a Chrysalis of her own to enact her revenge on the whole system instead of just one male pilot.  Assuming the men in charge or her fellow pilots don't kill her themselves first out of cowardice.....
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Iron Widow comes with a foreword by the author making it clear that the book is inspired by the real life story of Wu Zetian, China's only female ruling emperor.  And so the reader should know going in that certain things are going to happen or aren't going to happen as the story is told from Zetian's perspective, from which we see the whole book.  

And yet that doesn't matter because Zetian is such an absolutely compelling protagonist in the girl who refuses to let a misogynist society tell her how to behave or what to do, regardless of how wellmeaning they might be.  Her abusive family forced her to bind her feet, and insist upon her being subservient to an abusive father and negligent mother, and care not one bit for the possibility of her own death - or the death of her sister.  The rich boy she's been sneaking out to see means extremely well and actually does love her, but Zetian sees how returning that love would force her to a place of inferiority, and won't accept that for herself.  For Zetian a society that makes people like her mother knuckle under and accept the abuse, that binds the feet of girls unwillingly, and that makes them send off their daughters to death for money is utterly intolerable, and she will not stand for it....even if all she can manage is a small act of vengeance that gets herself killed in the aftermath.  

But naturally this book doesn't let Zetian die off (again this is based on a historical tale of her becoming Empress) after her first small bit of vengeance, and in doing so it puts Zetian in more often horrifying situations which only fuel her righteous rage.  The women who survive their male pilots are considered a threat?  Zetian doesn't care and will show them how stupid they are - violently if necessary...after all those male pilots are the ones who are willing to kill their female copilots without compunction.  The two women who have survived and become "perfect matches" for male pilots have opposite mentalities - one is violent and possessive of her man, while the other is passive and always willing to accommodate the world, and Zetian can't accept either view for the way it insists that her existence needs to be tied to a single man.  Even when Zetian winds up in a love triangle, she finds herself unwilling to rely too much on either man....and things only work out because both guys, in their own very different ways, are well-meaning, not to mention care for the other guy as well (resulting in a very nice resolution).  This is a book about Zetian's revenge and desire to tear down this system, and Zetian is just absolutely compelling in the process.  

The rest of this world and its characters are also for the most part compelling.  There are obvious secrets behind how the Chrysalises work and who the enemy of the humans really are, but the book pulls off those reveals extremely well.  The misogynist army commanders who have total disregard for women, and who are rich and spoiled and corrupt are totally believable - as are the horrifying acts they perform in their attempts to maintain the status quo (see above trigger warnings).  The rich chauvinist media mogul father of one of Zetian's potential loves is similarly believable, as are Zetian's desires for how to use him to her own ends.  The only weird thing that threw me out of the narrative was that the book uses Chinese names and characters from multiple periods of Chinese history, both before and after the original Wu Zetian, and that could occasionally throw me off as I remarked "hey it's that guy/girl!" (one use of Sun Wukong is just silly and distracting)*.  Still, it all adds up to a plot that swerves in satisfying directions as it features a girl trying to take down the patriarchy, leading up to an explosive but satisfying cliffhanger ending.

*It is possible this reaction is that of a White American guy who is used to similar things happening with fantasy based on Western History and doesn't remark about it, mind you.  But I don't really read much historical-based fantasy in general, and the Sun Wukong bit I'm pretty sure most people would find kind of silly.*

Highly recommended and I can't wait for the sequel.  

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