Book Review: Iron Widow

 

 Iron Widow

by Xiran Jay Zhao

Book Cover Picture:

Category: YA Sci-Fi

 

Target Age Group: Ages 14-18, Grades 9-12

 

Format: audio book

 

Summary: This book takes place in a futuristic Imperial China. They are currently at war with the Hundan and enlist fighters to pilot giant robots with their chi to fight them. The robots, called Chrysalis, are piloted by a man and a woman known as a concubine pilot. A lot of the time, the women are killed by the power of the male pilots chi. Wu Zetian, the main character, signs up to be a concubine pilot with the sole purpose of killing her sister's murderer and co-pilot. When she does so, she is branded an Iron Widow and is forced to be a concubine pilot for the strongest male pilot so that she does not overpower any more men.

 

Justification:. It won the 2021 BSFA Award for "Best Book for Younger Readers" and has been nominated for two 2022 Locus Awards and the 2022 Lodestar Award for Best Young Adult Book. This book is also popular on TikTok which this age group uses regularly.

 

Review: This review will examine the patriarchy in the story, relationships, the sci-fi elements and my experience listening to the audio book. 

Yin-Yang, male and female. Both energies are needed to power the Chrysalis that are used to fight the Hundan. However, the role of the female is very subservient to the men. Often times, the female pilots are killed by their male counterparts when the male chi overwhelms them. The people in power make sure to keep this unbalanced partnership in place cementing the females role as the weaker. When a female does overpower the male, like Zeitan easily does with her sister's murderer, they are labeled the Iron Widow and the event is swept under the rug to keep the patriarchy in place. Once Zetian figures this out, her outlook on everything changes and she tries hard to overcome the patriarchy. I love a good strong female lead, but I feel Zeitan falls a little short. While she tries to take things down from the inside, it is more on a personal level and not necessarily for women in general.

Wu Zetian is our female main character. She has loved this boy from her home town, Gao Yizhi, for a long time. While they have never  had a relationship per say, they both feel deeply for each other and he ends up getting a job at the headquarters to be near her. In the meantime, Zetian is paired with the male with the highest recorded chi, Li Shimin. As a pilot pair, they are basically a couple. While forced into this relationship at first, she ends up caring for him too and they have a pilot boding ceremony to sway the public towards supporting them. Yizhi, Zetian and Shimin all end up living together to work through some issues and keep the pilot pair safe. There is a brief moment that they decide to be in a poly-amorous relationship. While I appreciate the representation, again it fell short for me.  There is only one scene where Shimin and Yizhi kiss to show the relationship between the three of them. It feels rushed and not fleshed out and a little out of nowhere. I would have liked to see the build of of the relationship between the two young men and the three of them together. 

 

The sci-fi premise gave me Ender's Game vibes.  There were children (teens in this story), piloting robots to attack and defeat an alien presence that they were told were the bad guys. Spoiler alert! Only to find out at the end, it was us humans, that were invading their land and committing genocide. I LOVED Ender's Game and had huge hopes for this saga, but it did not live up to the hype for me. There were some cool futuristic historical nods that made it interesting. For example, the Great Wall of China was still standing landmark 2 millennia in the future, but war was being waged with the use of robots that ran on chi of the pilot that was literally hooked into it. 

I am someone who gets irritated when I don't know how to pronounce certain words. As this book was about the Chinese culture, it stood to reason I would be encountering a lot of words I didn't know how to pronounce. I chose to listen to the audio book instead, so that I could just focus on the story without stumbling over pronunciations. It really enhanced my experience because of this. I was also able to read the book while doing a myriad of other things like cooking and cleaning.

Overall, I liked the idea of this book, the basis of the plot and the LGBTQIA representation. I wanted to love it but it just fell a little short for me. I'm not inclined to continue the series. 2.5 stars.

 

Resources

 

Card, O. S. (1985). Ender's game. TOR Books.

Zhao, X. J. (2021). Iron widow (R. Fu, Narr.) [Audiobook]. Penguin Teen Canada.