🍂 September twenty-first 🍂
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Happy first day of fall, and happy book birthday to
@xiranjayzhao !!
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Rating: 4.5 out of 5
TW: alcoholism, rape mention, misogyny, femicide, murder, torture, suicidal ideation, emotional/physical abuse
Rep: polyamory, bisexual characters, visible disability, Chinese folklore/mythology
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Described as “Pacific Rim meets The Handmaid’s Tale”, Iron Widow is a re-imagined story of Empress Wu, China’s first and only female emperor, in a futuristic sci-fi setting, where women are sacrificially used as concubine pilots against the alien Hundun race to protect humanity. The link between male fighter pilots and their female concubines almost never ends with both alive, and usually its the women who succumb. This is how Wu Zetian’s older sister died. This is why she decides to become a concubine pilot herself — to avenge her sister. What she hadn’t decided on was killing him through the psychic link in their mecha suit, which subsequently earned her the title, Iron Widow. Zetian is undeterred even when she’s captured and forced into a pairing with Li Shimin, a very powerful pilot himself but also a known criminal, and she won’t stop till she reaches the top and stops the misogynistic system that’s made to murder so many young girls.
Essentially, this book is the epitome of Jessica Walter’s “Good for her” meme. Wu Zetian is such a morally gray character and an absolute badass who isn’t without her flaws that keep her from becoming one dimensional. Li Shimin is a little predictable in his depiction as “supposedly a cold-blooded killer but actually a cinnamon roll” trope, but I still enjoyed how he was written, how he meshed with Zetian’s character, how he dealt with his own personal trauma at the hands of a corrupt government that views them as expendable. The story is absolutely intense, the world-building is beautiful and immersive, all the battle scenes were edge-of-your-seat mind-gripping, and despite the fact that it ends in somewhat of a cliffhanger, it still resolves the overall plot of this book first before bringing up what will be happening in the next one. Those are the kind of cliffhangers I can appreciate.
(cont in comments)