It would be insufficient to describe Wu Zetian as a “strong female character” in this Iron Widow book review. She is forced into battle as a concubine pilot, and instead of dying, she emerges as an Iron Widow, a girl who can drain her male partner of qi to power the Chrysalis. Usually.Įnter Wu Zetian, a girl who enlists in the army so she can get close to the Chrysalis pilot who killed her sister.

Girls are used as “concubine pilots,” essentially qi batteries for the boy pilots, and even a single battle is fatal for the girls. Huaxia is a deeply patriarchal country, and so only boys can pilot a Chrysalis. Set in a far-flung future or alternate reality, and inspired by historical China, human civilization in Huaxia has dragged itself back from the destruction of the alien “Hunduns,” massive bug-like creatures whose husks are used to form the Chrysalises-giant robots akin to the Jaegers of Pacific Rim, but beautiful and based on the animals of East Asian mythology. Xiran Jay Zhao’s debut novel is brutal and immersive. Iron Widow is a book about the pilots of giant qi-powered mechas, and the experience of reading it felt like being physically plugged into a creature of spirit and machine, riding something larger than the human brain can fathom, feeling incredibly powerful and altogether too tiny at the same time.

In our Iron Widow book review, we go on a wild ride with a sci-fi retelling of China’s only female emperor.

Iron Widow by Xiran Jay Zhao