Most interesting throughout the novel is Zetian’s drive to reach her goals, and her attitude while doing it. From there, she meets the country’s most ruthless criminal and is forced to work with him in order to find out more about the government’s schemes. Honestly, all of that gets wrapped up fairly quickly, as Zetian’s own power steps into the limelight. Zetian thinks that at the very least, her family will get a nice monetary reward for her death, but there’s also a possibility she can kill the pilot who murdered her sister. Pretty high stakes for any girl who dares to sign up to die.

Girls can be there, acting as a battery, but more often than not the male pilot’s consciousness will consume the girl, killing her as soon as the battle’s done. Oh, I guess I should mention that there are giant mechs called Chrysalises, and that only boys are allowed to pilot them. Zetian wants to seek revenge for her older sister, who died as a concubine at the hands of one of the country’s greatest pilots. The novel follows Wu Zetian (loosely based on China’s only Empress) as she enlists in the army that killed her sister. Zhao describes Iron Widow as a mixture of Handmaid’s Tale and Pacific Rim, with a dash of Chinese history thrown in, and for the most part that’s completely accurate. Then those 15 minutes passed, then 30, then an hour, then two. Settling on Iron Widow by Xiran Jay Zhao, I prepared myself to read for about 15 minutes then delve into TikTok for an inevitable doom scroll session. After treating myself to a day off Friday (freelance life, amiright?), I decided to pick up a book for fun, just for me. You know that feeling when you can’t put a book down because it’s just too good to not keep reading? It’s a great, thrilling feeling, and I just haven’t really gotten to enjoy it much lately. Sure, there have been plenty of books I’ve enjoyed lately, but not many that I’ve been genuinely excited about. I haven’t been excited about a book in a long time.

Books like iron widow