This review contains some mild spoilers which I think are given away in the book jacket.
Iron Widow is a YA story set in a future city of Chinese inspired Huaxia where men and women pilot mecha type suits to protect the population from aliens around the Great Wall. The suits are called Chrysalises, and the pilot, a man, teams up with a woman in the back in a merging of energy and minds that usually result in the woman’s death. This is how the heroine’s sister dies. Zeitan plots revenge, and vows to kill the man responsible for her death by joining the military.
This is a primal scream of a book, exactly what I needed at the time. I was a bit surprised at how quickly Zeitan gets her revenge and gets paired with Li Shimin, a pilot who has murdered his family. They ply him with booze to make him both dependent and compliant. It is pretty savage, which I really liked but could see why people would not like it. Zeitan has her feet bound, is taught to subjugate herself to men, and is taught that the highest honor she could get would be to burn herself up in a Chrysalis. She learns to rebel against that through a chance encounter with Yizhi, the fifth son of one of the weathiest men in the land. He teaches her to read, and through reading she gets ideas. Dun dun dun!
There is a romance with Zeitan, Yizhi, and Li Shimin which treats everyone pretty equally. I liked that. I thought for a bit they would go the love triangle root, but did not. She is married to Li Shimin but Yizhi is still included in the relationship. There’s also a tiny bit of world building with the differences between city live and the rural village where Zeitan is from, but not that much.
I did have some issues with the idea that she could wake up a centuries old dude and he would be FINE with her taking charge of him. This ruler of a patriarchal society is just going to let a woman order him around. Sure. Maybe he’s just in shock or something.
I am very interested to see where this goes. It started off so frenetic and violent, I wonder if it will slow down or keep smashing. The twist at the end plants some fun ideas for the next book. I did really enjoy it and am looking forward to the sequel.