Bingo Row 3 – I
The first thing I noticed about Iron Widow by Xiran Jay Zhao was that the book was dedicated to Rebecca Schaeffer. That set a strong tone for the book. It indicated that the author felt some strong connection with a long dead actress whose death influenced stalking laws, and it indicated that the topics would be about how society and men treat women and celebrities. It turns out the book was dedicated to a different Rebecca Schaeffer than the one I’m thinking of – this one is alive and writes books, which makes the author’s dedication not so odd and double takey. I was way off, but the topics still ended up where I thought they’d be.
I’ve actually started Iron Widow a few times, starting back when it was hot (at least in my corners of the internet). I slogged through the prologue and put it down, hoping the rest of the book would be better. But then when I picked it back up, it had been so long I reread the prologue and entered a cycle. This happened every few months for years. Retrospectively, it’s odd that I kept on starting it instead of giving up. Maybe because I like the few videos I’ve seen from the author.
Recently, I started it again and thought maybe I should keep on reading instead of taking a break after the sloggy prologue. Happily, I found that the prologue doesn’t add much and it takes off after that with a very angry protagonist.
Coincidentally, my therapist has been talking about anger with me. There’s no reason to get into my issues, but I will say that Zetian’s anger fit perfectly into my mental health journey. So I chose a great time to push myself past the first several pages because Zetian is so angry.
She’s homicidally angry. She’s pummel a man to death angry. She’s so angry that her anger can raze armies and change wars and kill men. Her anger is directed at [not all!] men, at the way men and women treat women, at sexism, and how a society will put itself at risk just to keep women subdued.
Besides that, there’s not much to say that hasn’t been said. As stated above, this book was recently very hot and it’s also been heavily reviewed and discussed. Rightfully so – it’s very good, starting with the first chapter.