He should be the Iron King, and I should be the Iron Queen. Yet Iron Demon and Iron Widow is all they’ll let us be.
It’s back to my reviews of Books I Really Should Have Read Ages Ago, and this week’s review is for Xiran Jay Zhao’s debut novel, Iron Widow.
In Huaxia, the alternate-world version of sixth-century China, humanity is under attack by an army of invading monsters known as the Hunduns. Fortunately, hundreds of years ago humanity learned (with some help from The Gods) to use stolen Hundun Spirit Metal to create the gigantic transforming mechs known as the Chrysalises, piloted by young men who’s spirit pressure (qi) is high enough to control them.
Meanwhile there are tiny villages in Huaxia where peasants scrape together a living, women are mutilated with Foot Binding, and girls are raised to understand that the only way they can be valued is if they marry well. Or, if they can be sold to the army as Pilot Concubines, giving “comfort” to the off-duty pilots, and riding with them in the Chrysalises to supply the pilot with qi energy, a process which generally (okay, mostly)(okay, in almost every instance) is fatal. A high honor, and worth an extra bonus to the concubine’s family, but still fatal.
Wu Zetian has zero interest in honor, or in earning money for a family that maimed her, treats her as worthless, and still expects her to sacrifice herself for them. But that’s what she’s going to do anyway, even though it’s going to kill her, and cause her family to be ostracized or worse, and break the heart of her wealthy friend Gao Yizhi. Zetian’s older sister was sold to an ace Chrysalis pilot who murdered her – not drained of qi in battle, murdered – and Zetian is the only one who cares enough to do something about it. She’s going to sign up to be a Pilot Concubine, seduce her way into the pilot’s good graces, and then murder him armed with only a wooden hairpin and rage.
And against all odds, and in a way no one could have predicted, she does just that. And survives a battle in a Chrysalis, something which surprises Zetian as much as it does everyone else. Faced with the possibility of her being an Iron Widow (someone who’s qi is strong enough to kill the male pilot, instead of the other way around), the army forces her to ride with Li Shimin, a young pilot who’s qi is strong enough to have piloted his Chrysalis hundreds of times. Strong enough to have killed hundreds of girls in the process. Far too strong for Zetian.
And then Zetian survives that too! And this is where the story really starts, because Zetian’s had a taste of power now. She’s going to use her status as the Iron Widow to make herself too valuable to be killed, by helping the army retake ground from the Hunduns. And, while she’s doing the impossible, she’s going to destroy the whole rotten system that makes girls sacrifice themselves, and then put herself in charge.
“Be their nightmare, Wu Zetian.”
The novel is a first-person narration from Zetian’s point of view. It’s a bleak existence, being a woman in a society that’s both early Tang Dynasty China and a high-tech civilization which demands that women act as single-use batteries in glorified war machines. Xiran Jay Zhao keeps this from being a pity party or something akin to a Greek Tragedy by making it very clear that while Zetian is broken, she’s far from being defeated. She refuses to play the game by everyone else’s rules. Faced with the choice between a life of misery or an undeserved death, she’ll overturn the gameboard, flip the table, wrestle a soldier and point his gun at her own forehead to make everyone understand that they can’t threaten her with death if she’s already destined to die, so they might as well do things her way. And after a lifetime of watching her mother and her grandmother live in desperate unhappiness, she is done with the idea that she can get anywhere by being “good”.
You cannot appease someone into loving or respecting you.
The author makes a mention in the afterward about mechs being used as a literary device to explore adolescence, gender, and sexuality, and it’s certainly one of the most fascinating metaphors for all of that that I’ve seen. Everything about the setup of the Chrysalis and the role of the pilots and concubines reinforces irritating stereotypes: women are meant for service, for sacrifice. Women are weaker. Women must keep themselves pure (even death is better than letting themselves be “tainted” by sex) but they damn well better put out as soon as they’re paired up with a worthy male, and don’t even think about being traumatized by it. (Het hem, Purity Culture, what kind of messed up sex life are you terrorizing women into?) And the way pilots view the concubines, and Zetian especially, is a nasty little mirror of how some men view women in general, how their love and respect is so paper thin because it’s all based on whether or not a woman fits into the role they’ve assigned to them.
“Hate women? Don’t be ridiculous! The world wouldn’t function without women! Who would bear our children, make our meals, sew our clothes, warm our beds, and so, so, so much more? Please.” He leans into my periphery, feline eyes narrowing into slashes. “Nobody in this world hates women in general. They just hate the ones who won’t listen.”
As you can imagine, getting paired with a man like Li Shimin – a criminal who murdered his entire family and who has to be dragged to his Chrysalis in chains – is the last thing Zetian wants to do. Her utter fury at someone who saved their own life over and over again by letting the girl in the Chrysalis cockpit die keeps her from seeing (for a long, long while) that Li Shimin is exactly as broken as she is, and he’s utterly defeated. And the hope that the two of them might be a Balanced Match – a marriage-like pairing that lets thousands of girls believe maybe they’ll be the one-in-a-thousand who can survive a Chrysalis battle – isn’t much of an incentive, since she already has a soulmate in Yizhi, the rich best friend who’s never asked her for anything she isn’t willing to give and who absolutely will not give up on her.
Yes, this is a (very dark and complex) YA novel with a love triangle. BUT HEAR ME OUT. It’s a love triangle that’s handled differently from what you usually see, and definitely different from one in any other YA novel I’ve read. It kept surprising me with how pleasing it all was, how in many ways it represents the very best of humanity, where the ones involved honestly try to figure out what the other person needs. And it’s not something that Zetian spends a lot of typical teenage angst over, or tries to resolve in a way that would make her happy. She has quite a few other things on her plate to deal with, thank you.
“…love doesn’t solve problems,” I say. “Solving problems solves problems.”
Xiran Jay Zhao shows all of Zetian’s growing rage like a poem, interspersed with quiet moments of intimacy, or snippets of humor (Yizhi pushing past several confused soldiers “You can’t shoot me, I’m rich!”, or Zetian calmly munching green beans while Li Shimin beats the living daylights out of several attackers). But the moments in the book that absolutely shine are everything to do with the Chrysalises. These are mechs over a hundred meters tall, that start out as fantastical beasts (Vermillion Bird, White Tiger, Nine-Tailed Fox), but in battle can transform into anthropomorphic figures, or fully armed humanoid warriors. The pilot and concubine are linked together mentally while in the Chrysalis, and the mind-realm twists and morphs to reflect the emotions and memories of the occupants. The armor that the pilots and concubines wear is made from transformable Spirit Metal as well, which means they can shift to create weapons. Or wings! Just think of how painful it is for Zetian to walk with her bound feet, and then imagine what it would mean to be able to create wings as mobility aids, or even stunning decorations as she and Li Shimin try to win over a fickle populace with sheer spectacle.
The artist Ashley Mackenzie apparently read the book before creating the gorgeous cover illustration, and wow, does it show. There are times when I’ve chosen a book based on how much I like the cover (like I did for this one), and ended up being disappointed when the story inside didn’t measure up. Not here, I think It’s a perfect match. The author is skilled at describing a battle, or a hallucinatory dream, or a ceremony, in such a way that’s easy to follow and also stunningly beautiful. There’s a moment when a human reaches out to an out-of-control Chrysalis, and it’s an image I would give anything to see in a movie.
Zetian’s skill with the Chrysalis grows at the same pace as her fury at the way women are treated in this world, and she becomes more and more ruthless as she sheds all the things that have been used to try to control her: shame, family loyalty, mercy. She’s in an arms race against her opponents as every truly bonkers act of ruthlessness is met with more of the same. If there’s any upside to my having left this book in my to-be-read pile since 2021 (jeez, really?), it’s that I only have to wait until December to find out how Zetian will deal with both the latest escalation, and an unforgivable lie. If the forces in charge can’t make people play by their rules, then there’s always the never fail option: cheat.