I think back to something Qin Zheng once said: “Every oppressor, through their denial of humanity, sows the seeds of their own destruction.”
Here we are. The seeds that bloomed.
(Warning: Massive spoilers for the end of Iron Widow.)
The second book in Xiran Jay Zhao’s (ongoing, yay!) Iron Widow series picks up exactly where Book 1 left off. Wu Zetian has successfully awoken Emperor Qin Zheng from a two-hundred-year-old sleep and used his battle Chrysalis the Yellow Dragon to slaughter the old order of Huaxia, including her entire family. Zetian’s (supposedly) deceased husband Li Shimin is somehow being kept alive by the mysterious Heavenly Court, and Zetian’s lover, Gao Yizhi, has discovered that their planet’s thousand-year war with the monstrous Hundans has been a lie from the very start. And Zetian has revealed to the world that female Chrysalis pilots are exactly as strong as male pilots – and always have been – and declares herself Empress.
The events of a few days end up changing everything. Just…not the way Zetian hoped.
I’m a prisoner in this world, in this era, in this room, in this body. It never ends. It will never end.
Emperor Qin Zheng is so, so much more formidable than Zetian imagined. Even hundreds of years out of his element, he’s crafty and powerful enough to take control, and to convince everyone that Zetian declaring herself Empress was his idea, and only as a way to announce that she would soon be Zheng’s wife. A faithful wife, because Zheng and Zetian can train for battle in the dreamspace that connects Chrysalis pilots, where any and all secrets are revealed. So Zetian’s love-affair with Yizhi is officially over. Ditto any plans to let the rest of humanity know that they are actually the invaders, and the Hunduns have just been trying to defend their own world this entire time. Because that wouldn’t be convenient for Zheng’s plans.
And Zetian can’t even fight Zheng’s takeover, because even if she did manage to kill Zheng it would destroy any hope to free their planet – more on that later – and anyway, the remaining powerful figures in society all pretty much hate Zetian. For being female. For introducing the entire concept of female pilots. For wiping out the old government. And most of all for everything she and Zheng are doing to entirely remake society from top to bottom.
“From this point onward, there shall be a new order in Huaxia!” Qin Zheng declares. “There shall be revolution! My citizens, you have been deceived into thinking the richest among you deserve their fortunes for so-called hard work, when the truth is that there is a level of wealth impossible to achieve without exploiting those working far harder for far less!”
There is a lot of economic radicalism going on here. Book 1 featured the myriad ways societies oppress women. There’s a lot of that in Book 2 as well, but the focus has shifted to the ways the upper levels of society oppress everyone else. And it’s hard to argue when there are so many examples that echo real-world situations: rampant poverty while a tiny percent of the population has more money than they can spend in a lifetime. The wealthy influencing the government so their businesses can poison the air and water and force their underpaid employees to work with no safety measures. People growing up in generational poverty with fewer accesses to the schooling and jobs that could get them out of poverty while the children of wealthy families get to skate through life in jobs they’re completely unqualified for. The rich being able to indulge in atrocities, knowing they can buy their way out of trouble. And of course, the government working for the wealthy to arrest, imprison, and even execute anyone who advocates for change. Qin Zheng and Zetian both coming from poor families means they know firsthand what it’s like to be looked down on as “lazy” and “not working hard enough”, and they can use their image as The Peasant Empress and the Worker Emperor to spearhead a revolution for glorious change…
And if you think Huaxia automatically turns into a utopian worker’s paradise, then brace yourselves, because it turns out that trying to make a society that’s better for everybody is really fucking complicated. A lot of it depends on what everyone’s idea of “better” is, and exactly how that’s enforced.
How can two people hold down an entire nation that doesn’t want them as rulers?
From the very start, Zetian and Zheng are in a constant battle against everyone, for everything. Replacing the slaughtered former government members with people who might actually consider new ideas. Distributing food to the needy. Recruiting women to be Chrysalis pilots and trying to convince male pilots to work with them. Redistributing the wealth of the insanely wealthy, which usually involves arresting them and charging them with any number of crimes they either did to get their wealth and power, or what they used their wealth and power for.
The sheer number of counter-attacks and plots against the Emperor and Empress gets a little exhausting at times, especially when a health crisis forces them to come up with more unlikely solutions to impossible problems. Insurrectionists do everything they can to discredit the Empress (for “using her evil feminine wiles to lead the Emperor astray”), or to defeat both rulers, since what kind of Laborist paradise can you have when there’s royalty involved? In a war where the opposing sides aren’t different races or religions, but different economic beliefs, the enemy becomes anyone who doesn’t support the cause enough. Paranoia starts taking over, laws are passed to make it a crime to not report someone for disloyalty, and whoops, now we’ve got public executions.
Anyone who thinks this means we shouldn’t have everything other than pure Capitalism should go re-reread the paragraph starting with “There is a lot of economic radicalism going on here” and then tell me that unregulated Capitalism doesn’t result in the exact same thing, just with extra steps.
The details of the constant upheaval are endlessly fascinating, and the author livens things up even more with the unique element of the Iron Widow series: the Chrysalises. Or more specifically, the Spirit Metal that they’re made from. Harvested from the husks of Hunduns, each type has the properties of one of the five elements (Wood, Water, Fire, Metal, Earth), and pilots with a strong enough qi can shape it into armor, or ceremonial headdresses, or weapons, or whatever else is needed. Imagine a towering mecha Deer striding through floodwaters, transforming into an anthropomorphic horned figure with floral designs made of glowing red light. Or the Yellow Dragon at rest wrapped around a mountain. Or (my favorite), Zetian sprouting wings from her armor and snapping off pieces to transform into swords as she fights outside a Chrysalis that’s plummeting to the ground. Then when you add in the dream-realm where pilots are psychically connected you can have characters walking through each other’s traumatic memories, or worse, experience a death in battle as something real, as Zetian does when Zheng is training her with hallucinatory Hundun swarms that kill her over, and over, and over again.
I feel every scrape of their legs and every burn of their qi blasts. A death by a thousand cuts.
Zetian and Zheng’s relationship is…complicated. They both had an awful childhood, they’ve both had to overcome being born into poverty. And they’re both powerful fighters with (at least a few) shared goals. And Zetian hates Zheng with every fiber of her being. Even though there’s a mutual understanding between them that seems to be leading to something physical. But then there’s an overwhelming power imbalance that makes even the idea of sex a horrifying concept. And both of them are constantly trying to get under each other’s skin, when they’re trying to not think about getting into each other’s bed. So the result is – by design – a very unsettling will they/won’t they that’s about as different from Zetian’s former lovers as you can get. It’s like the romantic version of a train crash involving nuclear waste, toxic and impossible to look away from.
“You are the worst mistake I’ve made in my entire life.”
“So far.” He points a finger. “The worst mistake so far.”
Despite Zetian having accomplished so much since the previous book, this is a darker, grimmer story. The author still works in a lot of moments of humor (Zetian constantly playing up the worshipful lover attitude because she knows it bothers Zheng, two of Zetian’s friends in a secret meeting angrily writing notes at each other, Yizhi basically being Yizhi) but there are a lot of ruthless decisions, suffering, and betrayal. Horrific betrayal. My notes in several passages are just “Oh dear”, “not good!” and “FUCKING YIKES”. Zheng and Zetian would have an impossible task if they were only changing the course of civilization. Unfortunately they’ve got a much bigger goal: free the world from the rule of the Heavenly Court, something which will involve a battle with an enemy that isn’t even on the same planet as them. Once again, the events of a few days will change absolutely everything.
Stunning cover art once again by the incomparable Ashley Mackenzie.