Xiran Jay Zhao is a first-generation immigrant from small-town China who was raised by the Internet. A recent graduate of Vancouver's Simon Fraser University, they wrote science fiction and fantasy while they probably should have been studying more about biochemical pathways. You can find them on Twitter for memes, Instagram for cosplays and fancy outfits, and YouTube for long videos about Chinese history and culture. Iron Widow is their first novel. You can find them online at xiranjayzhao.com.
In Huaxia, the highest honor for a young girl is to be selected as a concubine-pilot: supporters paired up with male pilots to power up Chrysalises, the giant transforming mechas that humanity relies on to battle the massive aliens that lurk beyond the Great Wall. But the honor often ends in death, and when 18-year-old Zetian's sister is killed by an ace male pilot, Zetian signs up to avenge her. The vengeance is swift, brutal—and unexpected, leaving Zetian labeled as an Iron Widow, a much-feared kind of female pilot who can sacrifice boys to power up Chrysalises instead of the other way around. To tame her unnerving yet invaluable mental strength, she is paired up with Li Shimin, the strongest and most controversial male pilot in Huaxia. But now that Zetian has had some taste of power, she will not cower so easily. She will miss no opportunity to leverage her and Shimin's combined might and infamy, and survive attempt after attempt on her life, until she can figure out exactly why the pilot system relies so heavily on destroying girls' lives—and dismantle it for good.
There is some good done in this book, but unfortunately for me, it is not outweighed by all of the questions I have and frustrations I experienced reading it. One of the main issues I have with this novel is the complete lack of world building. Zetian's feminism doesn't seem to extend past her own world view and experience of misogyny. Zetian, rightly, wants justice for all the women who are sacrificed as part of the pilot system, where male pilots use up all the life force from their female co-pilots. However, Zetian never stops to examine the lives of women who aren't offered up to this system, outside of her mother and grandmother. What is life like for women her age who aren't offered up to this system? Who are the women that would be brides, like the potential bride for her brother? What do their lives look like? Zetian never looked outside of the pilot system to examine misogyny in her society as a whole, which was really frustrating for me as a reader, wanting to understand this world and how Zetian arrived at choosing this specific injustice to fight against. Sure, her sister was killed by a male pilot, but the relationship Zetian has with her sister is never explored fully enough to make me believe in the vengeance storyline, and the sister's death also isn't fully resolved in my opinion. There were a lot of holes for me in the feminism, in a way that leaves me feeling unsettled rather than feeling empowered.
The novel is compulsively readable. The writing style is very easy to digest, and once I started reading, I finished the book in only three sittings. It is true that you can feel the energy that the author poured into the writing, and the rage falls right off of the page, which kept me an engaged reader. What is sacrificed for this is that the novel feels younger than it should be, without the right amount of nuance to make it as strong a book as it could be. I wanted the characters to develop, and to look outside of their own heads to understand the larger world around them, but they never did. The battle scenes are more confusing than they are exciting, and I genuinely read the final section in a kind of haze, being unable to keep track of the action. The author attempts to jam multiple commentaries on modern-day issues into this novel, which overwhelmed the original story so much that I am unsure what to think after having finished. I would have loved to see these commentaries explored with more nuance, but because the focus seemed to shift in so many places, it never quite happened.
I was excited to see a polyamorous relationship between the three main characters! So often, love triangles in specifically young adult fiction aren't actual triangles, so it was exciting to see this representation. Unfortunately, the relationship between the three characters wasn't fleshed out at all. Zetian and Yizhi, childhood best friends, are reunited through a series of circumstances, and the two of them get together. While these two share some moments where Zetian explains her side of the story, this hardly happens in the capacity it needs to between Zetian and Shimin, and definitely doesn't happen between Shimin and Yizhi. Zetian muses on her and Yizhi's sexuality once or twice, and only briefly touches on the homophobia in the world, making this representation shallow and underdeveloped. Instead of feeling like the polyamorous relationship is part of the story, the romantic storyline feels added in to make the entire novel more attractive and marketable. I wanted to see a polyamorous relationship actually explored between the characters and with nuance, rather than feeling like an add-on to everything else going on.
I can't say I'll be checking out the second book in the series, but the questions this book brought up and refuses to answer will haunt me for days to come. But, if you're interested in checking this one out, you can find more information at the author's website, xiranjayzhao.com.
*This review can also be found on my Goodreads page*
Comments
Post a Comment