Anexis Matos

Synopsis

Zetian enlists in Huaxia’s army not to help her people fight the aliens beyond the Great Wall, but to assassinate the pilot who killed her sister. However, she gets her revenge in a way no one expected. She is labeled an Iron Widow and, in order to tame her, she is paired up with the Iron Demon, the most dangerous and controversial pilot in the army. Once Zetian gets a taste of power, she can’t let it go.

Backstory

I first heard about this book through a podcast called Unresolved Textual Tension. They did a very in-depth review and, although it wasn’s positive, I still had high expectations and put it on my TBR. For anyone unaware, a TBR is a to be read list. If you want to see their review, I’ll link it in my author’s note at the end.

Review

I have mixed feelings about the writing. On one hand, it’s very accessible. It’s the only thing that kept me reading. However, some of the language is odd, but I don’t think it’s a bad thing. Another issue is the prologue. It’s useless and should have been cut.

The pacing has pros and cons. On one hand, there’s never a dull moment. Something is constantly happening which works for the age category it targets. However, this pacing doesn’t allow for any character or plot development. As a reader, I don’t like this pacing.

Everything in this book is black and white, including the themes and characters. I never put these two together, but they’re so attached. Everything in this book is either agree or disagree with Zetian. Depending on the answer, people are good or evil. This is problematic and harmful because it suggests no gray area. Sometimes, people do what they do for different reasons and, while bad things cannot be excused, they may be understood. It’s also harmful because Zetian is portrayed as the best person when she truly isn’t. She does a lot of things that hurt many. I’m not telling you that this is problematic and harmful to encourage you not to read this book. I’m telling you this to acknowledge this fact and to let others who are not interested in reading something with problematic aspects that they’re in this story.

In their acknowledgements, Zhao mentions that the original first draft was much darker and, according to them, very problematic. However, their agent mentioned that it was too dark to be marketed as YA. After reading this, it makes sense. It feels like a book that would be better in the adult category rather than YA. I think YA can have dark subject matter, but publishing is very strict and doesn’t permit certain things from my understanding. This reads like a very watered down version of an adult book. The themes are glossed over and not explored enough. Even in YA, themes should be explored well. Not doing so is an insult to teen readers, your target demographic.

In their acknowledgements, Zhao also thanked producers for giving them the idea that mecha can be used to explore gender, sexuality, and adolescence. I believe they genuinely attempted to do so. However, there is no exploration of any of these themes. Like I mentioned, everything is black and white.

There are established characters, but no character arcs. They’re flat and either agree or disagree with Zetian who might just be the worse character. She is a raging feminist whose goal is to stop more girls from being killed. However, she doesn’t care about women. There’s a point in the story when she kills a woman who simply followed orders to protect her family. Rather than attempt to understand her, Zetian simply got rid of her. This is much worse considering that this woman helped Zetian as best as she could.

While characters are established, I don’t really know enough about them to care. The main characters are a raging feminist, a bad boy with a dark past, and a sweet boy who does something at the end that makes no sense. The establishment is their goals. For the boys, the goal seems to be to support Zetian, but, besides that, they have no other motivation. Zetian wants to take revenge for her sister’s death, but we don’t know what their bond was like. We barely understand her family’s dynamic. They’re not in the story enough for us to know them.

Conclusion

Overall, I’m very disappointed with this reading experience. I had high expectations when I decided to engage with this story. Originally, I felt it would be a two or three star book. However, once I reached the end, I rated it one star. It’s a very ambitious story with a lot of potential, but it failed because of execution. In the end, execution is one of the big things that makes or breaks a story.

Author’s Note

Hey, everyone! Thanks for reading! I hope you enjoyed today’s review.

After reading this book and recording a very long review for my YouTube channel, I looked up other people’s reviews. That’s when I realized how polarizing the criticism is. From what I saw, some people love it, some hate it, and there are some who are in the middle, recognizing the potential while acknowledging the bad parts. It was very interesting to see what people had to say after I made my review. Linked below is the only review I watched before reading this book.

I’ve reviewed a few YA books in this blog. I want to make it very clear that I have no issue with this category. In fact, I read a lot of YA and I’m almost 23. The YA category usually gives me comfort stories. While I enjoy adult books, I love YA and have since I was 13.

There’s a belief that you can’t judge a YA, middle grade, or children’s book the same way you would an adult book. The same belief applies to movies and TV shows. While I agree when it comes to media for children and short stories, I don’t believe the same applies to YA. My expectations shouldn’t be lower because media is targeted toward teens. Teenagers are a lot more intelligent than we give them credit. For any authors out there, let’s not insult our teen readers. They deserve better than that from us.

I’ve done an in-depth review on Iron Widow on my channel. If you’re interested, check it out below. I shared this in a separate post, but, if you haven’t seen it, at least you got a spoiler-free review beforehand, right?