Straight away, I appreciate the prologue. Zetian, our MC, is an unstoppable force of nature a power unmatched, an unbreakable heroine – her story’s a must-read. It’s a beauty of a novel and would resonate with comic, SFF fans everywhere. I’d dare say it’s got a pinch of The Way of Kings in there with reference to the Hundun Waste and the ultimate goal of liberating it. It’s one woman’s fight against a patriarchal society and certainly fits into the Handmaid’s Tale X Pacific Rim mould it’s been pitched as, but it’s so very much more. Iron Widow is an astonishing mash of everything that gets me excited about a novel – it’s giant, transforming mechs against an alien invasion.

That and the fact it handles some very, very difficult and relevant topics in a way you can’t ignore them. For me, it just so happens to be a book written with every aspect in a novel/comic/media that I think is awesome, almost as if it was tailored to me. I’ll preface this review by saying that if there’s one book this year I could give a rating of beyond 10, then this would be that book. She will miss no opportunity to leverage their combined might and infamy to survive attempt after attempt on her life, until she can figure out exactly why the pilot system works in its misogynist way-and stop more girls from being sacrificed. But now that Zetian has had a taste of power, she will not cower so easily. To tame her unnerving yet invaluable mental strength, she is paired up with Li Shimin, the strongest and most controversial male pilot in Huaxia. She is labeled an Iron Widow, a much-feared and much-silenced kind of female pilot who can sacrifice boys to power up Chrysalises instead.

But she gets her vengeance in a way nobody expected-she kills him through the psychic link between pilots and emerges from the cockpit unscathed. When 18-year-old Zetian offers herself up as a concubine-pilot, it’s to assassinate the ace male pilot responsible for her sister’s death. It doesn’t matter that the girls often die from the mental strain.

The boys of Huaxia dream of pairing up with girls to pilot Chrysalises, giant transforming robots that can battle the mecha aliens that lurk beyond the Great Wall.

Books like iron widow