Shattering excitement and brutal realities!

Iron Widow (Iron Widow #1) by Xiran Jay Zhao         

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

A startling concept! Humans blended with machines becoming part of that vehicle as pilots of frightening entities drawing on the pilot’s vital essence, their Qi. The merging of the pilot and his consort/concubine creates a machine with power deserving of anything Lucas has created. (Well to my mind) The relationship between pilots and their concubine-pilots, their consorts, is complex and flawed. Many of the concubines die, burnt out! One who died was Ruyi, our lead character Zetian’s Big Sister.

All this takes place in Huaxia where Chinese Hunger Games meets Transformers. (author Xidan Jay Zhao uses the analogy of The Handmaid’s Tale meets Chinese stories.) 

Humans have endlessly battled the Hunduns, “invaders from the cosmos who’d pulverised the height of human civilisation some two thousand years ago and shattered humanity into scattered tribes. “

Animae and manga pictures meld in my mind juxtaposed with the awful humanness of pilots and their concubines. Hunduns are entirely something else.

Zetian a young woman is sold by her family for the purpose of being matched with a pilot, if she doesn’t die in the process. Sexual joining supposedly increases their abilities. Zetian however has a goal, to take revenge for the death of her sister and beyond that to make the male pilots pay for the unceasing death of all young women, concubine pilots, lost in the meld with male pilots, their energy being sucked out of them in battle until they are no more. Like what happened to her sister, with, as she learns, the favoured pilot Yang Guang. Zetian is so close to achieving her goal of vengeance when an attack happens…and she finds herself in the midst of battle and a whole different realm.

Later Zetian is partnered with Li Shimin known as the Iron Demon. A frightening character, and yet there’s a story. There always is…

What Zetian discovers in this amazing, violent, bloody journey is secrets within secrets, layers of corruption and hidden knowledge feeding women to the cause without them knowing their truth. They are all sold the Big Lie! “I’ve been told endless lies since I was born.”

Zetian realises that women were “devalued precisely because we’re so valuable. The world is too afraid of not being able to obtain and control us to respect our true worth.”

I did enjoy the reference to a Being ensconced deep underground for his protection where “Rows upon rows of unnerving clay statues stand guard, facing us. They look like the guardian figurines that would go into the mausoleum of someone rich and powerful, except they’re life-sized.” (A lovely use of the Terracotta Warrior image in a land resplendent with fantastical Chinese images and inferences.)

Twists and turns in the story leave us hanging on a completely new and mind bending possibility for what might come.

A Penguin Random House Canada ARC via NetGalley 

Please note: Quotes taken from an advanced reading copy maybe subject to change