Review – Heavenly Tyrant (Iron Widow, Book 2) by Xiran Jay Zhao (3/5 stars)
Reading Level: Young Adult
Genre: Science Fiction
Length: 540 pages
Publisher: Tundra Books
Release Date: December 24, 2024
ASIN: B0BK36J88B
Stand Alone or Series: 2nd book in the Iron Widow trilogy
Source: Borrowed ebook from Library
Rating: ?/5 stars
” After suffering devastating loss and making drastic decisions, Zetian finds herself on the seat of power in Huaxia, but she has also learned that her world is not as it seems. Revelations about an enemy who dangles one of her loved ones as a hostage force Zetian to share power with a dangerous man she cannot simply depose. Despite their mutual dislike and distrust, the two must work together to take down their common enemy and stoke a revolution against the systems of exploitation that plague their world.
However, power is not so easy to wield once seized, and a revolution is not so easy to control once unleashed. As Huaxia’s former elites strike back and the common people’s fervor for justice turns bloody and paranoid, can Zetian remain a fair and just ruler? Or will she be forced to rely on fear and violence and succumb to her darker instincts in her quest for vengeance and liberation?”
Series Info/Source: This is 2nd book in the Iron Widow trilogy. I borrowed this on ebook from the library.
Thoughts: My first thought is that about 70% of the way in I realized there was no way this was going to be a duology, there was just too much going on. I hate it when authors advertise something as a duology and then kind of sneak it in to a trilogy without advertising the change. However, I really enjoyed the first book, so I probably would have read this book no matter what. This book is not as good as the first book. The beginning is very slow, and then things get very weird for the last quarter of the book. I still enjoyed Zetian and the fighting scenes with the giant mech-robots. This story is incredibly politics heavy though, and I thought some of the mid portions of the book got very preachy about politics. I don’t need to be educated on the laborists parties, etc, etc, in China…these are well known concepts historically. There was so much delving into political theory that it started to take away from the story.
Zetian has awakened the Yellow Dragon and finds herself forced to share power with Qin Zheng, the pilot of the Yellow Dragon who has been in a suspended slumber for 200 years. There is a lot of push and pull between the two. Zetian likes some of the ideas that Qin Zheng puts forward but doesn’t trust him. Together they believe they may be able to take on the gods themselves but first they set out to reform the current political system into more of a laborist type of system.
Very few of our favorite characters from the last book are here. Li Shimin is missing because of things that happened in the first book. Gao Yizhi is here but serving as an advisor for Qin Zheng and appears to have cut himself off from Zetian. If you are here for a continuation of an intriguing poly-romance…umm…well it is missing in this book. Instead, you get a strangely abusive relationship going on between Zetian and Qin Zheng.
This book is mostly about politics. You have Qin Zheng trying to dismantle the current political system and put in a more laborist system and you have revolutionaries trying to fight this new system. The battle with the Hunduns takes a back seat to all the internal political struggles. I didn’t enjoy any of this all that much.
There were some things I did enjoy. Zetian spends a lot of her spare time learning reading, writing, how to manipulate qi, and fighting. It’s nice to see a protagonist have to work to get better at what they do. When she’s not doing this, she is working to use her influence to do some good for the women of the area. I also really enjoyed some of the side characters that were introduced; for example Yizhi’s sister who is a mathematical genius. I did not understand why the two new male pilots for Zetian were given much page space at all given how little they ended up being in the story.
I enjoyed learning more about Yizhi’s back story, but this is very brief. I also continued to enjoy the amazing colossal battles between the Hunduns and the Chrysalis fighters. Although, again, these were few and far between. There is an especially awesome fight scene that takes place during a huge weather event; I thought this pointed to some intriguing (if not well filled out) background on the planet.
Things take a turn for the weird about 75% in, and I was like what the heck is going on. I guess I wasn’t expecting the battle against the gods to take that path and ended up puzzled and confused. I am trying to decide if I am curious enough to read the third book or not because I felt a lot of disappointment with this book given how excited I was to read it.
My Summary (3/5): Overall this was not as good as the first book. This is too political for me to enjoy and feels preachy at times. Many of our favorite characters from the first book are missing. There were some excellent battle scenes in here, but they were few and far between. I appreciate that Zetian spent time training and learning, but also didn’t really like her much as a character by the end of this book. Will I read the third and final book? I am not sure at this point. I was left feeling pretty confused and unenthusiastic by the end of this book. The premise here is very creative, and I absolutely loved the first book, but this book is just not great unless you really like delving into political theory. If I am being honest I picked this up for awesome action scenes and an intriguing romance and I didn’t really get much of either of those. I am also still bitter about the bait and switch around this being a duology.
