Cannonball Read 14

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Search This Site

> FAQ Home
> Tag: Xiran Jay Zhao

He will not kill me. He does not get to make me a statistic.

Iron Widow by Xiran Jay Zhao

by Leave a Comment

You cannot appease someone into loving or respecting you. ― Xiran Jay Zhao, Iron Widow I chose this book because I saw it reviewed on CBR14 and damn, did it look interesting. Feminist wrath? Yes, please. To sum it up, Wu Zetian is angry. Not just a little pissed, but vengeful and rightly so. In her world, humanity is in a centuries-long battle with the Hundans, an alien species which invaded their planet. The only way to keep the Hundans from overtaking the entire planet is to […]

I love everything this book chooses to be. #CBRBINGO – Font

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

by 4 Comments

“How do you take the fight out of half the population and render them willing slaves? You tell them they’re meant to do nothing but serve from the minute they’re born. You tell them they’re weak. You tell them they’re prey. You tell them over and over, until it’s the only truth they’re capable of living.” This book is a scream of rage into the night, and I’m so glad it got published. Even if you don’t normally read YA, I would urge you to […]

full of sound and fury, signifying not quite as much as it could

Iron Widow by Xiran Jay Zhao

by Leave a Comment

I’m not going to bury the lede on this one: I wanted to like it a lot more than I did. The nutshell premise is undeniably cool: space fantasy with strong Pacific Rim vibes, in that you have these mecha-type constructs piloted by psychically-linked soldiers who are fighting terrible alien monsters, powering their robots through the power of their chi, but everything inflected strongly through Chinese history and mythology. Except the system is horribly corrupt: girl pilots (we’ll say girls because the protagonist always does, and […]

Anger and Iron: Iron Widow by Xiran Jay Zhao

Iron Widow by Xiran Jay Zhao

by 1 Comment

In the world of this book, humans are in constant battle with alien insect creatures. Mecha robots, piloted by 2-person male-female teams, are critical to the battle efforts. However, the female member of the team is mainly used as kind of battery for the mecha – generally dying during battle as their life force is drained by the mecha. Human society is centered around this war – glorifying battle – and in order to ensure a steady supply of women volunteered for battle, their families […]

Fighting the Spirit Robot Patriarchy

Iron Widow by Xiran Jay Zhao

by 4 Comments

I picked up this novel because I was seeing it mentioned quite a bit on Twitter. And…I loved it. Nice job, queer literature Twitter. In this alternative world China, poor families sell their daughters either as wives or to the military, where they are partnered with the male pilot of a Chrysalis. Essentially a Chrysalis is a giant fighting robot made of spirit metal, which can morph into different forms. It is fueled by the qi of the male pilot and a female companion. Often […]

Two books I Did Not Like

Better Than the Movies by Lynn Painter

Iron Widow by Xiran Jay Zhao

by 1 Comment

Better Than the Movies One star because the main character has a genuinely touching conflict she’s trying to resolve. One star because the main romance is cute if visible from a billion billion miles away. Minus all the other ones for the multiple toxic tropes that we have to wade through which make literally zero sense in the context of the book. Iron Widow UGH felt so bad but this book just didn’t do it for me at all. It started out promising–Zhao’s writing style […]



Help Our Mission

You can donate to CBR via:

  1. PayPal
  2. Venmo