Iron Widow
Sep. 30th, 2021 01:04 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
issenlloIron Widow by Xiran Jay Zhao
Um... my chief takeaway from this book is that I needed to get a copy of 山海经, Classic of Mountains and Seas, stat, because all the chapters opened with a description of a mythical creature from it.
Ok, being serious now. Of course I've always liked mecha (my first love Gundam! Evangelion, not that much) or I'd not have read this. And the book fulfills that part very nicely, although... aiyaya the bookverse.
I do like the protagonist, how vengeful and violent and driven she is. I get the rage about being female and being seen as less than important and being only regarded as a baby-making machine or a servant, and a big part of the plot is underpinned by the utter unfairness and illogic of subjugating one half of the population, to the point of seeing their lives as disposable. So if you start from that basis, and you have the protagonist who is motivated, first for revenge and later for survival/dominance and then adding to that justice for the victimised, the flow of the plot is pretty much works out for me and is a thrilling ride all the way through. She starts out angry at the world and at the end has even more anger, except it's more layered and even more ambitious which is also really satisfying.
Book itself is meticulously edited - this is not a criticism of Zhao's writing; just that their strength is in (mecha) action and believably defiant and furious characters. I did shout out "whom!" a couple of times but that's just me, pedantic. Pacing doesn't drag and maybe rushes a smidgen, but a pleasure over narratives that inexplicably have in-your-face characters slow down to do some good deed, do prolonged soul-searching or admire the scenery. The dream-like sequences are good, and not overly mystical. I actually wouldn't mind some pseudo-scientific explanation of those: this is sci-fi, you are allowed.
The explanation for mecha and other stuff throughout is qi, which okay, is culturally relevant to me (yay representation) but it doesn't really get that much explication. (For that you need wuxia novels, I guess. Or at least a qigong manual.)
The twist at the end is - I wouldn't say it's predictable, but the entire set-up of the bookverse was working towards that, so I was surprised only at the form it took. Who watches Planet of the Apes these days without an ironic inner monologue, right? Probably because of two details that struck me as somewhat archaic: one, that Li Shimin had a kidney and part of liver removed as what, forced prisoner contribution to the people who require organ donations; and two, that the other male character apparently inherited over a billion yuan when his father got murdered. If your reaction to that is 'um, what?' - you're in the same headspace as me.
(It's a bit like Fifty Shades of Grey - which I really have not read - telling me that the height of mogul-like wealth, that the symbol of the 1% is... a Rolex. Maybe even a diamond-encrusted Rolex. I'm... whatever. Whatever happened to Vacheron Constantin, right?)
So I had a sense throughout that really, if this is really the world that they live in, this is such a made-up detail. Details. Even if it's sci-fi. Maybe Zhao signals it (not deliberately, maybe) by the way their own protagonist makes use of media exposure and social media (as though this is the early 21st century) as their own form of theatre, encouraging celebrity worship (bit of Hunger Games? I only watched the first movie) in order to gain power. Layers of theatre upon theatre, lies upon lies... one could hardly be surprised to find that the basis of their world is also made-up.
Not that that's bad plotting, or bad story-telling. It's just a feature of a story that sets out to tell this sort of story. It was a good surprise, but it wasn't a world-turning surprise. (But Qin Zheng was pretty cool - I guess the sequel will have more of him.)
I was a tiny bit disappointed. I wanted it to be like Joy of Life, where it's fun to think about our planet still here, but in a flipped incarnation, so as to speak.
Anyways. That bookverse. I enjoyed the rage and justifiable (and extreme) violence. I loved how Wu Zetian said all the things I'd always wanted a female protagonist to say, in the face of all this crappy sexist and classist and racist shit that our current world throws at us (of course one aspect of sci-fi is to highlight our own world's failings) and doesn't care for decorum, doesn't care to 'keep the peace' and doesn't care to 'see both sides' because there is already so much injustice pushing her down and she's going to get what she wants, instead.
Yah, so that was satisfying. But I'm already kinda jaded with sexist and classist and racist portrayals of the world, especially when the sexist shit is so familiar that it's already like listening to my grandma - or a dozen soap-dramas. So that felt unimaginative. It felt like playing a shooting game on easy setting: every corner of the universe is an injustice to take aim at. Granted, Wu Zetian gets that subtlety later, but she'd have to, she's intelligent enough to see it, once the opportunity.
I will just make another comment that using the names of historical figures for the characters is at once a masterstroke because it gives a character set-up right away (even if it is meant to be historically inaccurate) - again, very much like gaming - and also a little bit cartoony. Is it lazy characterisation or just very, very ironic? I can't decide.
I'm not just saying this because I love Li Shimin (the historical character, heh. 'specially because he killed his brothers). I mean, Chinese history is full of kings murdering their brothers for power, how different is this? Don't get the moral outrage in-book.
Well, this has gone longer than I expected. Summary: It was a thrill-ride of a book, I enjoyed reading it and rec it.
Edited to correct pronouns; thanks for the heads-up,dhampyresa
Um... my chief takeaway from this book is that I needed to get a copy of 山海经, Classic of Mountains and Seas, stat, because all the chapters opened with a description of a mythical creature from it.
Ok, being serious now. Of course I've always liked mecha (my first love Gundam! Evangelion, not that much) or I'd not have read this. And the book fulfills that part very nicely, although... aiyaya the bookverse.
I do like the protagonist, how vengeful and violent and driven she is. I get the rage about being female and being seen as less than important and being only regarded as a baby-making machine or a servant, and a big part of the plot is underpinned by the utter unfairness and illogic of subjugating one half of the population, to the point of seeing their lives as disposable. So if you start from that basis, and you have the protagonist who is motivated, first for revenge and later for survival/dominance and then adding to that justice for the victimised, the flow of the plot is pretty much works out for me and is a thrilling ride all the way through. She starts out angry at the world and at the end has even more anger, except it's more layered and even more ambitious which is also really satisfying.
Book itself is meticulously edited - this is not a criticism of Zhao's writing; just that their strength is in (mecha) action and believably defiant and furious characters. I did shout out "whom!" a couple of times but that's just me, pedantic. Pacing doesn't drag and maybe rushes a smidgen, but a pleasure over narratives that inexplicably have in-your-face characters slow down to do some good deed, do prolonged soul-searching or admire the scenery. The dream-like sequences are good, and not overly mystical. I actually wouldn't mind some pseudo-scientific explanation of those: this is sci-fi, you are allowed.
The explanation for mecha and other stuff throughout is qi, which okay, is culturally relevant to me (yay representation) but it doesn't really get that much explication. (For that you need wuxia novels, I guess. Or at least a qigong manual.)
The twist at the end is - I wouldn't say it's predictable, but the entire set-up of the bookverse was working towards that, so I was surprised only at the form it took. Who watches Planet of the Apes these days without an ironic inner monologue, right? Probably because of two details that struck me as somewhat archaic: one, that Li Shimin had a kidney and part of liver removed as what, forced prisoner contribution to the people who require organ donations; and two, that the other male character apparently inherited over a billion yuan when his father got murdered. If your reaction to that is 'um, what?' - you're in the same headspace as me.
(It's a bit like Fifty Shades of Grey - which I really have not read - telling me that the height of mogul-like wealth, that the symbol of the 1% is... a Rolex. Maybe even a diamond-encrusted Rolex. I'm... whatever. Whatever happened to Vacheron Constantin, right?)
So I had a sense throughout that really, if this is really the world that they live in, this is such a made-up detail. Details. Even if it's sci-fi. Maybe Zhao signals it (not deliberately, maybe) by the way their own protagonist makes use of media exposure and social media (as though this is the early 21st century) as their own form of theatre, encouraging celebrity worship (bit of Hunger Games? I only watched the first movie) in order to gain power. Layers of theatre upon theatre, lies upon lies... one could hardly be surprised to find that the basis of their world is also made-up.
Not that that's bad plotting, or bad story-telling. It's just a feature of a story that sets out to tell this sort of story. It was a good surprise, but it wasn't a world-turning surprise. (But Qin Zheng was pretty cool - I guess the sequel will have more of him.)
I was a tiny bit disappointed. I wanted it to be like Joy of Life, where it's fun to think about our planet still here, but in a flipped incarnation, so as to speak.
Anyways. That bookverse. I enjoyed the rage and justifiable (and extreme) violence. I loved how Wu Zetian said all the things I'd always wanted a female protagonist to say, in the face of all this crappy sexist and classist and racist shit that our current world throws at us (of course one aspect of sci-fi is to highlight our own world's failings) and doesn't care for decorum, doesn't care to 'keep the peace' and doesn't care to 'see both sides' because there is already so much injustice pushing her down and she's going to get what she wants, instead.
Yah, so that was satisfying. But I'm already kinda jaded with sexist and classist and racist portrayals of the world, especially when the sexist shit is so familiar that it's already like listening to my grandma - or a dozen soap-dramas. So that felt unimaginative. It felt like playing a shooting game on easy setting: every corner of the universe is an injustice to take aim at. Granted, Wu Zetian gets that subtlety later, but she'd have to, she's intelligent enough to see it, once the opportunity.
I will just make another comment that using the names of historical figures for the characters is at once a masterstroke because it gives a character set-up right away (even if it is meant to be historically inaccurate) - again, very much like gaming - and also a little bit cartoony. Is it lazy characterisation or just very, very ironic? I can't decide.
I'm not just saying this because I love Li Shimin (the historical character, heh. 'specially because he killed his brothers). I mean, Chinese history is full of kings murdering their brothers for power, how different is this? Don't get the moral outrage in-book.
Well, this has gone longer than I expected. Summary: It was a thrill-ride of a book, I enjoyed reading it and rec it.
Edited to correct pronouns; thanks for the heads-up,
dhampyresa
no subject
Date: 2021-09-29 08:03 pm (UTC)FWIW, the Penguin Classics translation of 山海经 is decent. Not brilliant prose, but it does serve you the critters. (I got nowhere with the original -- Han prose is even more obscure than Tang, and I'm ass at that.)
no subject
Date: 2021-10-01 12:21 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-10-01 03:23 am (UTC)ETA: Wait, I just noticed -- Wu Zetian *and* Li Shimin/Taizong are both characters? Now I rilly want this.
no subject
Date: 2021-09-30 02:39 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-10-01 12:22 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-10-01 10:28 pm (UTC)I'll admit that this is a big thing stopping me from reading this book. Idk how to feel about this either.
Xiran Jay Zhao's pronoun is they, btw.
no subject
Date: 2021-10-04 01:32 pm (UTC)I think the use of names from historical characters has the feel of fanfic (or just because I'm fanfic-focused) but in a mildly OOC way, i.e. Wu Zetian is a strong character who wants to be ruler in a patriarchal, male-dominated world (so, just like her historical counterpart) but her encounters in IW are not like history at all. It's not historical fanfic either. And I dunno why one of Wu Zetian's trainers is called Sima Yi since the historical Sima Yi is from Three Kingdoms and you could simply give him another name... I guess that it provides Zhao with inspiration?