What initially drew me to this book was its unique premise. Zetian, desperate to not let go of this newfound power, is now forced to accumulate even more infamy in the public eye to narrowly escape attacks against her life and possibly free the girls of Huaxia from the systems of oppression that kill them. No female pilot has ever survived in a Chrysallis with him. As punishment from the government, she’s paired with Li Shimin, a prisoner locked up for the murder of his family, and the strongest male pilot in the country. She’s branded an Iron Widow, a female pilot who is able to sacrifice boys to power the Chrysalises instead of the other way around. However, Zetian surprises Huaxia by not killing the pilot in his sleep as she expected but draining his life force via psychic link in the cockpit of a Chrysalis. At the beginning of the book, Zetian receives news that her sister, a former “concubine pilot,” was killed and offers herself up to the pilot system in hopes of assassinating the man who was responsible for her death.

The stage is set for 18-year-old Wu Zetian, a girl from the countryside and a historical reimagining of the only female empress of China.

Male pilots are revered in Huaxia as celebrities while their female counterparts are often reduced to human batteries and are ultimately killed in the process of controlling the Chrysalises. Large, superpowered mechas called Chrysallises are built out of Hundun husks and are controlled by pairs of male and female pilots. The Iron Widow is set in an alternate medieval China called Huaxia that’s plagued by deadly aliens called Hunduns.

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