Iron Widow is a 2021 science fantasy novel by New York Times best-selling author Xiran Jay Zhao that reimagines China’s only female empress, Wu Zetian, as a peasant girl bent on revenge in a futuristic dystopia based on Chinese culture. In this novel, the nation of Huaxia is beset by giant, metallic alien invaders known as Hunduns. The only way to fight Hunduns is to engineer their corpses into giant mecha-robots known as Chrysalises, which are then piloted via a two-person system: one girl and one boy. Because Huaxian culture is severely misogynistic and excludes women from all aspects of public and economic life, the female pilots of the Chrysalises are frequently killed in battle, as their only function is to be a battery for the male pilots.

Zhao reimagines the iconic figure of Wu Zetian as a peasant girl living on the frontiers of Huaxia. When her big sister Ruyi dies under mysterious circumstances as a concubine-pilot for Huaxia’s top male pilot, she plans to kill the man who murdered her sister. Wu Zetian’s revenge scheme embroils her in the internal politics of Huaxia and its piloting system, where she defies every convention of her sexist society and rises to power with the help of her two love interests. Iron Widow deals with themes of Resisting Oppression and Patriarchy, The Cost of Revenge, and Gender and Sexuality While Coming of Age. The novel is also a popular read on BookTok, a community of readers and book content creators on TikTok.

Content Warning: Iron Widow depicts suicidal ideation, mentions and threats of sexual assault, substance abuse, excessive use of alcohol, misogyny, gendered acts of violence, discussions of sexual purity and sexual shame, sex, and mentions of imperialism and genocide.

This guide uses the e-book version of the 2021 Penguin Teen edition.

Plot Summary

Huaxia is a country beset on all sides by alien invaders called the Hunduns: giant metallic creatures that resemble round beetles without faces. Two centuries ago, the Zhou province fell to a Hundun counterattack on humans because the legendary Yellow Dragon pilot, Qin Zheng, contracted a fatal disease and left the region undefended. Zheng, a master pilot surpassing all others, hid himself and the Yellow Dragon in a volcano in the Zhou province and entered a qi-induced stasis, hoping that somebody would bring him a cure for his illness one day.

Now, Huaxia is ruled by a council of Sages, a group of men who pass down decrees from the Heavenly Council, which is composed of an enigmatic group of “gods” who orbit the planet in a spacecraft. In order to survive the Hunduns, the people of Huaxia offer up Hundun corpses to the gods, who in turn gift them with schematics to create Chrysalises, giant magical robots crafted out of the spirit metal of Hundun corpses. This spirit metal is incredibly malleable and easily manipulated by people with strong spirit pressures, a measure of how well they can exert their qi. Unknown to all Huaxians except the highest-ranking Sages, Huaxia is a colony of foreign invaders, and the Heavenly Council is the government that oversees the colony on the Hunduns’ planet. The colony exists to kill and harvest Hunduns for the precious spirit metal, while the colonists are kept ignorant of the truth in order to turn them against the Hunduns.

Huaxians employ the Chrysalises to fight the Hunduns using a two-pilot system in which one girl and one boy pilot a single vehicle. The boy sits in the yang seat, while the girl sits in the yin seat. Huaxia is an extremely misogynistic country where women are viewed as little more than tools; the vast majority of female pilots die within a few battles. Unbeknownst to most Huaxians, this is intentional. The yin seat is designed to limit the power of whoever sits in it and turn that person into a battery that is easily consumed by the pilot in the yang seat.

As Huaxia’s top pilot and commander of the Nine-Tailed Fox Chrysalis, Yang Guang enjoys celebrity status, and many young girls dream of becoming his concubine-pilot, a position that pays exceedingly well. Wu Zetian’s sister, Ruyi, is sold off as a concubine-pilot for Yang Guang and dies under mysterious circumstances, but because Ruyi was not a battlefield casualty, her family does not receive any compensation. Wu Zetian enlists as a concubine-pilot under Yang Guang so she can kill him, leaving a three-year relationship with her lover, Gao Yizhi, the son of the richest man in Huaxia, Gao Qiu.

Wu Zetian’s plans to kill Yang Guang go awry when she is forced to act as his copilot during a surprise attack. During the battle, she becomes trapped in Yang Guang’s mind-realm, a magical mental space that is an effect of the Chrysalis and reflects a pilot’s internal psyche and memories. Although the women in the yin seat often lose themselves in the other pilot’s mind-realm and die, Wu Zetian fights her way out of Yang Guang’s mind-realm, killing him and taking control of the Chrysalis.

Wu Zetian’s murder of Yang Guang and defiance of gender expectations is a serious crime that lands her in prison, where she learns that she is an Iron Widow, a woman who overpowers and kills her male copilot. Due to her strong spirit pressure and the vacuum left by Yang Guang’s death, Wu Zetian is forced to co-pilot with the Iron Demon, Li Shimin, a death row prisoner whose incredibly high spirit pressure has killed every single woman who pilots with him. During her first excursion with Shimin, the two discover that they are a Balanced Match. The army sends the pair to a special training camp along with two other Balanced Matches: the pilots of the White Tiger and the Black Tortoise. Zetian’s time at the camp leads to her attempted murder by one of the other pilots. Her lover Yizhi saves her from the attempted murder and finds his way back into her life.

Yizhi, Zetian, and Shimin grow closer together as Yizhi helps Shimin with his alcoholism and Zetian struggles to balance her love for Yizhi with her forced relationship with Shimin. After Shimin collapses from alcohol withdrawal, the trio learns that the military’s central command wants to get rid of the troublesome pair, and Zetian realizes that she will need allies to survive.

The attempts to eliminate the pair begin as another surprise Hundun attack occurs. Zetian is shot trying to escape and must pilot with Shimin while mortally wounded, and the pair turns to Yizhi to help them pilot the Chrysalis. Media clips of Yizhi joining the already infamous pilot pair cause a stir in the public, which leads Zetian to realize that she needs Yizhi’s father as an ally to boost her celebrity status and protect her from the military’s plot to eliminate her. Gao Qiu orchestrates photoshoots for the pilot pair and skyrockets them into the mainstream. The trio’s celebrity is further boosted when Zetian and Shimin undergo a Crown Matching to cement their position as a renegade pair within the system. Zetian grows more romantically involved with both boys while they each wrestle with their feelings about this unconventional love triangle.

Zetian uses her newfound status to push the idea of a counterattack on the lost Zhou province, the success of which she plans to use to compel the military to create an equitable pilot system. Before the counterattack, she realizes that something is wrong with the Chrysalis pilot seats. Highly suspicious, she, Yizhi, and Shimin kidnap An Lushan, a superior strategist and Shimin’s personal handler and tormentor, who confesses that the Chrysalises are intentionally rigged to kill the female pilots, thereby preserving the lives of the males. Zetian plans to broadcast this confession to the world immediately after the counterattack.

When the counterattack happens the next day, the Hunduns lure the Chrysalis pilots into a trap. In the chaos, the Black Tortoise pilots betray and attempt to eliminate Zetian and Shimin. Shimin sacrifices himself to save Zetian and Yizhi. A distraught Zetian leaves Yizhi with the White Tiger and searches for the Yellow Dragon. She meets nomads who lead her to his resting place. Armed with the long-awaited cure for his disease, she awakens Zheng and forces him to take the yin seat of the Yellow Dragon. Zetian is inconsolable with rage over Shimin’s death and kills the pilots of the Black Tortoise before she turns her attention on Chang’an, the capital city, where she destroys the Sages, kills her own family as collateral hostages taken by the army, and helps Yizhi to kill his father who tries to stop them. Zetian is left standing as the most powerful pilot with the most powerful Chrysalis in a Huaxia suddenly without a government.

In the aftermath, Zetian learns that Shimin’s body has disappeared from the battlefield. Meanwhile, Yizhi combs through the Sage’s documents and learns the truth about the Heavenly Council and Huaxia’s purpose as a colony meant to exploit the Indigenous Hunduns. Zetian receives a message from the Heavenly Council demanding that she continue their ruse and rule like the Sages did. She learns that the Heavenly Council has taken Shimin hostage and will return him alive and well if she does what they want. The tale will continue in the second book in Zhao’s series, Heavenly Tyrant.