When I first started reading this, I was sure it was going to be my next 5-star read because it gave me all the tingly and excited feelings I tend to get when I’m reading something I’ll love. TL DR: Well, I’ve finally read Iron Widow and I have very mixed feelings. Misogyny & femicide, rape (mentioned), sexual assault, physical & emotional abuse, suicidal ideation, alcoholism, blood & gore depiction, murder, torture She will miss no opportunity to leverage their combined might and infamy to survive attempt after attempt on her life, until she can figure out exactly why the pilot system works in its misogynist way-and stop more girls from being sacrificed.

But now that Zetian has had a taste of power, she will not cower so easily. To tame her unnerving yet invaluable mental strength, she is paired up with Li Shimin, the strongest and most controversial male pilot in Huaxia. She is labeled an Iron Widow, a much-feared and much-silenced kind of female pilot who can sacrifice boys to power up Chrysalises instead. But she gets her vengeance in a way nobody expected-she kills him through the psychic link between pilots and emerges from the cockpit unscathed. When 18-year-old Zetian offers herself up as a concubine-pilot, it’s to assassinate the ace male pilot responsible for her sister’s death. It doesn’t matter that the girls often die from the mental strain. The boys of Huaxia dream of pairing up with girls to pilot Chrysalises, giant transforming robots that can battle the mecha aliens that lurk beyond the Great Wall. Genre: Young Adult Science Fiction/Fantasy

Goodreads iron widow