Heavenly Tyrant by Xiran Jay Zhao

I read Xiran Jay Zhao's Iron Widow back in 2022, when it was a finalist for the Lodestar Award for Best Young Adult Book. I ended up ranking it second, writing, "The narrative voice is distinct and clear, the turns of the plot are gripping, the exploration of gender roles is interesting and critical without being obvious, the worldbuilding is excellent." I was into it that I would have read the sequel... if I had known it came out, which it finally did in late 2024. But then I saw Heavenly Tyrant as an offering through LibraryThing's EarlyReviewers program and figured it was worth the punt.

Heavenly Tyrant by Xiran Jay Zhao

Published: 2024
Acquired: January 2025
Read: February 2025

As I started reading, I realized my memory of the first book was pretty vague. I remembered the set-up, that the main character was kind of a mecha pilot battling kaiju, and that her world had a lot of misogyny. What I didn't remember was the actual plot, that the first book ended with her declaring herself empress but also a long-dead but revered emperor coming out of suspended animation. But the way Zhao opens this novel lets you fill in the backstory pretty quickly. I don't know if I'd go so far as to say it would work for someone who hadn't read the first, but it does work pretty well for someone who doesn't remember the first.

The book is very interesting, because the emphasis doesn't really fall on being a mecha pilot and battling kaiju at all. I don't remember the first book well enough to know where I expected the story to go next, but I doubt it was in the direction it did. After waking up from her injuries, Zetian, the main character, finds that she is still empress... but only in the sense that she's now betrothed to Qin Zheng, the resurrected emperor, who's seized control of the government. But Qin Zheng is no ordinary tyrant; he actually turns out to have been (unmentioned in the history books) a "laborist," basically this world's equivalent of socialism, devoted to removing power from capitalist oligarchs and returning it to the people. So while on the one hand Zetian has to navigate what Qin Zheng's intentions toward her might be, she is also working alongside him to bring about the revolution for ordinary people that might also give women the freedom and independence they deserve. There's a lot here about how to build and maintain power in a revolution, about how to use catastrophic violence ethically in pursuit of a greater good, one of the ideas I find most fascinating in science fiction, and it's all done fairly well.

I was less into the relationship between Zetian and Qin Zheng. At times, it seems like we're supposed to take it as Zetian is genuinely afraid of Qin Zheng and the power he has over her... at others, her "defiance" is more like flirtatious banter, not motivated by fear. That said, there were still some effective twists and turns, and I ended up being drawn into it in the long run even if always a bit skeptical of it.

The novel's climax is weird—one subplot throughout the whole book is about Qin Zheng wanting to confront the "gods" that rule their world, and then they finally do it. There's a lot of exposition, and it suddenly feels like you're reading a very different book to the one you were reading. But there's going to be a third Iron Widow book (at least), and I am willing to reserve judgment until I see how this all plays out there. Zhao is an inventive writer who does interesting things I wouldn't expect, and I am along for the ride.