“He should be the Iron King, and I should be the Iron Queen. Yet Iron Demon and Iron Widow is all they'll let us be.”

Absolutely here for the rise of unhinged female characters.

That being said... I have some mixed feelings on this.

Despite being set in an extremely bleak world, Iron Widow was extremely engaging and cathartic, with such interesting world-building and a very distinct main character. Unlike some books that fall into the trap of becoming unnecessarily complicated for the sake of being different, Iron Widow was both unique and simple, easy-to-follow while intriguing and leaving the reader wanting more.

As for my issues with it, some of them are personal and some of them I can't articulate. The one I will touch on is that I feel like this suffered because it was a YA novel. Perhaps that's just me, but I kept thinking it again and again. I feel like so many things were brushed over due to this being meant for a younger audience, which just meant that there was occasionally an extremely grim topic dealt with simplistically and almost... frivolously, rather than being expanded upon and fully ever dealt with. Some of the realizations Zetian comes to are made so quickly due to the fast-pacing and writing style, that it just feels... forced when it could have been even more impactful.

I'm not saying 12-18 year old's can't handle graphic or heavy topics; I'm simply saying that the tonal shift created a weird dissonance that pulled me out of the story.


While I have mixed feelings on this book overall, I did still enjoy it and I will be reading the sequel whenever it comes out.