Heavenly Tyrant - Xiran Jay Zhao (Book Review)

4.25 Stars on StoryGraph

Heavenly Tyrant is the sequel to Xiran Jay Zhao’s 2021 book Iron Widow. It’s been a long wait for this book. This series is a sci-fi book that takes some inspiration from Chinese history including Wu Zetian, the only female emperor of China, the practice of lotus feet, and cultural revolutions.

A subtle theme of this book is body autonomy. As we learnt in Iron Widow, Zetian’s feet are broken and bound at only five years old so that she has lotus feet. This is something that hinders her mobility throughout Iron Widow and causes her a lot of pain. After waking up after the ending of Iron Widow, Zetian finds that while she was unconscious Qin Zheng had her under go a surgery to correct her lotus feet to be normal. While it is likely that had the option been presented to Zetian she would have said yes to it, this is the first time that Qin Zheng ignores and/or manipulates Zetian’s bodily autonomy. As Heavenly Tyrant progresses, Qin Zheng’s breaches of Zetian’s body autonomy can be quite distressing.

The surgery is also not a cure-all for Zetian’s disability or chronic pain. Her lotus feet caused her pain and were prone to infection. She would often use a cane or wheelchair to get around which gives her some ability to get around by herself. She remarks that while the surgery gives her less pain, she guesses that she’ll always feel some level of pain in her legs. She also continues to use mobility devices to get around. This is actually some great disability representation and takes a wild left turn from tropes seen in other sci-fi media wherein surgery/chips/makeovers make the disabled main character completely abled with no hint of their time spent with a disability.

If Iron Widow establishes Zetian as impulsive and determined, then Heavenly Tyrant shows how these two attributes combine and evolve. The decision to kill the Sages at the end of Iron Widow and declare herself emperoress was impulsive. This impulsiveness leads to quick adaptation. When Zetian realises that she needs something of her own in order to be remember in history as more than just Qin Zheng’s emperoress, she quickly establishes the Phoenix Foundation - a group dedicated to helping women. This helps her towards her goal of making life better and easier to women, something that has motivated Zetian since Iron Widow. The Phoenix Foundation is also a calculated power move as well. By establishing it, Zetian is establishing her own power base. Zetian needs a power base in order to counter Qin Zheng’s if she ever makes moves against him.

Overall, I really enjoyed reading Heavenly Tyrant. It plays with many themes including radicalism, body autonomy, intersectionality, and power dynamics. While the content can be quite brutal (after all, there is still a war going on in Zetian’s world), Heavenly Tyrant is a well deserved sequel to Iron Widow. I can’t wait to see where a third book would take us.