Iron Widow

Iron Widow is a young adult science fantasy novel by the Canadian writer Xiran Jay Zhao, published in 2021. It reimagines the rise of Wu Zetian in mecha form, set in Huaxia, a version of medieval China equipped with future technology. In 2021 it received the BSFA award for younger readers' books, and it was nominated for two Locus Awards in 2022 and for the Lodestar Award.

Huaxia is at war with an alien swarm that only giant mecha can stop, and the mecha are flown by pairs whose shared psychic link burns one pilot out. It is usually the girl. Zetian trains for one reason: to get into a cockpit and kill the pilot responsible for her sister's death, and she does it in a way that leaves her alive and famous. That makes her an Iron Widow, a pilot who can use up her partner instead of the other way round.

The army has to pair her with someone it thinks can hold her, and it gives her Li Shimin, a pilot with his own history and his own reasons for being where he is. Neither of them intends to make the arrangement easy, and the pairing turns into a working relationship that the military command has not planned for. The war, the mecha and the system that decides whose life is expendable are all part of what she is fighting.

The series continues in Heavenly Tyrant, and the first book establishes Huaxia, the mecha, the piloting system and Zetian herself. It is a science fantasy told from her point of view, and it draws directly on the historical figure whose rise it reimagines.