An absolutely thrilling book yet again. 

This was book two of the Iron Widow trilogy. Itwas one of my most anticipated books at the end of 2024. I listened to the audiobook but so have the physical book. Let’s get to this!

**Page count/Audiobook length (at regular speed):** 521 pages/21 hours, 4 minutes 

**Spice scale:** 🌶️🌶️

**Age range:** New Adult, published under Young Adult

**Genres:** Romance, Sci-fi, dystopian 

**Trigger Warnings:** Listed in the book

**What I Liked:** So! The book continues to be in Zetian’s POV. Something I really enjoyed was the recap of Iron Widow told through the first few chapters while also introducing the concepts of Heavenly Tyrant. There is a wonderful cast of side characters, and we have a return of Yizhi and Sima Yi, though in very different roles than the first book. 

Zetian is an unreliable narrator which I tend to enjoy. 

I liked learning about Qin Zheng a lot through the book. The prologue and epilogue are both in his POV. The way the book ended makes me think book 3 will have Dual POV. Though the writing would have to change (Zetian is in first person, Qin Zheng is in third). Honestly, I think I would have preferred more of Qin Zheng’s POV to help me understand his insane epilogue. 

The book doesn’t exactly on a cliff hanger, but it leaves some questions I hope are addressed and built on in Book 3. 

**What I Didn’t Like:** While I loved Zetian in the first book, I spent the first half of Heavenly Tyrant disliking her and her brand of feminism. It read as a “I hate all men” more than a “women need to have their voices heard and be seen as equals”. Although she was hating on men in the first book, we came into the book knowing she was on a war path.

About midway through the book, I felt she was growing and I was waiting for the triumphant ending. What I got left a sour taste in my mouth. All that buildup that looked like growth spoiled and thrown aside.

This book lost points for a pregnancy/fake pregnancy trope. I almost DNFd it for that. The note about “reproductive coercion” in the beginning of the book did not give an accurate representation of what happened in the book. But this fake pregnancy seems to have led to the insanity of the epilogue so… We’ll see what Book 3 brings?

**Overall Opinion:** The only thing that saved this book from being a 3.5 star read was that I thoroughly enjoyed the side characters and I didn’t see all the various betrayals and plot devices coming. I’m building some theories for Book 3. I know Xiran Jay Zhao has posted on their socials that they wish this wasn’t published in YA. I think some stylizing in the book keeps it bordering YA, but even I would say New Adult/Adult versus YA would be more fitting for this book. But there are publishing politics to get behind

I do want to say, read the acknowledgements at the end of the book, don’t skip them. With the heavy playing of politics and revolution, especially in this charged climate we’re in, the note does a good job of explaining where they were coming from and why they chose the conflict types they did. They do acknowledge how problematic the politics and revolution in the book can be when trying to overlay it to our world and society. So definitely read that. 

I’m looking forward to Book 3, and hoping for a Dual POV because I just didn’t like Zetian in this book

If you thought Iron Widow was action-packed, then this will not disappoint. You get a front row seat to the revolution, one that’s led by what should be a long dead emperor. The righteous anger for those with less is woven throughout. A firestorm of retaliation of the old regime and the hiccups and false starts of a new ruling class future. One that’s led empowers women in a way that didn’t before. 

The violence that was a constant with Iron Widow is just as strong in Heavenly Tyrant. It’s casual and brutal and not altogether unwelcome. The political intrigue is thick, double and triple crossings. You don’t know who to trust and what version of reality is being presented. You can’t help but like the emperor only for two pages later to hate him again. It’s masterful the world Zhao weaves into what it must be like living day to day with no one to truly trust. 

Whatever it is you think is going to happen, you’ll be wrong. Whatever you think you knew will be wrong. What you will be left with is a hell of a cliffhanger! 

I was sooooooo excited to get my hands on this book, and it did not disappoint!!
Zetian continued to live up a morally gray character I can enjoy. I also really enjoyed the nuance the author gave what an active economic revolution could be in a fantasy setting.
15/10 recommend to anyone who enjoys fantasy/sci-fi and an extremely morally gray cast!

The safe word being Private Property 🤣🤣🤣🤣

What a let-down this sequel has been. While I love Iron Widow and have reread it several times, Heavenly Tyrant lacks everything I loved about the first book. 

The pace is so terribly slow. It feels like almost nothing happens for the first 400 pages. It goes into way too much detail about setting up this revolution, which goes at a snail’s pace, and frankly the author could have covered the same length of time in way fewer pages. By contrast, most of the story happens in the last 100 pages or so, and that part of the story would have deserved more pages, as it was kind of a letdown in itself for being this much-hyped big showdown…. That fizzled out and got resolved so easily. I hope book three makes up for that. 

Almost all the characters in this sequel are quite unlikeable, most shockingly the ones that I loved in the previous book. Zetian has always been a flawed main character, but the determination that made her inspiring in Iron Widow almost disappears in this book. She doesn’t seem to try to fight any part of her current situation, although she laments it throughout the book.

And while she grieves Shimin, she doesn’t seem saddened to be separated from Yizhi at all. Yizhi, for his part, is very absent, and the little we see of him for most of the book is hateful, until the almost very end.

And of course Qin Zheng is very unlikeable as well for most of the book, and when we think he’s starting to have redeeming qualities, the epilogue shatters it all. 

A frankly puzzling, frustrating, slog of a sequel. Such a disappointment!