Heavenly Tyrant trades the blisteringly fast pace and humor of Iron Widow for a story with a wider political scope, that sometimes struggles under juggling the weight of its philosophical questions about how to best overthrow capitalism with the sci-fi plot twist at the end of the first book.

I see why this one kept getting delayed; even with the extra page count over Iron Widow it feels kind of compressed (especially with the tentative resolution of many plot points around the 75% mark as the book started laying the groundwork for the next one). I'm so glad that one of my major criticisms of the previous book has been addressed and Zetian now has female friends and allies, but the process of actually becoming friends feels squeezed for time over how much the book focuses on pros and cons of communism. Sexism is still a major theme of this book and I like the way it was handled, even if we have yet to have a true resolution here. It's not that the previous book wasn't political, but this one is extremely overt with its discussions of the class struggle and the mirroring of atrocities committed by  real-world communist governments. I think that's why I'm struggling so much with reviewing it... there wasn't enough concrete resolution of a lot of the "revolution" plotline for me to know how I feel about this book, and I'm going to need the series to finish before I can form a solid opinion on it. 

I have no idea how Zhao will wrap any of this up in one more book. Both the "smaller" plotline concerning Huaxia and the broader scope seem like they'll need way more space than just one book to resolve.