“Don’t you get it? You are to me what the gods were to you. I can’t breathe freely as long as you live!” - Zetian, Heavenly Tyrants
This book. 
This book, y’all. 
I laughed, I cried, I screamed, and I’m pretty sure the ending made me loose my mind. 
I don’t even know how to write a review of this book without spoiling it, so this review will probably be somewhat different than most of my others. 
We were warned that this book is very different from Iron Widow, and that is correct. Iron Widow is very much a girl power fantasy, and it is glorious in its fire. This book takes time to look at the details of what liberation, equality, and strength looks like, both on a small scale, personal level and on a broader, societal level.
Zetian continues to be everything I love in a heroine. She is broken, confused, and struggles, but bold enough to face her own established ideas and with a strength and fire to propel her forward. I loved watching her struggle with her ethics throughout the story as she wrestles with what it means to have equality as a woman and how to maintain her own autonomy within a relationship and a society that is constantly trying to take it from her.
Qin Zheng. I hate him. He’s very well written, but I still hate him. He’s the perfect example of a leftist man who doesn’t understand how those politics apply to his relationship with his wife (or women in general). He’s smart and charismatic and yet has gaping blind spots, primarily in his careless treatment of Zetian’s autonomy. If I see him, it’s on sight. 
Yizhi is the most complex character in this book, and that made me like him even more, although I spent solidly 90% of the book wanting to strangle him. His politican side comes out in this book, both for good and evil, and it leads to a lot of horrid decisions but also some very smart ones. 
Shimin, my poor baby. I refuse to believe that you’re gone. 
My favorite part of this book is that the relationships focus so much on Zetian making good friends. So many heroines don’t have women around them, and this book changes that for Zetian, bringing some of my favorite side characters- Wan’er and Taiping particularly.