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!