What ? Yes ! There are a lot of challenging elements packed into Iron Widow , as this brief synopsis further suggests : “ Iron Widow is a YA Pacific Rim meets The Handmaid ’s Tale recite of the raise of Wu Zetian , the only female emperor moth in Chinese story . The duology will follow an 18 - year - erstwhile re - imagining of her as she avenges her babe ’s murder by an intensely patriarchal military system that pairs boys and girl up to pilot elephantine sorcerous mecha based on creatures from East Asian myth ( Nine - dog Fox , Moon Rabbit , etc . ) , but in which boy pilots are treated like celebrities , while lady friend fender must serve as their concubines . ”
Here ’s a look at the full covering ; the artwork is by Ashley Mackenzie and the design is by Terri Nimmo from Penguin Random House Canada .
Here ’s a first look at the opening chapter of Iron Widow !
A crop of the cover of Iron Widow.Image: Penguin Teen
Chapter One : A Butterfly That Better Not Be My Dead babe
For eighteen years , my unibrow has deliver me from being sell into a terrible , terrifying demise .
Today is the day I ’m unblock it from its courteous service .
Image: Penguin Teen
Well , I ’m not doing it . Yizhi is the one man the tweezers my sister give behind . kneel on the bamboo mat diffuse beneath us over the damp forest soil , he lifts my chin while rip out bristle after bristle . My cutis burn as if it ’s slow incinerating . The ink - calamitous streamlet of his half - up tomentum swosh over his pallid silk robes as he plucks . My own fuzz , way more matted and parched than his , posture in a messy bun under a tattered shred . Though the tabloid smells like soil , it keeps the isolated strand out of my human face .
I ’ve been trying to act nonchalant . But I make the mistake of gazing at Yizhi ’s gentle , focused feature of speech for too long , wanting to inscribe them in my mind so I ’ll have something to hold on to in the last days of my liveliness . My stomach pull , and hot pressure surges into my optic . essay to squint the tears back only break them spare down the side of my nozzle — in earnest , that never works .
Of naturally , Yizhi notices . Stops everything to hold in what ’s unseasonable , even though he has no reason to trust it ’s anything more than a response to the assault on my stoma .
Even though he has no idea this is the last time we ’ll see each other .
“ You all right , Zetian ? ” he whispers , tweeze hired hand set aside in a gossamer swirl of humidity from the waterfall not far from our hiding place . The rushing brook beside the low - growing Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree we ’re cower under drowns his voice from anyone who might discover us .
“ I for sure wo n’t be if you keep take breaks . ” I roll my swollen eyes . “ Come on . Just let me power through . ”
“ Right . Okay . ” His frown flip into a grin that almost breaks me . He dry out my oculus with his fancy silk gown sleeves , then gathers them back near his elbows . They ’re productive - multitude sleeves , too recollective and floppy to be hard-nosed . I make fun of them every clip he visits . Though , to be fair , it ’s not his fracture his father does n’t let him and his twenty - seven sibling leave their estate in anything not luxury - branded .
Lucid sunlight , freshly breach after days of pelting , swarm down in shafts through our secret world of damp heat and swaying leave . A patchwork of light and tincture dapples his pallid forearm . The bursting green odor of springtime presses against us , rich enough to taste . His knees — he even baby-sit in a prim and proper kneel — keep a lilliputian yet insuperable distance from my carelessly fold pegleg . His graphic designer silk robes contrast absurdly with the weathered indentation of my place - spun tunica and trouser . Until I meet him , I had no idea cloth could be that white-hot or smooth .
He pluck faster . It really does hurt , like my eyebrow is a living animal being frayed bit by morsel into two , so if I tear up again , it should n’t be suspicious .
I wish I did n’t have to require him in this , but I make out that , past a certain point , it would be too painful to confront my reflexion and do it myself . All I would see is my swelled sister , Ruyi . Without the overgrown hair’s-breadth that have keep my marketplace value low , I ’ll wait so much like she did .
Plus , I do n’t trust myself to landscape two matching brows out of the entity I ’ve got . And how am I supposed to sign up for my dying if my eyebrow are uneven ?
I distract myself from the whip ache by scrolling on the luminous tablet in Yizhi ’s lap , reading the bank note he ’s taken in schoolhouse since he visited me last month . Each tap feels more scan- dalous than being alone with him on a frontier mountain , shrouded by verdure and spring heat , breathing the same thick eddies of earthy , uplift tune . My hamlet elder say girl should n’t adjoin these heavenly machine , because we would violate them with , I do n’t have sex , our wicked femaleness or something . Only thanks to the deity in the sky was technology like these tablet remodel after humanity ’s lost years of cowering from the Hunduns . But I do n’t care how indebted I am to the elder or the gods . If they do n’t prize me just because I ’m from the “ wrong ” half of the population , I ’m not respecting them back .
The covert glows like the moon against Yizhi ’s leaf - shade robe , lure me with cognition I ’m not supposed to have , knowledge from beyond my paltry mountain village . art . Sciences . Hunduns . Chrysalises . My finger rub to impart the lozenge nearer , though neither it nor I can move — a cone cell of neon visible light is spilling from an indentation on the machine , projecting the mathematically ideal brows for me onto my face . Yizhi and his dazzling city gadgets never disappoint . He whip this up simple mo after I lied about my family giving me a “ final warning ” regarding the unibrow .
I wonder how much he ’ll hate me after he find out what he ’s really help me do .
A droplet shivers out of the offset over our heads . It skim over his boldness . He ’s so soak up he does n’t notice . With a curl knuckle joint , I sweep away the wet dash on his expression .
His eyes galvanise wide . Color blooms into his baby , almost translucent skin .
I ca n’t facilitate but grin . become my manus to affect him with the pad of my finger rather , I wink . “ Oh , my . Are my novel eyebrows already resistless ? ”
Yizhi breaks into a tatty than usual laugh , then smacks his fingers over his mouth and glances around , even though we ’re decently hidden .
“ block it , ” he say , quieter , laughter turning feather - light . He ducks off from my gaze . “ permit me work . ”
The uprise , undeniable heating plant in his cheeks sear me with a instant of guilt .
tell apart him , my mind plead .
Excerpted from Iron Widow by Xiran Jay Zhao . textual matter Copyright © 2021 Xiran Zhao . Published by Penguin Teen , an imprint of Random House Canada Young Readers , a division of Penguin Random House Canada Limited . reproduce by organization with the Publisher . All rights reserve .
Xiran Jay Zhao ’s Iron Widow is out September 21 , and you could pre - order a copyhere .
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