Hello, everyone! Today I’m reviewing Heavenly Tyrant by Xiran Jay Zhao. This sequel to Iron Widow has been long awaited, and it was finally released back in December. Was it worth the wait? Read on to find out my thoughts!

After suffering devastating loss and making drastic decisions, Zetian finds herself at the seat of power in Huaxia. But she has also learned that her world is not as it seems, and revelations about an enemy more daunting than Zetian imagined forces her to share power with a dangerous man she cannot simply depose. Despite having vastly different ideas about how they must deconstruct the corrupt and misogynist system that plagues their country, Zetian must join this man in a dance of truth and lies and perform their roles to perfection in order to take down their common enemy, who seeks to control them as puppets while dangling one of Zetian’s loved ones as a hostage.

With political unrest and perilous forces aiming to undermine Zetian at every turn, can she enact positive changes as a fair and just ruler? Or will she be forced to rely on fear and violence and succumb to her darker instincts in her quest for vengeance?

I’m going to be blunt about this one. Heavenly Tyrant kind of sucked. It doubled down on many of the things I didn’t like about the first book. The pacing was off, and the book was way too long. The middle of the story seemed to drag on forever with its focus on political intrigue that wasn’t intriguing and character dynamics I didn’t care about. I’m just really disappointed.

Heavenly Tyrant tackled some interesting and important themes. Unfortunately, the author could definitely learn a thing or two about subtlety. The characters would go off on long rants about topics that sounded like they were picked straight out of a contemporary news bulletin. It just felt out of place and incredibly preachy. This was a problem for me in the first book, too, but it was worse in this sequel. The writing made it feel like the author was just using the characters as thinly veiled avatars for their philosophical and political musings.

There was much less action in Heavenly Tyrant. A few battles took place here and there, and the end did have plenty of fight sequences. However, the focus of the story shifted much more to Zetian trying to figure out how to rule the country after the mess she made of it at the end of the first book. The political intrigue element was so promising, but it just fell flat for me. Once again, there was just too much focus on the rants and not enough insight into the politics of it all. The politics basically boiled down to arrest or kill anyone who doesn’t agree.

It didn’t help that there were massive shifts in the character dynamics for Heavenly Tyrant. I enjoyed the relationship between Zetian and her love interests in the first book. I actually wanted even more of them together than we got. Unfortunately, all of the older characters other than Zetian got sidelined in this sequel. This was done to make way for the revived emperor. His relationship with Zetian was super toxic. Even though he was actually an interesting character in his own right, I hated his relationship with Zetian, which made me kind of want him out of the picture. I did like the glimpses of his past, though. They added some depth to his character and made his motivations understandable.

Zetian still felt a little too flat for me in Heavenly Tyrant. I was hoping for a bigger shift in her mission and how she operated now that she had so much power. However, she was still mostly just consumed by rage and her impulsive nature. There were hints of growth in the plans she made for helping the women of her country. It just wasn’t enough to keep her character from feeling too stagnant.

Overall, Heavenly Tyrant wasn’t a great time for me. So many things about this book got on my nerves, especially the preachiness and Zetian’s toxic relationship with the emperor. I liked the overall plot of fighting back against ‘the gods,’ though. I just wish the story had been a bit tighter with more focus on the world of the characters and less rants that sounded like they could have come from the opinion section of a contemporary news publication. Therefore, I think my rating of 2.75 out of 5 stars is pretty generous for Heavenly Tyrant.

There you have it. My thoughts on Heavenly Tyrant by Xiran Jay Zhao. Have you read this sequel or its predecessor? What did you think? Were you happier with the direction of the series than me? Also, when did this become a series instead of a duology? Let me know your thoughts down in the comments!