/lit/ - Literature

>>19611286
I only read Iron Widow from the year 2021 and I enjoyed it because I'm a filthy degenerate who reads young adult books by women of color.
If /lit/ read any literary fiction this year, it was probably the Sally Rooney book or the Kazuo Ishiguro book.

Author's book profile image
https://xiranjayzhao.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/20200415_165724_mh1586996383180.jpg

DEBUTED AT #1!
Iron Widow has been on the Indie & New York Times bestseller lists for 5 weeks in a row now and every week I think about how it was widely rejected because publishers thought YA sci-fi couldn't sell
https://twitter.com/XiranJayZhao/status/1453507929659772929

Author book self-description video
https://www.tiktok.com/@xiranjayzhao/video/7018690351598701829

Bonus Summary for Weebs (their term):
Under siege by monsters beyond the Great Wall like that shitty Matt Damon movie, except the monsters are Cybertronian-like sentient machines, a society that has the fashion, social customs, and beliefs of Ancient China but futuristic tech fights back by pulling a Neon Genesis Evangelion and rebuilding their very invaders into giant mecha. A boy-girl pair in their teens, because of course they have to be teens, pilot the mecha Darling in the Franxx style, except in a much more sensible position (he hugs her from behind). Under command of human pilots, these mecha take on forms inspired by East Asian myth creatures and transform like Transformers through Digimon-esque evolution lines that get more humanoid as you go on. The pilots physically embody them, so it’s more Attack on Titan rules than Gundam. Oh, and they blast qi attacks, so the battles honestly read like a bunch of furries engaged in a Dragon Ball Z fight, and that’s no one’s fault but mine.

the absolute state of reading in 2021
>It’s been a weird journey, going from desperately trying to get people to read my writing to having people pay to read it
>Well, if you didn’t pay for this, that’s fine, but please leave me a rating and a review on Goodreads or Amazon, LOL.