Iron Widow

YA with giant mechs. Not something I have really read anything on, so an intriguing and enjoyable read! This was essentially a critique of the patriarchy inherent within military hierarchies so has a fascinating dose of gender politics included within it too.

The basic set up is that some (alien?) invasion has taken place and humanity is fighting to survive using salvages mechs to counter the hordes of invading alien ones. These mechs require 2 pilots, with a yin and a yang seat for a male and female pilot. However, this frequently ends up as the male pilot draining the female one to power the mech - essentially the female pilots are acting as sacrifices to power the robots - except in a few cases where a balanced mech results.

Our lead character is angry about this. Her sister was killed by a pilot (and outside of a mech so the family did not get the pay off for the sacrifice) and she is determined to avenge her. She volunteers to be a pilot to try and get close enough to avenge her sister, but this leads to unintended consequences.

One elephant in the room is the annoying love triangle that YA authors seem contractually obliged to include in every story. It is present in this story too. Fortunately the action outweighs the usual whiney teenage angst here, but I do wish some YA books would avoid this trope as it almost invariably makes books less enjoyable for me.

This was my last subscription book from illumicrate as I have now cancelled the subscription - I was getting too many doubles and have some changes to my life situation meaning I want to be more focused on my reading goals. That said, I went out on a high as this was genuinely an enjoyable read.