Xiran Jay Zhao Books in Order

Xiran Jay Zhao is a Chinese Canadian writer and online creator whose science fiction and fantasy bring together Chinese history, mythology, pop culture, and a sharp interest in who gets power. They are a first-generation Hui Chinese immigrant who moved from a small town in China to Vancouver, Canada, while still young.

Growing up, Zhao was raised as much by the internet as by the places around them, a fact they mention with characteristic humor. That online life became part of their work: alongside fiction, they make educational videos and other media about Chinese history, culture, and the ways those subjects are used, or misused, in popular entertainment.

Their route into publishing was not a straight line. Zhao graduated from Simon Fraser University in Vancouver with a degree focused on biochemical disease research, just as the first COVID-19 wave made a normal job search difficult. Rather than follow the research career they had trained for, they put their energy into writing books and making online content.

That detour became the job.

Their debut novel, Iron Widow, arrived in 2021 and became a number-one New York Times bestseller. It imagines a future Huaxia where girls are treated as disposable co-pilots for giant fighting machines, then gives its furious heroine, Zetian, the power to refuse every rule meant to keep her in place. Readers who pick it up find a direct, fast-moving story about revenge, survival, and tearing into a system built to sacrifice young women.

Zhao returned to that world in Heavenly Tyrant, which follows Zetian into a more dangerous fight over political power and revolution. The sequel keeps the mecha scale and personal stakes of Iron Widow, but it also spends time on the hard work after a victory: compromise, responsibility, and the way a movement can change when it grows.

With Zachary Ying and the Dragon Emperor, their first middle-grade novel, Zhao shifts to a twelve-year-old gamer who must travel through China with the spirit of the First Emperor speaking from his headset. The book mixes magical artifacts, jokes, legends, and a child's growing understanding of heritage, friendship, and family.

The history is never just scenery.

Across these books, Zhao returns to people who are underestimated, boxed in by social roles, or caught between the stories they have inherited and the lives they want to make. They use fast plots, jokes, messy alliances, and large fantasy or science-fiction setups to explore identity, family, gender, class, and the cost of changing a system from inside it.

Zhao still works across books and the internet, and their videos are part of the same larger conversation rather than a separate sideline. Whether the subject is a historical figure, a myth, a robot battle, or a gaming headset, they like asking what gets lost when culture is flattened into a familiar stereotype. Their books have also been finalists for, or winners of, awards including the Nebula, BSFA, Locus, and Astounding.