The Iron Widow by Xiran Jay Zhao. Think Neon Genesis Evangelion X Female Rage X Chinese History. It's by no means a perfect book, but it's entertaining, the premise is very interesting and the character work is quite good!

But those movies simply weren't good.

Wikipedia even states that Strange World partly bombed because of poor word-of-mouth (which I definitely believe). And Wish got video essays and articles en masse about how it didn't deliver.