This book was just okay for me. It is being marketed as an adult fantasy in the US and a YA fantasy in the UK. It definitely read more YA, and if I had know that I wouldn’t have requested the Netgalley arc.

I won’t go into a detailed synopsis because this book doesn’t really bring anything new to the table. It’s a pretty typical YA fantasy. There’s a girl with a special power and she falls for the enemy prince, but she also has a childhood best friend that could possibly become a love interest. That pretty much sums up the entire book. Not a lot happened, and the “enemies” fell for each other pretty quickly. I won’t be continuing the series.

I have to admit that what drew me in to this book was the gorgeous cover and its description. Reading the book was a different vibe entirely. If I could assign this book a color, it would be grey; it's all one volume, all one color, and repetitive to the point that I had to put it down about 60% of the way in. Nothing changes, the stakes aren't raised, everyone is just doing what they would usually do while stating on and on about the fragile peace or possible war. I also don't enjoy the "attraction to the oppressor" type love story, which is where this story seems to want to go.

You come into this story at the least interesting moment in the world's history! Give me a book about when the Romans first burst into this reality/plane of existence. The battles between science and magic! Without having any attachment to this universe, caring about anything that is going on in this book is very difficult - the writing implies that everything that will happen is already in motion, it made me feel like everyone involved was swimming against the current of the inevitable.

A lack of investment in the characters, the bland world-building, and the boring story were all reasons that I chose to place this title on my "Did Not Finish" shelf. It's a shame, that cover was very enticing and promising.

This book had so much potential when I read the synopsis I was so excited to have received the arc… but it didn’t live up to expectations due to two big reasons for me. First was the opian (opium) there was a lot of talk about addiction and how deadly it is.. I related to Ryuang a lot because I have a sister who was an addict and I know how hard that is but the fact there was no warnings about the drug addiction was a turn off for me. So if that’s a trigger for you now you are aware.. and second the colonizer/colonized relationship was an ick for me. Antony who is a Roman prince has so much power over Ryuang and has threatened to harm her family if she doesn’t do what he wants.. I wish there was no romance in this book that would have made it better rather than this almost Stockholm syndrome budding relationship.

Anything featuring Asian characters with a romantasy element instantly makes it to the top of my list of everything.

It has been a long time since I've been this confused about how to evaluate a book. I'm usually able to emerge out of a read with a clear rating like 99% of the time. This book is that 1%.
The ambiguity is mainly because I devoured this book so fast and I couldn't stop reading, but when you think about it after the fact, some things start popping up that are a bit of a question.

Touching on some of the good stuff, I loved the concept of this. There's so much potential with this plot, and the world-building was good enough that there will be plenty of material to continue with this series. Ruying wasn't the most likable main character, but I think that was the intention (morally grey boss women, yes), and the use of her power as a weapon was interesting to see develop. She made some questionable choices in this book, but I liked seeing her navigate the circumstances she was thrown into, while protecting her people from back home.

Her relationship with Antony was something I actually really liked throughout the book. Until the plot twist at the end, I thought they had a steady partnership that had grown into mutual care and protection, and I always enjoy the villain arc that Antony loosely fit into. I was eating up the way their dynamic was evolving, until I started to touch upon the fact that this was very resembling of romanticization of colonialism. A lot of the reviews with this book pointed out the clear power struggle here, because Antony wasn't just someone on the opposite side, he was in a ruling position. Direct colonization of Ruying's people. And he continues to exercise this even with Ruying by his side, using her own powers. The line there is so ambiguous that I'm not sure how to interpret that relationship and how it might build in the next books in this series.

I also didn't quite understand the existence of Ruying's sister to the story. She only showed up for one scene towards the end to badger Ruying about her choices. That didn't end up hindering Ruying at all, honestly, and the shift only happened when she saw everything with Taohua.

Barring the morality of the romance here and some plot holes, I think there is potential and I look forward to the next book!!

The magic system in this book was not as developed as I would have liked, and the actions of the characters were not round. The relationship dynamic did not grab me and was often disturbing at times, and the main character's justification for her actions for a family that repeatedly asks her not to continue what she is doing was hard to sympathize with. I would have liked more background on the world and the magic system, and there needed to be a stronger thematic stance on the horrors of Imperialism.

I guess I expected more with this. I expected a city with people who can do magic, and I expected multiple forms of that to be shown. It understandably focuses on the main character, but I just wanted more. I understand some didn’t like this one because it’s a “colonizer romance”, and I admit, it did feel weird to read. It’s an odd choice, to say the least, to have Ruying catching feelings for this guy when he’s willing to manipulate her the whole time. I usually finish a series that I start, so even though this was just “ok” for me, I’m curious enough to see how it goes.

A major fault of the book is that it's often jarring. Not so much in terms of content but temporally. We spend what feels like a lot of time with Ruying in the beginning seeing the pacing of her life, how her family has come on hard times. Then there's a raid and Ruying is brought to Antony and eventually becomes his personal assassin. Yes, we do get a couple of scenes with her acclimating to this we then jump to her having been in this role for a few months. Then later we jump again to her on this diplomatic mission and the fallout from that. In short it felt lik this book was speed running the plot points. There were glimpses of more nuanced takes and conversations that felt cut short so that we could continue to make the book feel more fast paced than it needed to be.

This review does contain minor spoilers.
To Gaze Upon Wicked Gods has a really interesting magic system that I would love to see more of. Unfortunately, this was the only thing I really found intriguing in the book. There was next to no world building, until towards the end when they visited Sihai. That city was described in great detail and I felt like I could see it in my head. The same could not be said about the rest of the book. I keep going back and forth in my feelings regarding Ruying. I liked her willingness to sacrifice everything for her grandmother and sister, but at times she was annoyingly indecisive about what to do. It felt like every other page she was having an internal debate about whether or not she was doing the right thing by agreeing to kill her people in exchange for the safety of her family. I understand the struggle, but at the same time it was used very repetitively. I think that this could be remedied in the sequel.
The romance in the book leaves a lot to
be desired. I really think that in this case the romantic subplot takes away from the book instead of adding to it. My hopes are that the next book steers clear of the current proposed love interest.
This book has the foundation of a really brilliant magic system, but for me everything else was lacking. I can still see myself reading the sequel so I can find out what happens to Ruying.
Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher, Random House Publishing Group - Ballantine, for the eARC in exchange for an honest review.

I was not able to read this book in it’s entirety due to the heavy themes of colonialism and oppression, alongside a romance between two characters of opposite sides. This is not an enemies to lovers (or Zutara) romance. This is a book about how a young woman who hates another group of people for what they have done and are currently doing in her country, only to become complicit in it’s actions. On top of that, the writing is very simple, the characters are inconsistent, and the pacing skips over very important details in the timeline.

The book is beautifully written, and I’m hoping there’s a part two so we can see what happens now the mc has stepped into her power and is ready to defend her people .

I enjoyed the world building and characters in this book. I thought the clash between magic and science, as well as, Asian culture vs Roman, was different. I liked that the FMC was a twin and they had dueling magic. I liked that there was this tension of a pending revolution and what way was the best to peace. I thought the very slow burn of the romance was good for a book that is fantasy/adventure forward. I do feel that I was left with a lot of questions at the end. I also think that there were a lot of characters introduced and then nothing really came from them as I thought they would. I know that sometimes fantasy books start slow and the second book is where the story truly picks up.

My hope is that the story continues and more characters come into play. I'd like to see the FMC also self develop more, as she spent most of this book pouncing between a few emotional states.

If you like Asian cultures, large variety of magic, and environmental impact, I think you would enjoy this book. I found that the tempo is slow, but there was also a lot of world building.

I received an eARC this book from NetGalley and exchange for an honest review.

This book was painful to get through. I forced myself through it because I wanted it to get better. It just got worse. It started as a story of oppression and burgeoning war and turn into a colonizer romance, which made me wanna puke every step of the way. I could not relate to the main character because I saw no redeeming qualities in the man she was supposed to be falling in love with. The decisions she made were unfathomable to me. I will not be reading book 2 and will probably be forgetting this book. The author tried to show AND tell what was happening and as a result we had chapter upon chapter of being told the same thing over and over again. I made it to the 50% mark and nothing had happened at that point except to be told the same bits of information over and over again. Long story short: Romans colonizing Er-Lang, using the drug opian to subjugate the population, girl with death magic who’s afraid of her power allows colonizing prince to use her as a tool of war, girl is blind to everything everyone is saying and everything around her until the very end when they finally kill her best friend and she’s like oh. I could probably go on longer, but I want to be done with this book and this review.

Gorgeous cover. Writing could have been better. The novel is highly entertaining, and that's what made me finish the book because honestly the writing didn't fascinate me. I felt like I was being bombarded with info dump and the protagonist's monologue to explain a world that they could have shown us with actions or with more subtlety. The romance felt very forced, I really felt like the male lead was always deceiving the female lead. However, I understand where this naivety of the protagonist comes from, because as it is said in the book, he was the first guy who didn't treat her like she was a monster, the first to show feelings for her, and also "showed" her that he had a good side, that you had also suffered like her. When you don't have a good conception of yourself, you will look for affection even in the most narcissistic person.

well. i'm going to be honest, i don't think this book warranted all of the discourse. the prose isn't bad, if a bit over-confident for a debut, i don't care for most of the tropes the book is marketed on but. it's fine. it's literally just fine

I never DNF e-galleys and I never rate them if I don't finish them. But I just can't anymore, I'm stopping at 31%.

The world building in this book is just so badly done. We have a first chapter that is just an info dump while the main character walks around her city. It's pretty clear how the romance is gonna go, and I'm just not interested in it (yeah, even if I think the main love interest for this book in not endgame, I still don't care about the romance that I think is going to be the main one in future books). Being in the main character's head is extremely taxing; she keeps saying how powerful she is and how deadly her magic is. But she never does anything with it.

The next part of this review can be seen as a spoiler so I'm warning now. But I don't think it is - they talk about it openly a lot of times but from what I saw in other reviews it's seen as a plot twist. So, spoiler warning.

And it's just s obvious what the plot twist is going to be. It's not even a plot twist - they already mentioned a dozen times: people disappearing, people being taken to labs. Obviously they are being experimented upon. But even so it comes a surprise to the main character to understand the evil.

Thank you Netgalley, author, and publisher for the ARC.

I really enjoyed this one. I thought the concept between two worlds was interesting. It felt contemporary but it also felt fantasy. I thought the magic system was well developed. I didn't connect much with the romance but I also felt like the romance wasn't the focus of the plot as much as the politics were.

That last line was so so good! I can't wait to read book two to see where all this betrayal will lead.

I could go ahead and tell you how excited I was, when I saw this book for an ARC and how happy I got when I was approved. To make it even more dramatic, I could tell you that after 30% I disagree with most of the grievances the Internet seemed to have with the "colonizer romance" and the author for promoting it as enemies to lovers. I haven't got opinion, but one thing I knew for sure (and mind you, I'm still at 30%): how many times do you need to tell me someone is your childhood this and that? How many times one can repeat themselves, telling me simple as a pencil story? I grew frustrated. I liked the language, but soon I understood that the book lacks essence and a concept. For that reason there was just word count and maximum amount of metaphors that either told me something already written 10 times, or just had no sense whatsoever. Because it is in a bad taste to quote ARCs, I would keep receipts for myself.
Now, to the main character we go. She is the most inconsistent main character in a history. Once she thinks one thing to contradict herself on the next page. Her justification for serving the colonizer make no sense and doing it "just for family" when her family is almost non-existent in narration, or like her sister simply cruel and mean, lack justification. So there is only one. The colonizer is hot. Great, but he is also evil and manipulative, and she seems to see through that just to convince herself that it is not true. She even goes ahead and preaches in his defense tho she did not believe it herself couple pages before.

I couldn't save myself even if I tried, there was nothing good about this. And saying that the story is inspired by true events of experiments on Manchurian people just to use it as a trope and tool is just a slap in a face. This is beyond expectations, this is beyond criticism. This book should have someone who would read it before publication and tell the author: hey, you have a great idea, but you can do better. So much better.

I enjoyed this book far more than I thought I would based off other reviews. It’s been called a colonizer romance, which I totally agree with. BUT I think it gives Red Queen vibes? We know he’s bad, that he’s not honest, that OBVIOUSLY she will change her mind at the end. She was a little whiny/in her own head, but not more so than any other FMC in the genre. I didn’t follow the backlash deep enough to let the review bombing change my views. There were some grammatical errors that needed to be fixed, but overall, it was a good enough read that kept me engaged. I think fans of red queen/cruel prince would like this. I do look forward to reading book 2.

Thank you NetGalley, Molly X. Chang, and Random House for the e-arc. I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.

Thank you NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group - Ballantine, Del Rey for this ARC Copy!

I will start of by saying that I heard a lot of discourse of this book and a lot was going on prior to publishing, but I committed to reading and reviewing based on the book and not what I have heard online.

This world is brutal, violent, dangerous, and though it has been a reality for so many, no one knows how they would react to those situation unless you actually have lived it. This is not a romance, this is the story of a girl living through a horrific and brutal time and the hard choices that she must make for survival. Did she make the right choices every time? Absolutely not, but did she do what she felt like she had to do to survive and care for her family, I think so. I would hope I would make different choices in that scenario, but if there is one thing that I learned about working in EMS and dealing with literal trauma every day for years, is that people do not know how they are going to react until something happens to them.

The story took some dark and unpopular directions, but regardless of how that makes us feel as an individual, it does not mean that it is glorifying anything. It is literally just a window into a situation that seems just as likely to happen as the correct decisions that are expected from the character.

As a single POV under an unreliable narrator I think this book does a really good job in making us uncomfortable, and that is the point. If that is upsetting to you then this is not the book for you, but unless you read something completely different than I did, there was no glorifying the colonizers, there was no easy choices given to the protagonist, there was no glorifying of colonizer romance.

Molly X. Chang’s debut novel To Gaze Upon Wicked Gods is a genre-blending tale that compels readers to take a look at the true costs of war and greed. Ruying is a girl blessed with the powers of Death, trying to keep her head down and avoid notice from the Romans that invaded her home. However, one choice forces to reveal her magic (in the presence of the enemy prince), which alters her trajectory more than she could have ever imagined.

The worldbuilding was definitely what sold me on this book. First of all, the author does a great job portraying what it’s like to live under a colonizer’s rule. Given the inspiration that’s mentioned in the author’s note, this part comes across as almost historical fiction. It also is reminiscent of how our own greed has damaged our planet (the Roman world has been besieged by natural disasters and other issues due to overtaxing their resources, which were instrumental factors in their choice to invade other territories). Secondly, the magic system is super cool. The people of Er-Lang have traditionally had very powerful magic, but it doesn’t come without its costs (which is why they were unable to use it when they were invaded). For some, its pain. For others like Ruying, it can be as bad as taking years off her own life for every life she ends with her death magic. And as a third point, there are elements of sci-fi in the book too. I didn’t initially realize it, but when they say the Romans came from a different world, it is literally a different world (by way of a portal in the sky). Super cool, and very well done to blend so many genres together. Admittedly, there are a couple of moments where elements of worldbuilding don’t make sense, but it didn’t retract from my reading too much and I think there’s room to fix it in future novels.

There’s been a lot of conflict and critiques about the romance in the book, and I think that comes from a place of misunderstanding. First of all, I would not classify this book as a ‘romantasy’. For that to happen, the romance would need to be the main storyline and it’s more of a subplot. I also wouldn’t classify Ruying and Antony’s relationship as a romance (though Baihu and Ruying are another matter entirely). From the very first moment they interact, Antony is manipulating her. In a world so oppressive, Ruying is desperate to cling to the chance that someone actually cares about what her people are going through. Some see it as love and attraction, but in my opinion it came across more as clinging to a sense of safety. The author makes it clear that Antony is not some redeemable prince, and is actually a corrupt gaslighting villainous figure so do with that information what you will.

To Gaze Upon Wicked Gods had a strong storyline and world to have me reading to the end. Ruying’s journey was compelling, and I will definitely be picking up any future sequels (especially To Kill a Wicked Prince), as I’m curious to see how the rest of it plays out. I would recommend this book to those who enjoyed reads like Xiran Jay Zhao’s Iron Widow or Chloe Gong’s These Violent Delights.

CONTENT WARNINGS: Death of a Parent, Addiction, Colonization, Drug Use, Torture