Wow! This book was incredible! Hooked me from the first page and that ending has me begging for the next book!

The story follows Ruying, a girl gifted with the power of Death, as she tries to survive in Roman occupied Er-Lang. Ruying just wants to keep her head down and protect those she loves, but when she steals from the wrong person everything gets turned upside down. Now she has to choose what side will she fight for: the Romans, Er-Lang, or a rebel group led by the Phantom? Ruying also has to reconcile with some tough questions like, how much evil can be justified in the name of the greater good? Is the safety of those we love worth betraying our country and our people? As well as tackling difficult topics like being a powerful woman in a patriarchal society, colonialism, drug addiction, and abuse.

If you like political intrigue, no spice slow burn romance (that will have gushing over holding hands!), TRUE enemies to lovers, morally grey main characters (both FMC and MMC), magic, and lore, I HIGHLY recommend this book! Molly X. Chang's writing style is so poetic, immersive, and beautiful it reminded me of Laini Taylor. This book was one of my favorite books I have read recently and I cannot wait for the next book!!

My only criticisms of this book: the invading country being called the Romans, I understand the imagery the author was going for but somehow Romans coming from the sky invading a fantasy world took me out of it initially. My only other complaint is that the entire book is written in the first person narrative except for the Antony chapter which seemed odd and a bit jarring. Otherwise absolutely adored this book!!

5 ⭐️
0 🌶️
2 🤭 (infrequent cussing not including the F word)
⚠️: violence, abuse, drug addiction, torture, death

Thank you NetGalley, Random House Publishing Group- Ballantine/Del Rey, and Molly X. Chang for the ARC! 💕

I’m going to be upfront about a few things:

First, had I known this was going to be a series I wouldn’t have requested it. I wasn’t looking to get invested in a new series and there was no indication this was book one in a series (or duology? IDK) when I requested it. Point of fact: There’s still no indication on NetGalley, Amazon, BookBub, or Goodreads. So if you were interested in this book because you thought it was a standalone (like I did), it’s not (or, if it is, I’m very confused).

Second: I can’t pinpoint exactly why I liked this book so much…but I did. I liked it a lot.

Since the plot of this book is complex and it’s not a standalone as I initially thought, this review is going to be on the shorter side. This also has to do with the fact (see above) that I can’t really hone in on why I liked it so much, so all I can do is tell you I was resonating with this book on a whole frequency that let most of the flaws I saw in it slide on by with little notice until I finished and sat with it for a minute (most of this “minute” was largely spent being very confused about how I didn’t know this wasn’t a standalone).

The blurb for this book waxes eloquent about the romantasy element of this book, but if you’re looking for a romantasy-heavy book this isn’t it. The romantasy element really only comes into play in the third act and it’s all very chaste and proper (partially due to the FMC’s beliefs and partially due to constant changes in circumstances). What’s more important in this book is the complex feelings and responsibilities regarding family, very quick and shuffling political intrigues, the evils of colonization, and complex moral dilemmas.

So yes, it has its issues, but it was very enjoyable nonetheless. If you’re looking to get into a new series I highly recommend it.

I was provided a copy of this title by NetGalley and the author. All thoughts, opinions, views, and ideas expressed herein are mine and mine alone. Thank you.

File Under: Book Series/Fantasy/Romantasy/Fantasy Series/Forbidden Romance

Molly X. Chang’s debut novel is a captivating, beautifully woven tale of colonialism, strong roots of culture, resistance, and courage. I was absolutely captivated just a few chapters in by the unique magic system and world building. This story centers around Ruying who is a young woman with the power of death attempting to fight for the survival of her family while Rome is holding her empire captive. There is so much heartbreak next to so much hope, characters that are so well developed and easy to connect to and love, and an immense amount of growth seen in Ruying by the end of the novel. The end of this book suggests a sequel, and I absolutely can’t wait to see how Ruying’s story turns out!

May or may not read this at some point. Torn after starting to hear/see reviews from fellow content creators that I have matching taste and trust with.

I really wanted to like this.
I was super intrigued that it was loosely based off of real events.
But how could the main character just turn a blind eye to and forget that the person she is working for is the one who kidnapped and enslaved her, threatening her life, the lives of her family, and her entire world, and just go along with whatever, eventually “falling in love” with her captor?
She spent the first bit of the book trash talking someone she grew up with because of the choices that she thought that he made and then turns around and becomes much worse in the span of six months.
It also ended Super abruptly.
I don’t mind cliffhangers, but this kinda just Stopped.

This was one of my most anticipated reads of the year and I was so excited when I received an ARC of it. I love reading fantasy from debut authors and couldn’t wait to start this. However as I started reading I found myself struggling to want to continue reading. Our main character, Ruyling, is in a tough situation. Her country has essentially been invaded, her parents are dead, her grandmother needs to marry her off, and her sister is addicted to the same drug that killed eventually killed their father. Oh and did I mention she can wield death?! There is so much potential here but at 36% I decided to DNF for a few reasons. The world building was taking entirely too long. At 21% I thought “wow when are things going to happen? It feels like nothing has happened.” World building is so important to a fantasy novel but naming an invader Rome kind of pulled me out of the fantasy world being buoy. Another sticking point for me was our main character being utterly “woe is me. Woe is us” constantly. The situation sucks for sure but with this attitude I don’t have enough faith that Ruyling is going to turn it around to endure another 64% of the book. I also felt a bit of the ick when I realized that we were potentially going to have a relationship between Ruyling and one of the Roman princes. I am all for enemies to lovers but I can’t get down with a romance between someone actively engaging in the destruction of the other love interest’s land and people.
I really wanted to love this book and appreciate the opportunity to receive an ARC early.
Due to not finishing the book I will not be leaving reviews on any site as I do not believe it is fair to the author.

Thank you to NetGalley, Random House, and Molly X. Change for the advanced copy of To Gaze Upon Wicked Gods!

To Gaze Upon Wicked Gods follows Ruying, a girl with the magic to separate a person's life force from their physical body, as she navigates an ever-changing political landscape to save the lives of her twin sister and grandmother, as well as the rest of her country.

I struggled with the Ruying's monologuing through the first 25%. It felt as if she repeated herself over and over and over again without much changing behind the scenes. Once things progressed, however, I felt myself questioning everything as much as Ruying- was Baihu to be trusted? Was Antony to be trusted? What did the Romans want with Pangu? The last half of the book was a thrilling adventure full of assassins, politics, and romance that left me intrigued and wanting for the next book in the series.

2.5 rounded to 3 stars.
Thank You to Netgalley and Random House Publishing Group – Ballantine and Del Rey for the chance to read this 2024 anticipated release of mine early.
The beginning half for me was very slow and rocky and almost ended in a DNF around 40%. As an epic fantasy reader and I needed more descriptions and explanations for the world we are placed in.
I felt like everything was info dumped and that continued and was reiterated almost in a repetitive way the rest of the time. There was a lot of telling and not a lot of showing. Which may be because we only saw things through Ruying's perspective. It also would have been nice to have more dual perspectives.
I was also bothered by the choice of the enemy faction being Rome and Romans, then also having a few things in common but also being in an undetermined timeline with advanced weaponry like guns, fighter jets, and missiles. A different name choice, even a made up one, would have bothered me less, because it was written to be a modernized country and not the actual Roman Empire.
The lack of descriptions ended in me not understanding the location a scene was taking place in. As a very visual reader, sometimes I would picture one thing about a situation but then suddenly an action would happen that would take me out to reorient myself. This might be edited by the full published release, but it definitely made the reading experience tougher.
Things got much better around 60%. The involvement of politics, opening up of the scope of world, and more things happen. By this point, I actually began enjoying my time reading. I'm thinking the very beginning needed just a little bit longer to work on the setup. I didn't have a connection to the characters when things started wrapping up to the ending. I never bought the “romance”, and I still don't.
By the end I did have a better understanding of the world setup, that Rome entered like aliens through a portal and they are trying to save their former world. This all should have been understood in that beginning slog. I feel like this author can improve with the second book because we ended on a solid chain of events to get Ruying to be someone who you are rooting for. I did note the emphasis on “doing the right thing” and trying to figure out for yourself who to trust and figuring out morality within your own self. Especially as a 19 year old that is still trying to understand the world.
Overall, I think the series can become promising. This first book is hopefully only a struggle because of everything it had to introduce.

Within the last year, I have started to get more into asian fantasy so I was super excited for this one. The world building was really interesting and something different for me (magic and science) but it was a little hard for me to figure all out. I really liked Ruying but I didn't love some of the relationships in the book-romantic, family and friends. Hopefully the author will continue to build on her writing skills because at some points, I could tell this was her first novel and a little under-edited. I would consider reading the next one but I am not dying to.

Aot of people talk about this being a colonizer romance and I thinknthat colored my perception going into this book. That being said, I think this book iltimately wasnlt for me. I've been looking for an Asian inspired adult fantasy series for a while and while I had high hopes for this, the setting and chatacters were ultimatly not my thing. I would the proganist both naive and dense in a way I wasn't able to overlook and I couldnt tell if the love interest was suppose to be a good person doing bad things or just a colonizer doing their thing.

I will be publishing to my Goodreads and my blog, which will be linked below. The review will be posted on 4/14/24.

I would like to thank Random House and NetGally for an ARC of To Gaze Upon Wicked Gods by Molly X. Chang.

I always get super excited to read books from debut authors, so I was very excited to read this book. Especially after hearing that the main character, Ruying, is a necromancer.

Overall, I liked To Gaze Upon Wicked Gods and I wished some elements had been improved on or eliminated.

For one, I really liked the main character, Ruying, and her friends. They were all incredibly likable and I wanted to learn more about her friends throughout the book. Ruying is also an interesting character, she has magic powers that she does not want and is being forced to use them against her will, so her journey throughout the book with her powers was fun to watch. I also liked the world of the book. Ruying's home planet has been conquered by the Romans and war is constantly on the brink, something nobody wants. I did wish the Roman planet had a different name, as because they are named after Ancient Rome, I could only often think of their technology and not the super advanced futuristic technology they are described as having. I did like though that because they are named after Rome, it was easier to picture the comparison being made in this book.

Now, for things I did not like. This book was marketed as an enemies-to-lovers, which I was excited for, but did not like the execution. Antony is a part of the Romans, and even though there is time spent in the book making it clear he was adopted into their royal family, I still could not get past that Ruying was falling in love with a man that was helping in the colonization of her planet. I thought their relationship worked better as enemies who were forced to work together and not as romantic interests. I also wish we were able to see more of Ruying using her necromancy and how Antony directed her to do so, as I think that would have allowed more world building and time for them to hate each other even more, rather than fall in love.

Overall, I would give To Gaze Upon Wicked Gods by Molly X. Chang a 3.5 out of 5 stars, rounded down to 3 stars on Goodreads. While I liked the world and characters, I wish the romantic subplot had not been a part of the book and either gone or change Antony's background.

Thank you for this arc. I am in love with this book. It was so much more than I anticipated. I love how flawed the characters are and how complicated the plot is. The worldbuilding was gorgeous. The magic system was divine. I loved every second of this book and I will be in horrible suspense waiting for the sequel.

Gorgeous cover, but not for me. The pacing was so slow and didn't really interest me until the second half. Things did pick up then but not enough to get fully engrossed in the story.

The world-building was also just so confusing to me. Even in the last few chapters some things were mentioned about the world that didn't feel like a reveal or plot twist, just as matter-of-fact statements about the world, and I was left so bewildered feeling like I had fundamentally misunderstood everything about the world. It's definitely possible that I missed a few things (especially during the slow first half), but things still shouldn't have been so confusing or jarring.

The premise overall was intriguing, but the execution just wasn't for me.

***ARC received from Del Ray and NetGalley, opinions are all my own. Thank you!***

First, I think its important to point out that, if you were not aware, To Gaze Upon Wicked Gods was one of the targeted books by an author that was trying to prop up their book by creating and giving false negative reviews to this book. This author did not deserve that, none of the other authors deserved to be treated in such a way. This does not in any way shape what I feel about this book, I had it before all the review bombing information came to light.

Ruying is gifted by death to kill and lives in a world that has been oppressed by an invading nation. There is so much there but it just doesn’t fully deliver.

For the characters I didn’t really like any of them that much which was a shame as they all have potential. I wish that Ruying had been a little bit of a stronger lead, she just seems to be there to do whatever anyone else tells her to do while angsting over everything. She uses her abilities yet never fully commits when it really matters but is fine when it doesn’t. The rest of the secondary characters are a little one dimensional, the cruel sister wanting to be a martyr, the childhood friend potential love interest that comes and goes as the plot needs. The only interesting one was Antony because he seemed to run counter than what the book was trying to portray him as.

I know there has been a lot of controversy surrounding the romance, romantazing an oppressor and oppressed relationship. I’m not here to pass judgement on those that may feel that way as those are their valid feelings. I just expected the romance simply because its one of the most common tropes in these types of books. Rarely is it handled well and that is certainly the case in this book. Most of the build up of their relationship happens off page, there are six months that we get glimpses of what Ruying is doing and little of what she is feeling other than Antony is somewhat of a comfort, I guess? Since we aren’t spending significant time with these characters watching them build up a relationship it just falls flat. Antony actually could be a good person fighting against the repression of his family and empire but that is never shown and if that it was the book is trying to show it missed the mark. He’s all pretty words but the book feels like it is going out of its way to cast him as a not so bad guy. Even Antony doesn’t see himself as a not so bad guy, he is willing to do whatever it takes to see his end game come to pass. The book should just let him be a bad guy and we know that he isn’t, at least not toward Ruying.

The ending felt a little rushed for me, yes I get that its the first in the series but it doesn’t cast Ruying is much of a good light. She finally gets to witness what the empire is doing to people like her and its shocking but why? Antony has not exactly been secretive that the scientists have been performing experiments, maybe not the full truth but he brings it up quite a few times. I get that Ruying may be blind to the idea due to her feelings but it just fell flat for me as it makes her feel completely oblivious as opposed to someone truly left in the dark about what Antony is doing. It also removes the chance at her being a truly morally grey character, someone aware but willing to turn a blind eye for what they believe to be the better good. Which the book tries to do many times but can’t seem to commit, if anything Antony and Baihu come off as the more morally grey characters while Ruying just feels like 90% of the time she isn’t paying attention.

The writing is fine, some sections move along at a good pace keeping the book moving forward while others it can slow down a bit. I did like how the book dealt with the opian addiction that different characters dealt with but even that gets pushed off to the side. The politics of agreements and double crossing each other were interesting but it was all pushed to the back of the book when it would have been better spread out throughout the story as I did like those parts.

I so deeply wanted to like this book, all the potential is there to tell a fascinating story about what people are willing to do to protect their people. Unfortunately the execution of it fell flat leaving much to be desired.

4.5 ☆

This is how you tell a story folks. I love the refresh take of having a FMC being on the morally gray scale instead of pure hearted and good. At time I found myself acknowledging the tagine of the book, "Heros die, cowards live." because I get it in this context. I understood where Ruying and Baihu meant everytime they explain these to the other. We know how twisted Antony appears to he and I couldn't fully trust him throughout the novel but I couldn't not trust him until the last 15% when we truly see his colors show.
I loved the way Rome was so closely described to mimic our own world and structure and show Er-Lang as a time before greed and the need for luxury took center stage for our lives.

I'm looking forward to book two to see where Ruying goes with her alliance and hope she continued on her own morally gray path.I want to see more of how she sees Death and maybe even come into a way to control it rather than be a chain


Thank you to NetGalley and Random House Publishing for this e-arc in exchange for an honest review.

This book unfortunately didn't work for me even though I was very hyped about the premise of exploring colonization in a fantasy lens. The magic system was neat and had good consequences for use. But, overall, I had a hard time with Ruying as the main character. So much of our time with her is spent with her self flagellating and working to protect her Grandma and sister Meiya. The pacing didn't work for me and felt slow. The writing itself had a lot of unnecessary description and I found myself skimming frequently.

The prose is so hard to get through. Every single paragraph is trying to end with a dramatic punch, eventually the effect is diminished and nothing actually makes an impact.
The world building is so clunky and for attempting to be political intrigue, each nugget we learn feels like an after thought. Nothing happened the entire first chapter except our main character just listing examples of why Colonizing Empire = Bad. We got it. The info-dumping monologues (both internal and via speech!) were killing me. Worse than being morally gray is just being annoying.

The romance felt icky. I just really didn't have a good time with this one.

This was fun and interesting and I enjoyed the unique story line. Would recommend to many. I enjoyed the growth of the main character and the struggles they encountered.

Look, your mileage may vary but while I found the pages flew by quickly enough I thought the book had a number of flaws. Calling the high tech invaders Rome was kind of a weird choice stylistically but ok. I found neither side sympathetic. The invaders are evil and murder a lot of folks yes. The magic side is obviously super sexist at the you girls better hope your nearest male relative is nice and treats his property well because you’re nothing as a female level of suck. And frankly that deserves to fall as a society and is also evil. So, two unsympathetic sides. Both suck. Colonists suck, women aren’t really people and exist just to serve men suck. Everyone sucks. You can pick which one you think sucks more. There’s plenty of ick to go around. And then the potential romance relationship being shown is super Stockholm syndrome creepy. This is the second fantasy romance I’ve read this calendar year where the girl is soft for someone outright abusive of her. Ewwwwwwww. No. Nope. No thank you. Ick. I started to rate this book at two stars because I did find it readable enough to hate finish it but I took a star away because the falling for her abuser thing is awful. I hope not to run into a third book of hey, fall for this abusive ass. You can fix him!
And if you’re someone who needs to hear this get out. Dump them, you don’t deserve it and you can do better.

I can honestly say I didn’t like this book. The first third drew me in just enough that I was semi interested in what was going to happen to Ruying. I felt like the book could have potential and then it lost any hope. Once Ruying joins the prince everything just died. There was very little happening of interest. She kind of kills and moves on. While I read it all I can not tell you what really happened because it felt like Ruying lost herself and just became a tool. Which technically she did. Yet I have read other books along this line and the characters still have growth and ownership. Ruying has none. The last couple chapters do end the book where it might draw readers back in, but having to muddle through two thirds of a book to get to that part I think will be the real challenge.
Thank you to Random House Publishing Group-Ballantine, Del Rey and Netgalley for allowing me to read an advance copy of this book.