Another contender for "amazing cover, great concept, too bad about the absolute mess of the execution".

Look, some people have genres they're really good at and genres they're really bad at, and that's fine and normal and human. Molly X. Chang is not good at political worldbuilding or treatises about morals during war and unfortunately she has made that such an integral part of this novel that everything else suffers for the sake of trying to make it make sense or have impact. Characters go on long monologues or repat themselves over and over. The amount of telling instead of showing is truly impressive - take the grandmother, for instance. We are told over and over (and over) that she was her generation's most brilliant strategist, that she taught Ruying and Meiya all sorts of skills (that we can only assume she taught herself in secret (again, how), since one thing we're never told is how she herself learned these skills in a society that balked at teaching women anything non-domestic), that she is their fiercest protector, but what we see of her is her doing absolutely nothing except crying and trying to arrange a marriage for Ruying. She misses that Meiya has become addicted to opian, that suddenly the trades she was doing (also ??? what trades? is there a futures market???) are much more lucrative, that there are Roman guards watching their house, that Ruying has also watched their house at times. She never passed down any strategic gems of wisdom or had anything to say about their current political predicament that Ruying could parrot or think about at the right moment. All definitely behavior a genius strategist who taught herself to survive in a world against her would exhibit. And that's just a very small, very contained example, but it's the same pattern that shows up for every piece of worldbuilding and character backstory.

Add to that just how overwritten the prose is. Not a paragraph goes by that doesn't have absurdly exaggerated phrases for the sake of impact that convolutes what it's trying to say or flat-out contradicts what the story has said earlier. In one chapter, at the beginning, we're reminded that Rome opened the portal two decades ago. At the end of the chapter, we're treated to "we can't turn back time and reverse our ancestors' mistake of trusting them." WHAT ANCESTORS. The ones still alive? Ruying is 19 years old, born just a few years after the portal and the one-day conflict where Rome completely overpowered the pangulings. She is almost as old as the conflict; it's certainly not something "age-old" or from her ancestors' time. There's a certain impact these sentences are trying to evoke from the reader with the way they're phrased, but they also seem to rely on the reader having absolutely no continuity of plot. Which might explain why circumstances and feelings are told over and over, because we as readers aren't really intended to hold more than a few minutes of memory. Which is fine for some styles of storytelling, but once again, not one that relies so heavily on political worldbuilding.

Another few examples: "I hated their ignorance about everything their debauchery and reckless joy were built upon: the blood and bones and intergenerational trauma of my people." (That's just its own trauma, Ruying, unless you're talking about the trauma of being female with a destiny in a society that would ignore you otherwise, like your grandmother).

[after the Sihai Emperor bows to Antony] "If even the royals of our world lowered their dignity for Rome, what did this portend for our future?
For a fleeting moment, I understood why people rallied behind the Phantom, why Baihu risked his life for a dream of revolution, why Meiya painted posters and snuck out at midnight, willing to die for a flickering hope.
Maybe Baihu was right.
Maybe I was on the wrong side of this war. A thought that gathered pressure behind my eyes until I blinked them away." [AND THEN SHE NEVER THINKS ABOUT IT AGAIN]
Out of context, this is almost good (aside from the really choppy sentences and one-sentence paragraphs that constantly plague the novel). In context, she's already seen her own Emperor bow to Rome. Multiple times. We don't get a sense of why this time is different, much less why this time, out of all things, would inspire revolutionary thoughts when she's had many chances before. Despite all of her constant monologuing about wanting respect and safety and peace and the text telling us how conflicted she is, we never actually see her convincing herself that her actions will have the outcome she hopes for. We never actually see any of those arguments from anyone else, either. This is a novel that wants to have a lot of thoughts about politics and war and oppression and live in the grey area of choices between survival and dignity. But, Chang doesn't have the chops to pull this off. Every time a mental conflict arises, the text tells us; we never feel Ruying's conflict, we don't get a sense of the pressure she's under any one way, and we certainly don't know where her ethical code comes from (much less what it really is; the book wants us to think that she'll do anything for her family, but she often stops far short of that when the choice is before her, so what we're left with is a confusing mess). This is just a book of lines that sound good out of context, snappy quotes and highlights, but all together in context are just convoluted and weak.

Speaking of convoluted and weak, then there's the romance. "Romance". Much like the politics, we have no sense of why Ruying likes or trusts Antony. Or why he likes her. It really seems like he just holds her as she cries after killing someone and then suddenly she's like "maybe he's not that bad", compounded by his telling her that he wants peace (and her never, ever questioning that or what "peace" means to him). And then she learns he grew up a poor street rat and is immediately like "oh he's broken and sad and has experienced pain, so he understands and definitely wants the same as me". (regardless of the fact that he also tells her that he shot his entire family at like. age eight (there's at least three counts of children under ten killing someone in this book) for the opportunity to be a prince of Rome, and she's totally cool with this, and not in a "I understand he's a murderer, but I can't help but be drawn to him" way but in a "I have literally no thoughts about this, good or bad" way). He also straight up TELLS HER that the xianlings have been experimented on (and implies that he himself has seen the results and experiments and possibly had a hand in it), and it goes right over her head. If you're going to write an actual war criminal enemies-to-lovers romance, endgame or not, you have to actually engage with the fact that he's done some shit. Even beyond the experimentation, at basically their first meeting, Antony puts a gun into Ruying's hand and expects her, with no training and from a window in a tall building, to shoot a man in the street. And instead of actually contending with the tension and political sides and arguments that should ensue from such a relationship, we timeskip six months and suddenly Ruying trusts him and is drawn to him and never asks him why she's assassinating the people she's killing. We go from enemies to friends in the blink of an eye and it's dizzying. More than that, it's boring.

I could keep going and cover Baihu and Meiya and Taohua and get further into the worldbuilding and how even beyond the politics it doesn't make sense, but really, at the end of the day, everything about this book is fascinating in concept and absolutely toothless and boring in execution.

I think this is the first book that Molly Chang wrote and I am excited to read more, I was a little disappointed with this book. He character build up took to long for me in the beginning. But in the middle it did pick up pace. Oh and the cover of the book is phenomenal! Great graphic of the cover and oh the blurb sucked me in I do hate cliffhangers cause I want to know what happens next. Maybe he 2nd book will explain more?

So, again I firmly believe there are no bad books and every book is a huge labor of love. There’s just books that fit or don’t fit us and for me, it just didn’t fit unfortunately

This one sits at a 3.5 out of 5 for me. Thank you NetGalley for the ARC.

I have mixed feelings on this book...

I honestly thought the concept of the world was really interesting, where you have magic and science coming head to head. It has the potential to be a great story about colonization and revolution but it does fall a little flat. It also doesn't help that the colonizers are a reimagining of the existing, supped-up version of "Rome." I think the story would have benefitted by giving the colonizing world a name based on the fantasy rather than basing it off a real world empire, but I do also understand why the author did so. By choosing to name them "Rome," it allows us as the reader to better insert ourselves into the story and make it feel somewhat realistic.

The "romance" subplot in this story did make me a bit uncomfortable, nor did I find it relevant to the story. This sort of colonizer romance just did not feel believable to me and to be honest it drew away from the main character. You can respect and admire someone without falling for them.

The writing at times is a little choppy and rambley, which meant I had to go back and re-read passages to make sure I knew what was going on, which I normally don't do with books. But I do think the bones of a great world are here and I will pick up book 2 to see where the story goes (since MC makes some choices at the end of the story that will really propel stuff forward).

To be honest, I almost DNFed this several times but wanted to write my review having read the whole book. There are minor plot spoilers in this review, after the comments about the writing style.

So, the writing style - it's extremely choppy; the author often uses single sentence or sentence fragments as separate consecutive paragraphs. The intent appears to be for dramatic effect, but given the frequency this construct appears, it serves only to annoy. Literally, an except from about 15% in:

But not in this life.
Not when I had a grandmother and sister to protect.
In this life, I sought no glory.
Only survival.
For myself, and those I loved.
Still, something unpleased brewed in the pit of my stomach.
Envy.
Hate.
Feelings I was ashamed to feel.
We'd both dreamt of becoming heroes as children.

Additionally, the text frequently uses Chinese characters (as in, it's written like 漢字 and not transliterated hanzi) generally to share a Chinese idiom which is then followed by the English translation....but why? What is this adding by having these characters pop up every other page? If the author is trying to create an atmospheric effect and drive home to the readers that this isn't taking place in a Western country and they're not speaking English, it's a clunky and distracting way to do it that also does a disservice to the readers' intelligence (not to mention that other Chinese words are left transliterated).

Plotwise - this is very simplistic and at its core is a fairly unoriginal "girl with special powers must rise up against her oppressors" plot. Despite its marketing as adult, this reads like a young YA (it mostly reminded me of a less compelling, poorer written Graceling).

In terms of setting, this is very bizarre. The main world is an analog for China where the people have magic and apparently hadn't gotten around to inventing gunpowder (which was developed in China in like...the 8th or 9th century), but still use the exact same language and alphabet. They've been invaded by the Roman Empire coming to their world through unexplained portal magic/technology, which then goes on to conquer and subjugate them because the Roman Empire has technology and notChina only has dumb magic (these Romans are also able to control and block magic with their amazing technology, which is never explained). But also, this can't be our world's Roman Empire, because you find out later that this Roman Empire came to this world to find a new place to live because their world has basically been destroyed by global warming and natural disasters. So if it's not even the Roman Empire we know, why bother calling it that and not just have a Roman Empire-analog from the same world, with superior technology and no confusing space portals? Again, it's like the author doesn't trust her readers to pick up on any nuance.

Speaking of nuance - so there is sort of a romance between the main character Ruying, who is one of the oppressed, and her captor/enslaver Antony, one of the Roman princes. And at one level, I really want to believe that this is set up as a Stockholm syndrome-type of romance, and that we will see Ruying come to realize this. But this also very hard for me to buy, because 1) the author has not shown that she can handle anything with subtlety or nuance, and 2) about 85% in there is an absolutely unhinged chapter coming out of nowhere from Antony's POV, where he waxes on about how much he loves Ruying and would start wars for her, she is his sun, his moon, his starlit sky, etc. And is this meant to be....romantic? I can't even tell because the author has not earned any trust with me in the previous 85% of the book. Also these two are both such non-entities to me I don't even care?

Overall, do not recommend and I will not be picking up the sequel.

DNF. This book, To Gaze Upon Wicked Gods by Molly Chang, sounded so good, and it had an amazing concept, but it was not well executed. One the major problems I had with this book was the inclusion of technology and advanced civilizations. This would havd been so much better if it were more high fantasy than dystopian fantasy. I also was expecting this would connect more to the Japanese invasion of Manchuria than the Romans colonization of Middle Eastern and Asian countries, as that is what was alluded to/mentioned in the authors note at the beginning of the novel. I also not not particularly enjoy the colonizer/colonized romance dynamic. On top of all of that, the pacing and worldbuilding seeming really rushed and horribly put together. Enough about the negatives though. A few positives about this book include its writing, and that stunning cover. It's a shame I didn't like this, because I would love to display it on my shelves.

I received an arc of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I am going to be truthful, I did not like this book. The world building was very subpar, almost none. The characters were not like able, even the main character. It was really a struggle to get through.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the arc of this book.

I was provided with an ARC by NetGalley in exchange for an honest review

DNF book. As excited as I was to read this book, I can Review a book where there is controversy that Reviewers are being harassed and doxed.

Thank you to NetGalley and DelRay for this e-ARC.

Unfortunately, I DNF’d To Gaze Upon Wicked Gods at 15%.

Molly’s opening note and the personal message in it was touching and appreciated. The story is there, I can see it. But the writing is exceptionally hard to read. I don’t know how else to describe the prose other than just “weird.” I had to reread several paragraphs over and over again to understand what I was reading. I love intricate, rich story telling, especially in fantasy — but this felt a little.. try hard?

My hope is that these issues get ironed out before the book is published — I’ll be giving it another shot then because I desperately want to support Molly.

This book is now in my top 5 for the year of 2024. That’s how good this book is.

The characters are well written along with the world, background, and plot of the story. Every chapter draws you in and you don’t want to stop. There’s one thing that I love about this book is that there will be Japanese writing in it, with English translations and to me, that really drew me in. I love when books have quirks like that.

Overall, this book is fantastic and I highly recommend it to anyone!

The only issue I had is that Chapter 16 was missing…

Thank you NetGalley and the publishers for the e-ARC!

I want to begin this review by saying that this was a highly anticipated book for me. I fell in love with the cover and thought the premise sounded promising. I was more than disappointed once I started reading and had finally come to the decision to DNF at 50%. The overall plot of the story wasn't bad and I think the magic system could be really interesting but the thing that really killed the entire book for me was the writing style. From the first chapter, there was major info-dumping that made it hard to dive into the world that was being created. The narrative also felt extremely juvenile which hurt the overall likeness of the main character. The clunkiness made the story so hard to get through especially when there was no redeeming elements from the characters or romance.

Arc received by NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Thank you to NetGalley, Molly X. Chang and Ballentine.

I am sorry but I cannot get passed 'Rome' in a made up fantasy world. Colonizer romance is already borderline weird enough without the colonizers being named after a real-life empire, now I don't 100% believe this will continue being the romantic interest but the marketing has been unfortunate. I could not root for this romance at all because even thought I generally have no qualms about enemy empire prince romances our mmc Antony was just an awful person. and to top it off our fmc Ruying becomes an assassin for our him. Btw spoilers, but he is not some misunderstood prince like other colonizer-esque romances where they're secretly <i> NOT </i> doing heinous shit instead he is fully, with full agency, committing actual war crimes lmao. The think that is worrying even with the direction the ending/plot twist took is that marketing the book as a "romantasy zutara on steroids/enemies to lovers/double villain/love-triangle" etc adds the potential of Antony getting a redemption arc. Had the book not been marketed the way it has I would have looked at the toxic relationship as exactly that toxic and not a potential end game serious love interest-- which is a part of what affected my enjoyment (the other part was how much Ruying's actions angered me, I wanted to shake her or slap her out of it so many times. She does however have immense potential to grow in the future??? Ultimately I do not think this was a bad book by any means and if anything I liked it enough to consider reading the sequels.


ALSO I AM SORRY, AGAIN, BUT EVEN WITH THE AUTHORS DISCLAIMER ABOUT NOT JUDGING RUYING TOO HARSHLY BUT I AM AND I WILL... she's also incredibly stupid. Anyway unless she outright sticks a spear through Antony's throat and heart in the next book I'm not so sure about this series.
I will maybe look into if book 2 somehow redeems this book.

Thank you, Random House for offering this digital e-ARC via NetGalley.

I have mixed feelings about this. The cover is beautiful, the setting intrigues me and I like the story idea and the type of magic found within the novel. I have no complaints about the technical aspects of the writing.

However, the negatives outweigh the positives. There are way too many long passages of the MC conveying character backstory and world set up. And there are too many interruptions in the conversations filled with paragraphs of her thinking and going through the process of making decisions. I don't think it served the story because it made it drag to the point that I wanted to skim through scenes.

So, interesting idea, technically good, but the writing style made it difficult for me to immerse myself.

Thank you to NetGalley and Del Rey for an advanced copy of this book for review!

1.5⭐ I unfortunately had to DNF this book at 40%. I tried to finish it but I found myself losing interest after 10 min of trying to read. I think the idea is fantastic and the cover art is breathtaking but the execution of the story left much to be desired. I couldn't get myself to be invested in the plot or the characters at all and it kind of throws me off that this book is technically a fantasy but the antagonist group is the Romans/Roman Empire that have guns and tanks and other machines. Overall, I think the pacing was also very slow considering I stopped reading at 40% and only one significant thing happened. I truly wanted to love this book but in the end, I just was not able to continue.

I am not able to post my review on Goodreads due to ratings and reviews being limited. The book's idea is actually interesting, but the way it was brought to life was what I did not like. The story was extremely slow paced with nothing happening in the first 25% except characters ranting about the same things over and over and over again. The conversations were odd as rants would be inserted when characters were asked a simple question; I attributed this to the author's personal views being portrayed in the story. After the 25% mark, the story picked up pace which made me interested in the plot, but the writing was filled with endless descriptions and lots of telling instead of showing. I ended up skimming many long-winded passages and the never-ending rants since they brought no relation to the story except repetition of things already stated back in the first chapter. I also was not a fan of the colonizer romance, or it wasn't really a romance, more like an infatuation mixed with a drop of instant love. I understand that a layer of manipulation was involved, but for a main character who absolutely abhors the Romans (and tells us this through endless rants), she instantly becomes attached to Antony and becomes gullible to whatever he says. Thank you NetGalley and Edelweiss for an ARC.

It's really a solid debut from Molly x Chang. Creative, lush prose, beautiful writing and characterization. A solid, if complex romance and a good set up for what comes next.

Thank you NetGalley for an early reader copy in exchange for my honest review.

Overall: 3.50-3.74 ⭐️ (rounded up)

Ruying is living in the dark aftermath of a world conquered and subjugated by Romans, people who have used science and portals to access their world. The odd meshing of sci-fi, fantasy, and mythology aside the storyline has a lot going for it. A world and people ravaged and torn apart to save another that sees a chance to literally off-load and use others for their own gains. It felt apart by trying to wedge in a love story - honestly, it didn’t need it and felt so awkward - and attempting to merge too many concepts together. Again, it has a lot of merits and I loved the beginning and end, plus the simple yet richly varying magic system. As one of the books I was most excited for this year it was a bit of a “huh” when I got mid way through and had to keep pushing until I got back into the grove of the story.

Edit: I edited my review to add some more details and also because when I was re-reading it, I didn’t like the tone that was coming across. But it is essentially the same review, now just more helpful to fellow readers I think.

I really wanted to love this, I thought the story sounded really interesting, I love Chinese fantasy, and the cover was gorgeous, so it was a highly anticipated read for me. I really did give this my best shot. And through the first third of the book, I can say I was enjoying it (I had a couple of issues with the writing style but that wasn’t a deal breaker for me, I just ignored the issues). But I unfortunately ended up DNF-ing at about ~50%.

My biggest issue, and my reason for DNF-ing, comes from my growing annoyance with the main character. And that annoyance is kind of in two parts. One being the actual character herself and the other comes from the writing style. Those two things blended together until I just got a bit of the ick and couldn’t make myself finish.

So, my issue with Ruying our MC. I think a good part of this comes from the author letter/note at the start of the book leading us into thinking Ruying is a morally grey character that will be doing bad things. I’m down for morally grey characters, they are really interesting, so I was actually excited for this and excited for the book to explore darker themes because of that. However, I can’t really describe Ruying as morally grey because at every chance she gets she just resists using her power to kill people. She gets in multiple situations where either she is personally at threat of death or her family is being threatened and yet she still holds back. That became very frustrating because she was made out to be someone who would do anything for her family (we were told this) but then when it comes down to it, she won’t actually act as she needs to. This just really annoyed me personally.

The other aspect related to this, is the writing style. The author very often tells instead of shows and has lots of monologues of the characters thoughts. So as the actor acts in an annoying way to me, the writing then further reflects on that a lot. It just got really annoying for her to be constantly thinking about how she doesn’t want to kill anyone, not kill someone, and think about it again. If the writing style were different, I think I could have gotten over my annoyance with this character. Or if the character had been more morally grey and acted on it, then I could have gotten over my annoyance with the writing style. But the combination was just too much for me.

I will say though, that I was really intrigued by the other characters like Baihu and Meiya. They were characters that clearly had faults but they were interesting faults, whereas for me Ruying’s faults were annoying. So that is to say I think the author can write interesting, dynamic characters I just unfortunately didn’t like the main one and because it was the main character, that prevented me from continuing to read the story. I would however, give future books by this author a chance, although I do hope for better editing in the future to help with the writing style issues (the telling instead of showing, and the choppy sentences to add drama which was too frequent).

Some other things I want to point out about the book. I was intrigued by the world and magic system and I think those could be really strong aspects of the series depending on how they develop throughout the books.

This book, wasn’t for me, but I hope my review helps people determine if it’s a good fit for them. I truly believe some people will enjoy this book and I hope it reaches those people. I also hope people stop sending hate to the author because that is just vile behavior and should not be accepted. The author poured love into this book and doesn’t deserve to be met with hate.

This was a highly anticipated book for me. So I really appreciate getting a chance to read this. Thank you netgalley, the publishers, and the author for the ARC I received.

Ruying is a young woman blessed (or cursed) with the ability to literally pull the life out of people. Her ability to kill people without leaving a trace makes her a valuable commodity. Despite this gift, her world is in chaos- the kingdom she resides in, rich with magic, has been invaded by another kingdom, one based in science and technology which stronger and more powerful, her people are being slaughtered, and her family is not safe. Ruying is offered a deal by an enemy prince- if she assassinates his rivals, he will spare her life and ensure her family is safe. As they work together, they slowly start to develop feelings for one another.

Most of the story is Ruying coming to grips with her power and the responsibility she has to use her power for the greater good. At the start, Ruying does what she has to do to stay alive and keep her family safe and she doesn’t apologize for it. The fact that she was upfront about this strong held belief was incredibly humanizing. To her, her world is her family, not the wider population. This conviction makes her journey over the course of the story even more powerful. By the end, Ruying decides she needs to make a stand, that she needs to be brave and defend her people, but the royal family sure isn’t up to the task. The ending sets up a compelling storyline for book two.

I look forward to the developing relationship between Ruying and Anthony in book two. I have so many unanswered questions and am not entirely convinced his feelings for her are genuine. He appears incredibly manipulative during all most all their encounters.

I highly recommend this book for fans who enjoyed “The Hurricane Wars” or are looking for an edgier version of “A Court of Thorns and Roses”.

I truly wanted to love this book because upon reading the description, it seemed to tick all the boxes. The premise was interesting, the magic system seemed like it would be fun, and the main character blessed with Death powers made this right up my alley. I think the story had incredible potential, but unfortunately, for me, it fell spectacularly flat. I’d first like to comment that this book is based on real life war crimes committed in Manchuria. I applaud the author for writing something inspired by such a heart wrenching situation.

As for the story itself, the world-building by and large was superficial and practically nonexistent. We’re told some things about the world in which the story takes place, but it always felt like the bare minimum and seemed to leave important details out.


Normally I often see a trade off, when the world building is a little lax the characterization makes up for it, but I didn’t find that with this book. The internal monologue wasn’t well written and the dialogue reminded me of a bad TV drama, where everything was told and never shown. Typically I adore a morally grey protagonist, but there wasn’t any character development at all in any of the already superficially written characters, so I can’t even say this was particularly done well either.

Lastly, a romance between a colonizer and one of the oppressed peoples does not sit well with me and was an incredibly uncomfortable thing to read about.

Though I can say the cover was beautiful and the idea could have created a fantastic and exciting story, unfortunately I think this fell short in the execution.

This is one of my biggest disappointments of the year. This review will be a mess, much like the book.

To begin, the marketing. What went on with marketing of this book should be studied in what not to do for years to come. I've seen this called enemies-to-lovers, friends-to-lovers, childhood-friends-to-lovers, romantasy, romantic fantasy, ya fantasy, ya romantic fantasy--what is the truth??? I still don't know. They seem to have stuck with "romantasy" which I think is an issue, I'll touch on that in a bit. The trouble is I don't really know who the main romantic pairing is and not in a good plot sort of way. More like, the author is potentially trying to do a gotcha? I truly don't know.

It's honestly not written particularly well? The main character Ruying has an internal monologue that is so incredibly annoying, not for characterization reasons but for what feels like a lack of editing. Let women be annoying! But! Let the writing be good enough to support her.

While there's a few aspects of this book I feel I'm not necessarily qualified to speak on (ie colonizer/colonized romance as a whole) I know an enemies to lovers when I see it and while so far it certainly fits the bill, within the framework of "romantasy" there is a relative expectation of a happy/happy enough ending. I just don't think in this particular set up, there can be a happyish/happy enough ending with the two characters who are allegedly the main couple. I want Ruying to kill Antony? I feel that will be the only way to truly satisfy this relationship trajectory as it stands.

I'm interested in where this will go for sheer nosiness sake.

Thank you to NetGalley and Ballantine/Del Rey for the eARC in exchange for an honest review.