ARC received on NetGalley in exchange for an honest review

dnfed at 15%

I was really excited for this book. The plot and magic system both sounded so alluring, however, four chapters in and I found myself frustrated, agitated, and annoyed that I'm spending time reading a book like this when I know there are better ones out there. The world building is not well written, and it is shoved onto the reader in long paragraphs of lore, history, and magic without contextual sense as to why it's being explained in that moment. One plot point took over 4 chapters because every piece of dialogue or every character action was interrupted by paragraphs of world building that didn't fit, and I found myself consistently having to remind myself of what was going on, and who was who. If anything, that form of world writing made it less digestible, because no one wants such heavy politics thrown onto them before they even know why they should care.

The first person also increased repetition, and left no room for me to begin empathizing with, or disliking, the characters on my own. I think first person can be well done at times, but this was not an instance where that happened.

In all honesty though, I wouldn't say don't read it. I didn't get far enough to see the plot or the romance unfold, and I can see some people liking it for sure. Life's just to short for me to read books I don't like.

Thank you to Netgalley and Del Rey for an eARC copy in exchange for an honest review.

1.5 Stars

I was very intrigued by the premise and promise of this book, but unfortunately, this turned out to be a huge disappointment. This book struggles majorly with telling instead of showing, and it really ruins all of the strong facets. While I enjoyed the evocative metaphors, the main character’s manifestation of death magic, the immersive ancient Chinese-inspired setting, the inclusion of Chinese proverbs, and the compelling character dynamics, I feel like the execution did not do these elements the justice that they deserved.

The first 25% of this book is quite rough, both for the reader and in quality, and it was enough to nearly entirely put me off from finishing. The delivery of information is clunky and lacks nuance; this is true for the whole book but especially so during this first section. Exposition occurs in paragraphs upon paragraphs of the narrator Ruying telling the reader how the world works, including the Roman invasion of Er-Lang, its lasting effects, and the ongoing opian crisis. We are also conveniently and explicitly told Ruying’s backstory in her internal monologue or in paragraphs of dialogue with her longtime friend Baihu which consists of multiple instances of “do you remember this event from our childhood?” The narration also often tells the reader what they should interpret about any information they receive. I can make the conclusion that colonialism is harmful myself and don’t need to be told so.

I think this beginning section would be much stronger with major structural changes. I would have preferred the story to start shortly before the Roman invasion followed by a few chapters of Ruying growing up under this new regime. This way, the reader:
-gains an understanding of the state of the world that the characters want to return to
-witnesses changes caused by the Romans rather than being told about them
-sees important moments in Ruying’s backstory that can be later fleshed out further via flashbacks
-gets to know the important people in Ruying’s life
-develops more of a personal investment/connection by experiencing events rather than hearing about them

As it is, Ruying’s motivation to protect her family at all costs feels somewhat unconvincing since the reader only sees her sister and grandmother in a handful of scenes. It’s very difficult to connect with characters we hardly see and only hear about. The same goes for Ruying’s friend Taohua. I wish these relationships received the appropriate page time to properly show off the interesting relationships the author has created.

There is also a 6-month time skip in the middle of the book in which Ruying embraces her role as an assassin. Nearly all of Ruying’s assassinations take place during this period. It was really disappointing that the author chose to skip what should have been a major and emotionally compelling part of the story. We could have followed the grated change of Ruying’s conflicted emotions as she struggles to choose between her morals or protecting her family as well as the progression of her magic’s negative effects on her. Instead, we are just told that Ruying has changed during this time, but it doesn’t feel earned at all.

I wasn’t the biggest fan of the writing style in this book, either. Ruying’s inner monologue over-relies on sentence fragments and narrative questions, leading to a repetitive and sometimes choppy reading experience. This is further exacerbated by Ruying’s tendency to repeat the same thoughts and questions over and over throughout the book. I think, overall, first-person perspective hindered the story rather than enhanced it because the reader gets bogged down in Ruying’s constant stream of thoughts.

Aside from the craft issues above that weakens the content, this book has another glaring issue: the romance. This could have been an exploration of toxic relationships and the awful things people will do to survive or for power, but instead, this is a colonizer romance. It feels very disrespectful to frame this as “enemies to lovers” or “morally gray characters” when Ruying is blackmailed, threatened, and tortured into this relationship and Antony is quite literally her oppressor. By describing both of these characters as morally gray, Ruying and Antony are inadvertently equalized, thereby humanizing Antony. Ruying’s interactions with Antony are not presented —or at least do not come across— as intentionally depicting a victim and their manipulator; it feels like the author actually wants us to root for this relationship due to the use of common romance tropes like the one bed trope. I would like to give the author the benefit of the doubt here and assume they did not intend to be harmful, but in its current state, this book promotes sympathy towards colonizers, and I simply cannot give it a good rating.

I know this arc has been available for a long time so I hope there has been/will be additional editing prior to the book’s publication date in April. There is a very engaging story here, but it needs much more refinement in terms of its craft and the message it wants to convey.

Thank you so much to Random House and NetGalley who provided an advanced copy of this book in exchange for my honest review. All opinions are my own. 

To Gaze Upon Wicked Gods was a great read, one that was full of dispair, hope, love, and destruction. The main character felt real and raw, and I felt her indecision and desperate attempts to hold onto hope throughout the book. This book felt like it could hold a lot of trigger warnings for many people, so be sure to look into that prior to reading. 

I see some other reviews noting the issue with romance between the MC and her opressor. When I read this, it came across as Stockholm Syndrome instead of encouraging romance, and I didn't feel the author made attempts at making the guy seem redeemable. That relationship was really sad, and I hope that it wasn't supposed to be seen as good, nor do I want it to continue in the next book. I really hope it was not supposed to be an encouraged romance. 


Overall, I really liked the book!

I had high hopes for this book based on the premise, but overall was pretty disappointed. The whole thing read like a rough draft, and the writing style just didn't do it for me. Worldbuilding was confusing (it was not explained well that Rome and Pangu are not in the same world?) and the plot was formulaic. Character development is not great, and I got tired of explicitly being told all the characters are morally grey. The worst part was the romance though. I get that dark romance is a popular thing right now, but this book is marketed as a fantasy romance, and holy hell, dark romance is what we got. It was too toxic and abusive for my tastes, and did not redeem itself throughout the book. Romanticizing abusive relationships (especially in YA books) is something I really dislike, so this book was not for me.

This is another one that’s just not for me. I really didn’t connect to the romance or the main character and that made it difficult for me to continue reading.

I enjoyed reading this book. The beginning was a little slow but added to the world-building. It picked up towards the middle and I became invested in the story.

The characters were dynamic and I like how they had grey areas. There were not heroes or villains.

There are a few typos that need to be addressed in the book.

Overall it was a great story and I am excited to read the second one.

To Gaze Upon Wicked Gods by Molly X. Chang

★☆☆☆☆ || 1.5/5

---

ARC received on NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

I wanted to enjoy this book. The title and cover art is catching, synopsis promising, and for the first 20% of the book, I found the plot intriguing and wanted to know more.

However, it all takes a nosedive shortly after. For a story centered around a war between magic and science, there is little to no in-depth exploration in the differences between the two. Similarly, a severe lack of world-building when it should have been pivotal, considering Pangu and Rome come from two entirely different planets, connected through this portal that is never explained. Use of magic has a physical toll on the user, and we see this depicted in Ruying for all of 1 or 2 chapters before the idea is entirely dropped.

On a related note, the author should have highly considered creating a fictional race adjacent to the Romans for this story. To call the colonisers “Romans” only elicits the imagery of Ancient Rome, yet the Romans here use technology and science. It’s a little disconcerting as a reader, and we’ve already created a fictional world adjacent to China. Why not just commit to an entirely fictional universe?

Characters are dull and underdeveloped. Ruying spends the whole book idolising Meiya, whom she calls “kind”. We only ever see Meiya cruelly putting her sister down, and she takes the award for my most disliked character. The rest of the characters suffer the same issue: too much offscreen character building. Lots of tell, instead of show: “Meiya is kind, Grandma is intelligent, Taohua is strong”. We never see any of this demonstrated through action on screen

Romance was unconvincing. The dialogue between Antony and Ruying was dry and so boring to read. Ruying is gas lit, brainwashed (in the most obvious way; it wasn’t even subtle), and clearly in a Stockholm Syndrome situation. Time skip occurs, and suddenly - Antony and Ruying are in love. I greatly dislike that we had one random chapter of Antony’s POV to depict that he'd actually fallen for Ruying. Why not just show it in his actions instead? What made him fall for her? I have no clue, because both romance and her killings seemed to all happen off screen through time skips! All of which leads to severe lack of development. And to preface all of this with her initial Author’s Note just seems in incredibly bad taste (and I say this as someone who has no issues reading problematic dark tropes - I would entirely remove the Author’s Note at this point). I understand what the author was trying to attempt, but I truly think that proper execution of the idea requires a more delicate touch.

What truly made me miffed (spoiler alert) was that Meiya and Baihu kept Ruying in the dark the entire time until the end. It's like they were begging for Ruying to be brainwashed, and were baffled by the end result.

Other various dislikes:

- Chinese text itself embedded into the narrative (although I did enjoy its application within the story). As a native Chinese speaker, I would prefer to have footnotes instead to make reading flow more consistent
- The rebel group and Phantom are underdeveloped if not non-existent. Zero buildup prior to their appearance
- The Author keeps writing. Like. This.
- Use of time skips to skip crucial character and plot development, resulting in flat characters
- Failed attempt at painting characters as morally grey

For a promising and rather strong start to the story, it peters off quite fast and tragically. The ideas and concepts that author attempts to explore requires a more skillful hand.

3/10

To Gaze Upon Wicked Gods started strong with an interesting premise, the might of magic vs the might of science. The juxtaposition of a civilization fighting with bows against one with fighter jets and missiles was great. Unfortunately it was all downhill from there.

The writing was clunky and repeated the same things over and over with just slightly different wording. You are beat over the head that magic can't compete with science, and annoyingly it is just called "science" every time. The book probably could have been 30% shorter without all these repeats, or it could have been just as long and actually taken the time to explore what could have been one of its best parts instead of just skipping over it. Ruying spends over 6 months as an assassin for the prince of Rome Antony. From the books synopsis we are led to believe this is pretty much the plot of the book. In reality what we get is a time skip interlude that just completely skips over almost all of her assassinations.

As far as the "romance" element goes, its disgusting. It is just straight up Stockholm Syndrome. I really can't explain it any other way. Sure by the end the main character figures this out but it is all so painful to read, and not in a good, making you feel for Ruying way.

The end also felt extremely rushed. It is clearly setting up for the sequel but in a way that has very little suspense and did not seem to properly wrap up anything. As I was reading and watching my percentage through the book I kept wondering if my e-ARC might be missing part of the book but nope it just comes to an abrupt end.

I REALLY liked the concept of this book and really wanted to enjoy it but I just couldn't. I feel so disappointed because with different writing this story could have been fantastic.

As a side note there is one passage that reads

"Now in this bed with Ruying beside him, Antony finally understood what his grandfather meant when he said love was a weakness.
Why they fought the wars.
Why poets dedicated their lives putting this feeling into words."


Which to me just seems like the author really enjoys the song "You are in Love" by Taylor Swift (which I can't blame her for) and wanted to just copy it into her book


And you understand now why they lost their minds and fought the wars
And why I've spent my whole life trying to put it into words

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for sending me an e-ARC of this book!

Now, I personally loved this book! I saw a lot of reviews talking about how she always mentions his jade eyes.. I felt like she's just noticing it more so and taking note of it mentally because her people don't have green eyes. It didn't bother me all that much, using the eyes and the science versus magic as a huge comparison. (Although she only really truly compares one character's eyes I suppose.)

The colonizer romance aspect people were talking about... I can kind of see what they mean, but there is a TWIST (not really a twist TO BE FAIR but I saw it coming and was hoping she'd go through with it.. that remains to be seen I suppose!) that ends up kind of tossing that upside down towards the end. (And I realize I had to choose to hide my Goodreads review due to that lol) I was also glad that at every turn, Ruying is questioning herself and if that's the right way to go.. To romance him and betray her people or to take a stand.

Ruying herself is weak willed. But also not at times. I liked seeing her struggle with her own thoughts, her own temptations. It made her feel alive.

I love the idea of the Xianlings and I want to find out why the magic has begun drying up.. was it truly the gods or no?

Also Baihu supremacy. That is all. Baihu. Supremacy.

I really wanted to like this book, and if the entire story had been written more like the last 20% this review would have been mostly positive.

Let me start with what I did like: the world was really interesting. The Romans are a direct reflection of the modern West, but with access to a world that was relatively unspoiled by pollution and exploitation of natural resources. Pangu is a world built around magic which the Romans don't have and this setup has so much potential in the science vs magic.

However, the story is hindered by the first 70% of the book in which it felt like very little happened except a lot of internal monologue of the main character. The book spends so much time telling us how the FMC feels and what she's thinking without showing us the world or characters around her in any meaningful way. The last portion of the story gets better with a bit more plot but I nearly stopped reading so many times leading up to that.

Overall I was disappointed by the pacing and limited view of the world and characters. I'm not sure if I will pick up the next book or not at this time.

Thank you Netgalley and Random House publishing group - Ballantine for the opportunity to read and review this book prior to publication. My review will be publicly available on my Storygraph within a month of publication. I will also post a review to my social media shortly after publication.

I received this ARC from netgalley in exchange for an honest review. This review (and a shortened version for insta) will go live today, Feb 4th.

Since the new year started, I’ve begun reading ARC’s and also actively looking for new cultures and nationalities outside of the norm. This definitely fit the bill. The plot was interesting and fueled by the fight between magic and science, with war right around the corner. I enjoyed the spirituality of this culture and how well thought out it is in the book. The plot did drag at a few points for me, but not for long. By the time I finished this book, I don’t know whose side I’m actually on.

The characters are multi faceted and have great backstories. The reader really gets a sense of how the characters came to be where they are in life. Even minor characters have a lasting impact. I am hoping we’re not heading towards a love triangle in this next book though; I’ve never been a fan and honestly, I really like Antony. The author does a great job of blurring good and evil; it’s hard to root for someone who has committed atrocities, but she’s successfully done just that.

The author has a flowing writing style that fits the content of the book. It’s almost reverent in describing the people and their cultures. It was beautiful to read.

All in all, this was a fun read. I enjoyed the plot and the characters, although it is obvious this is written for an age group younger than the one I’m in. It drug a bit in spots and was a bit juvenile for me in a few spots, but I still give it 4⭐️.

I might be slightly biased because I'm a soon to be Del Rey author, but I just loved this one! The world building especially (though I was a tad confused at the genre at first). But it ended up being so cool. The story felt like such a ride!

I plan to come back and write a much more thorough review very soon!

DNF after chapter 1 (17 pages)

Yeah, no, I do not like this. There are so many tiny grammatical errors that don't feel like a stylistic choice made by the author and I cannot get into the writing.

Granted, after receiving this arc I have since read a review of the book that made me very un-enthusiastic to proceed (shout-out to nahid’s pekoe on Goodreads and their very thorough review). But I was still curious to try it for myself.

However, I do not like this writing at all and I'm not going to be able to read a whole book like this. There are so. many. back-to-back. sentence fragments. If you're going to use them it should be for emphasis or humor or pacing. But if the number of sentence fragments outnumbers the number of full sentences in the same span? Honey, you're doing it wrong; I'm sorry.

Examples from just the second page of the arc I received, note: these may differ in the final publication--
"balanced at knife's edge" and "every Roman who marched this city" sound just wrong enough to my native ear

The one positive I did get out of this was that the foreword and the review I mentioned above both call attention to Unit 731 which was a facility that carried out torturous experiments and killed roughly half a million people. I didn't know about this before and have since gone online to be more educated on the subject. So thanks for that (though also I am very, very sad now-- please practice self care if you choose to look it up).

I don’t have a lot to say about this except that I cannot get behind a romance between a colonizer and the person he’s oppressing. It isn’t enemies to lovers. It isn’t “hot” or “sexy” or even moderately attractive in anyway. It’s dangerous and the farthest thing from romance that I can imagine.

I’ll be staying away from this book, unfortunately.

Thank you to the publisher and Netgalley for the copy in exchange for an honest review.

I really wanted to like this book. Enemies to lovers, a rich fantasy setting inspired by Chinese legends, countries at war, a magic system with a cost, and a strong female MC? It sounded too good to be true. Unfortunately, it was. Pitched as a complex fantasy full of morally gray characters forced to make the best of horrible situations amid war, the novel instead reads like a YA fantasy that couldn’t decide on scale, characters, or message. I don’t tend to like books that preach at me and most of this book was just the author telling the reader how bad war is. After the author’s note at the beginning about her family’s experience with Unit 731, I expected a vivid and human portrayal of what it means to be forced into a dangerous situation and stripped of humanity. Instead, the main character worked for the fantasy equivalent of Unit 731, chose to ignore the violence she committed because her boss was hot and sometimes nice to her after he sent her to kill people, and justified her actions by saying she was protecting her family. Since her relationship with her family was a weak shadow at best, that wasn’t a believable reason for what she did. I know Ruying was supposed to love her family, but the author fell into the trap of telling the audience that rather than showing it.

Beyond shaky motivations, I honestly believe that there were more words dedicated to calling war evil than there were to character development or creating a plot. I get it, war is bad. But To Gaze Upon Wicked Gods promised to create a gray space between good and evil. Instead, there was just evil. No character—villain or otherwise—had a reason to do what they did to the extent that they did. If you want to write a book condemning war while also revealing human complexity, then you have to create vivid characters that readers can understand. You can’t just say that war is bad and then expect the audience to root for characters on either side perpetuating the conflict. There was also a lot of writerly voice rather than character’s voice. It was easy to tell when the author was trying to get across her message rather than when the character faced a moral dilemma.

A central theme of the story is Ruying’s corruption arc. Most of her “corruption” happened off-page and was summarized in a brief 10-page interlude. Aside from one scene, the reader never witnessed her internal conflict so her ensuing actions weren’t believable. Instead of a story of a girl who destroyed her soul to save her family, readers have a girl abruptly changing sides and falling in love with her captor/boss who has no reason to care about her.

The “romance” in this novel didn’t exist and didn’t make sense. I get what the author was trying to do with a villain romance that would have humanized both sides. Instead, audiences got a girl falling in love with her abuser (he takes away her family, tortures her, has her kill people and violate her values, and controls her future) because she found him attractive and he “saw” her. Enemies-to-lovers works when both characters are equals. To me at least, that’s the appeal of the trope: one character sees the worst in the other, sees them as an equal, and chooses to care about them anyway. Enemies-to-lovers doens't work when one character has no choice but to fall in love. It doesn’t work when there’s no chemistry and no good motivations. It didn’t work here.

My final major issue with To Gaze Upon Wicked Gods was the worldbuilding or lack thereof. Why and how the portal connecting the worlds opened was never explained. Why Rome controls its entire world without conflict was never explained. Where magic came from was never fully explained. The audience was just supposed to accept that the Romans were all powerful because they had technology and that Pangu was weak despite having magic and an understanding of their resources. The magic system also didn’t make sense and didn’t have clear rules, despite supposedly taking a high toll on the magic-wielders.

Once again, I wanted to like this book. I would have liked this book if had been what the synopsis promised. But shaky worldbuilding, inconsistent messaging, and poor character development just led to a book I was glad to finish.

Thank you to NetGalley and Random House Pub for this earc

I honestly didn’t know what to expect of this book. But what I got was kind of awesome. If you’re looking for an easy fantasy to get into the genre, this one is for you.

We have two worlds, one of Magic and one of Science. When the world of science start to die, Romans come to the world of Magic for help. And of course take over.

The world was very easy to follow is word of science based on our world and world of magic is your basic set up.

The plot follows Ruying who has a power to kill people by taking their qi - life force. When Roman prince basically blackmails her into killing for him for “the greater good” she agrees to save her family.

This story is as old as time and a favorite for a reason. Kind of enemies to lovers. But what sucked me in, is that you really don’t know if Prince is actually evil and Ruying really that naive to follow his orders without questioning it. Author definitely took definition of “morally grey” and went with it.

We definitely had few moments when things were a little slow or had a time jump which I didn’t love. But it was still very entertaining

What I can’t wait to see in the next book is will Anthony actually turns to good or will Ruying have to kill him?

This was definitely a different type of Asian inspired literature. A mash up of Asian folklore, science fiction, and fantasy, it made it difficult to reconcile the two worlds in the book but it was still an entertaining read. And while I had issues with Ruying falling for her captor, I do realize this is a fiction book and written for entertainment.

Reading about how Rome has destroyed their planet emphasizes what we are doing to our planet currently, and where we’re headed if we don’t stop the abuse asap. This is a major theme of this book. The consequences are that this Roman civilization invades another world through a portal and looks for ways to save their world by destroying the world they’ve just invaded. What follows is a tale of a captive magic user who falls for her captor and does his bidding, not realizing she is destroying her world even further.

A sad tale, but still full of action and entertaining, I will definitely read the following book(s) to find out what happens next in Ruying’s story.

Thank you to NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group - Ballantine for sending me a copy in exchange for an honest review.

Thank you to NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group for an ARC in exchange for an honest review! I appreciate the opportunity to read this unfortunately this wasn’t for me.

To Gaze Upon Wicked Gods is set in an Asian-inspired fantasy world. You follow the main character Ruying, a girl blessed by death, as she is forced to become an assassin for the enemy Roman prince in order to protect her family.

I would like to start with some strong points, I think there is a lot of great potential here in this story. The world the author built is intriguing, and the strongest part of this book is when that is developed and explored. I found the beginning very interesting; where we begin to learn about Ruying, her family, the general history of Xianlings, the introduction/subsequent impacts of the opian drug, and how magic is used. At first, some of the explanations of Xianlings and Pangu were a bit lost on me, it felt clunky but I eventually picked up the pieces as the story progressed. I'm still confused about the portals?

There is a lot of great and powerful commentary on colonialism and its detrimental impact on colonized people. There are also fantastic moments highlighting the patriarchy that is embedded in Asian culture/tradition. Specifically, how women struggle to navigate the roles and expectations placed before us. Chang doesn’t shy away from the horrors of life living under oppression…..which is why I was incredibly disappointed (and quite frankly baffled) when I realized Ruying's love interest was indeed going to be her colonizer.

While this is set in a fantasy world, the issues the characters face mirror real life. The genre of fantasy/sci-fi has been used as a vehicle for social commentary for decades. So it is nearly impossible to read this book and not think of the current state of affairs happening in real time in our world.

It is incredibly difficult to get behind the main love interest Prince Antony as he is quite literally Ruyings colonizer. I just couldn’t do it, it was distasteful and concerning. He is not “morally grey”, he is a colonizer and an oppressor through and through full stop. Chang tries to give him a more sympathetic backstory but it was still giving white savior vibes. It is not enough for me to root for him or even remotely want him and Ruying together.

The power dynamic between the two is completely off for a successful enemies-to-lovers trope to even happen here. It’s more colonizer to lovers which is just disturbing. The very jarring and unequal power dynamic (oppressor & oppressed) between the two characters was being romanticized and tainted the real commentary Chang makes about colonialism as a whole. I don’t think this aspect of the story is going to sit well with readers, it’s unfortunately not something you can ignore.

That said, I think Baihu was a far more compelling love interest for Ruying and I am rooting for him. I would love to see more of him, his scene with Ruying towards the end was *chef's kiss*, he said what desperately needed to be said and shook some damn sense into Ruying.

The ending of this book shows promise and I see what the author is trying to achieve with Ruying’s overall character arc but I believe the execution fell very flat. She doesn't really read as morally grey. At first, her motivations to protect her family are clear but then the poor girl is straight-up manipulated to the point of delusion.

I was so happy when she finally came to her senses. I thought it was never going to happen. I want better for Ruying! Having to read her go-to bat for Antony made me feel so sad for her. Is this the kind of story/message we really want to send out in 2024? Seems like a very odd and bizarre choice, especially from a POC author. If the story continues to go down this colonizer romance path I will sit the next one out, which is a shame because there is a lot of potential here.

I wish there were a way for me to give this more than 5 stars.

Thank you to NetGalley and Random House Publishing for early access to the digital ARC. I devoured this book in 6 hours.

To Gaze Upon Wicked Gods follows a young woman torn between survival and freedom. To protect the ones she loves, Ruying makes a deal with the devil, a Roman Prince named Antony Augustus. Using the magic given to her by Death, Ruying must grapple with the complexities of morality while living during times of war and subjugation. It deals with very heavy topics, such as colonization from the perspectives of both sides.

Ruying is an amazingly flushed-out and real person. Antony is a brutal morally gray foil for her. The other characters add depth to this world without taking focus away from the main plot.

It has political intrigue, great sci-fi and fantasy elements, as well as a tortuous romance arch that left me in tears. It is definently a dark romance. I would not necessarily call this enemies-to-lovers. There is a huge power imbalance between them that they are both very aware of.

However, I highly recommend this book and I can not wait for the sequel.

I was looking forward to reading this book, especially after reading the note by the author where she describes about how the story was influenced by the cruelty inflicted on the people of China in Unit 731. But I unfortunately ended up not liking it.

I'll start with the things that I liked about the book:

- I really liked the way the magic was used and described. The way Ruying goes into Death's world when she uses her powers was really cool, and I also enjoyed the passages describing death and Ruying's connection to it.

- There was some metaphors in the writing that I liked, and the book was very readable and easy to understand.


And for what I didn't like:

- The tone came across as super melodramatic. The writing is very repetitive, and it was very difficult to get immersed into the story, especially at the beginning, because it felt like the story was just being told to us rather than shown. For example, the entire first chapter is pretty much just an exposition dump about the world and the conflict between Pangu and Rome, and how the Romans oppress and treat the Panguans poorly. I feel like this world-building could have been interwoven into the story while we see Ruying go about her day to day life, rather than just dumped to the reader all at once. And when Ruying becomes an assassin, all of the details are pretty much skimped over. It didn't feel like I was experiencing a story and instead more like one was just being summarized to me. I do think this issue got a little better towards the end of the novel, however.

- I found the world-building to be somewhat confusing.. I didn't really understand why Pangu was so technologically behind compared to Rome, or why they seem to be completely unfamiliar with the idea of science. Like... are there no inventors in Pangu or what?

- When Ruying uses her Death magic to assassinate people, it appears to be taking a very negative toll on her, but this is dropped like halfway into the book. I know that this is supposed to be a trilogy, but the issue just felt like it was handwaved and forgotten about..

- None of the characters are particularly interesting or engaging. The dialogue is all very dry and mostly involves the characters just dumping their life story and trauma to other characters or explaining stuff about the plot.

- And for my biggest issue: the romance. Antony is one of the princes of the Roman empire who are subjugating Ruying's people. After she's kidnapped by the Roman's and imprisoned, Antony wants to use her powers to assassinate people who are getting in his way. Ruying, who doesn't like using her powers to kill people, initially refuses but eventually ends up agreeing after Antony claims that he's doing this to keep the peace between Rome and Pangu and prevent Pangu from being completely destroyed in war. And Ruying takes this entirely at face-value. Like.. this guy offers absolutely no evidence to support his claims, nor does he ever explain to her why the people she's killing are standing in the way of peace. She just believes him for no reason, even at one point claiming that she didn't care that she didn't know the truth about him, or something among those lines.
Antony is just straight up an awful person, and I didn't understand why Ruying fell for him. He doesn't treat her with respect, she knows that he's hiding a bunch of crap from her, he plays a major role in the subjugation of her people, and she barely even knows Antony. And the book seems to paint this relationship in a positive light despite everything that Antony's done, which I was not a fan of.

Overall, I ended up being really disappointed with this book, and it felt like it needed a lot more editing.