Thanks to Netgalley, the author, and the publisher for the advance reading copy!

As a big lover of fantasy novels, especially Asian fantasy, I thought this was a great addition to the genre.

Content warnings: drug use, addiction, violence.
Rating: 3.5 rounded up

Ruying is a Xianling girl blessed (or cursed) with the powers of death; she can pull the qi from others killing them almost completely undetected. After a desperate act to provide for her family in the upcoming winter she finds herself in the hands of Antony, the second prince of Rome's hands. In order to keep her life and protect her family she must do the bidding of her people's greatest enemy.

Heroes die. Cowards live.


Molly X. Chang's debut novel is a retelling of folklore that was inspired by the real events her grandparents lived through during WII to the people of Manchuria under Russian and Japanese occupation. The author's note at the beginning of the book was very gripping.

Chang did a really great job of building a dystopian war-ravaged world without giving away all the intricacies at the beginning of the book. Er-Lang is a land rich in magic and natural resources and Rome, as we later find out, has ruined their own world to keep indulging in the comforts their science has brought them, leading them to look for resources elsewhere. You really feel the hopelessness of the conquered people from the start as well as the entitlement of the Romans.

The plot of this book focuses mainly focuses on two characters, Ruying and Antony, with only glimpses at the side characters (which I hope we get a lot more of in the next book, a multi-POV would be SO GOOD in my opinion). Ruying is a young woman who would do anything to make sure her family is safe and survives the roman rule. While she is captured she really goes through the struggle of not wanting to turn her back on her people while being forced to work as an assassin to protect her family's lives. At the beginning of the book she berated Baihu for being the Roman prince's lapdop then ends up in the same position herself, now seeing that not all choices are easy and she has to decide what sins she can live with to protect the people she loves. Antony gives me very much gaslight and groomer vibes. He forces Ruying to do what she promised she never would (killing) then comforts her afterwords. He is the only Roman who gives her attention or positive words leading to an almost stockholm syndrome romance instead of enemies to lovers. While we do get one glimpse into Antony's mind towards the end of the book, his actions throughout lead me to believe he spent the majority of the time playing with Ruying. The only side character I felt any emotions towards was Meiya, Ruying's twin sister. Chang really made her an unlikeable character. Meiya is introduced as an opian addict; without the drug the withdrawals will kill her like it did their father.

Maybe you're just using all of this as an excuse. Maybe the real reason you serve that Roman prince is because you're spineless. Just like Father. And like Father, the only person you care about is yourself. Your name and Gift are wasted on you.


I don't think it's a far stretch to say Meiya is the reason Ruying caught Antony's attention in the first place and her holier than thou attitude really sets me off.

The majority of this book focuses on Ruying's time with Antony, but I really look forward to see where Chang goes with this story. I'm hopeful the next in the series will include A LOT of rebel action and I'm quietly hoping Ruying and Baihu end up together.

I received an ARC of this book from Netgally and Random House in exchange for an honest review.

this is the first ever Asian historical fantasy i have ever read and wow, wow, wow. i was blown away!

this world – where heroes die and cowards live – is so beautifully and intricately written: the history of the crumbling Er-Lang Empire in Pangu, the hard life of the citizens in the struggling Jing-City, the misunderstood magic of the Xianlings and the undisclosed science advances of the Romans... wow. it all comes together to create an intense world where there is so much misguided loyalty, undisclosed secrets that could topple empires and worlds, and lies and deceptions which leads to betrayal and heartbreak.

the magic system, especially the qi-cells mentioned, in this world is one i have never read before, it's unique, mysterious. and it has me wondering if there's more to it (probably) and the science of the Romans seems... futuristic? so many instances in which the Romans talked as if they are truly from another world, another time...

the main character – named Yang Ruying – is a girl blessed by Death, which is one of the things she fears the most. the name her late mother chose for her means "brave", and brave she is. her having to make all the wrong decisions and place her loyalty in the hands of the wrong people in order to protect her loved ones, kin and empire, is so difficult, yet honorable to watch unfold. because in the end, like her, i have no idea if what she is doing will be worth it in the end, if it'll be the right thing to do. which is the reason why morally gray characters are so interesting to me. and she isn't the only morally gray character in the series, mostly everyone is.

also can i say that the the small glimpse of the love triangle subplot between Antony, Ruying, and Baihu that we were teased with throughout the entire book was *chefs kiss* i am really curious to see where that goes because both of the men fell first, and hard.

the ending of book 1 – which honestly left me bug-eyed and shocked – has me wanting book 2 so badly. i am really looking forward to it.

To Gaze Upon Wicked Gods is an epic fantasy with great world building and engaging characters.
Ruying is a girl blessed by death struggling to take care of her aging grandmother and drug addict twin. In a moment of desperation she steals a bag of gold from an enemy, Prince Antony.
After capturing her he convinced her to use her powers to help him convincing her of his cause.
Ruying has a significant amount of doubt and angst about her choices. Her motives are clear and easy to understand and I felt her struggles. I also loved Antony and even when I felt like I couldn't trust him.
The world definitely echoed history with the conquerors and the conquered. The Roman's treatment of the Pengu people reminiscent of the Nazis. I think it captures the horrors and complications of being on different sides of a war.
I wanted the romantic relationship with Antony to develop more but understood why it couldn't.
I'm looking forward to the rest of the series. Thanks to netgalley for the arc is exchange for my honest review.

Thank you to NetGalley & the publisher (Random House Publishing Group - Ballantine, Del Rey) for an ARC of this book in exchange for my honest review.

First of all, the book draws you in right away--I was easily captivated and drawn into the world-building immediately. The author's note also helps to place the world in terms of historical comparison/culture/expectations.

Second of all, even though some people say it's unfair (and they're slightly different genres), I can definitely see the comparisons to RFK's Poppy War trilogy--I saw it mostly in the similarity of the orphan FMC situations and how they both start working for a political/governmental group they don't necessarily agree with morally in order to achieve their (FMC's) own individual ends/goals, as well as the MMC being on the opposite (political) side of the war and being of morally grey (or possibly even evil) character. I think the Chinese fantasy comparison is where many people immediately go to compare the two (I think *that* may be unfair, but it is definitely a similarity between the series). Also, opium is a huge plot point in both books.

Thirdly, I wavered on how much I liked the book and where to rate it, because I spent the middle chunk of the book despairing at Ruying's situation & how on earth the book (or series) was going to have any kind of hopeful ending...or how the enemies to lovers (?) relationship was going to work. I was satisfied by the ending, but man did I spend the middle of the book Worried. Also, I spent the middle of the book worried that this series was going to be a Corruption Arc of the FMC (ala The Poppy Wars) and, man, is that kinda series not for me...I don't think it's going that way, after all, but I was Worried.

Also, I wanted to smack Ruying's sister (Meiya) for most of the book--she's a petty thing that acts all ~morally superior~, when 1) she's addicted to opium and 2) SHE'S the reason why Ruying's in the situation she's in. If her sister (Meiya) had not been addicted to opium and required it to continue living, Ruying wouldn't have ended up selling herself/her soul/her powers to Rome. Meiya is a humongous hypocrite acting all morally superior when SHE'S the problem, it's her!!!

Fourthly (fifthly?), there are parts to the book where Antony sounds like a Disney/Bond? villain with his polished "the ends justify the means" speeches and sentences, which was a little off-putting to me, because what kinda book villain talks like that??? i like my villains with Nuance, thanks.

On a different note, the scenes with [SPOILER]the Sihai emperor & his son (chapters 36 & 38)[SPOILER] were heart-breaking, omg. I cried during both of them and they actually made me up my rating of the book (if it can make me cry, 99% of the time that makes it a 4 or 5 star book).

Finally, the relationship between Antony & Ruying--I knew going in the relationship was going to be enemies to ?lovers?, so I was Prepared in that aspect...but holy cow was I not Prepared for how Truly Enemies they would be for most (all?) of the book. My E2L girlies, THIS book is for you...not the people who Say they like E2L but really want antagonistic work colleagues/belligerent sexual tension pairs.

[SPOILER]Antony's[SPOILER] single POV chapter--this Also contributed to my 4 star book rating. It was barely 1.5 pages and BOY was it a zinger. I understand why it was only one chapter, but BOY did I want more after this. It also helped confirm something I'd suspected for the middle half of the book but really became transparent in the immediate chapter before ([SPOILER]"Goodnight, my love"[SPOILER] and [SPOILER]"Maybe one day I'll deserve you"[SPOILER] are pretty blatant, even if Ruying is half clueless). [SPOILER]'Why they fought the wars. Why poets dedicated their lives putting this feeling into words."[SPOILER] has BIG [SPOILER]"You Are In Love"[SPOILER] (TSwift) vibes [SPOILER]("And you understand now why they lost their minds and fought the wars / And why I've spent my whole life tryin' to put it into words")[SPOILER] Also: [SPOILER]'And when he saw her bleeding on the riverbank, when he thought she might be dead, nothing else mattered. If anything happened to her, Antony would burn this whole world to the ground. He would start wars to keep her safe.'[SPOILER] just goes SO HARD. Also: [SPOILER]'Antony Augustus was not a religious man, but he would worship at her altar, kneel for her in eternity.'[SPOILER], hot damn. i was dyyyyyying reading this entire chapter, wanting so much more. And I think this chapter solidified me loving this pairing, even though i questioned myself the entire middle chunk of the book.

Also also: based on the naming of the MMC ('Antony Augustus'), I had wondered if his and Ruying's relationship would have Antony and Cleopatra vibes, and [SPOILER]I wasn't wrong. /insert eye emoji/[SPOILER]

Sorry for so many spoiler notes, just tagging aggressively so people can enjoy the book without spoilers like I did! Cause reading emotions in real time was what blew me away about this book.

Overall, a solid start to an intriguing series. I'll be curious to see where this goes!

I rally wanted to love this book based on the plot and the cover, but I was disappointed. I like the concept that the author was going for and was hopeful that it would reach this amazing destination, but the trip getting there was a hot mess and the destination I got wasn't the one advertised. The world building needs some work as does the pacing. We're the told the character is morally gray and willing to save their family by any means necessary, but she really wasn't doing anything useful for much of the book other than whining, complaining, and passing out judgment. There's so much that seemingly happens off page that I was left wondering how did we get there. The romance made no sense and supports a toxic relationship that was just weird.

ARC provided by Del Rey in exchange for an honest review —

Oh my god??? I loved this!!! The writing in this book is so emotionally driven that I was feeling every weave of the main character’s decisions right along with her. I felt like the limits of what someone would do to survive were tested here, and in such a way that felt authentic and raw. The world building is something I can’t wait to see explored in sequels as well - there is so much to be expanded upon as the character’s journeys continue, and the foundations established in To Gaze Upon Wicked Gods make for a fantastical, sinister, and eerie treat! Molly X. Chang has a gorgeous writing style that I devoured page after page and left me craving more.

This felt like a personal and unique blend that is perfect for readers that are fans of Immortal Longings, Red Rising, and Throne of Glass. Absolutely wonderful and I highly, highly recommend.

I received an ARC for this book. All thoughts and feelings about this book above are my own.

Well, this was bad. Which is so disappointing, because it sounded so good. But between its implications, the writing of the love interest, and the romanticization of some icky topics, I grew to resent this book. By the end, I was reading just so I had more ammunition for this review, and not because I was actually enjoying my reading.

I think the problem that is bugging me the most right now is the worldbuilding. And like many other reviewers picked on, it's underdeveloped and confusing. But that's not my biggest problem with it. My biggest problem with it is the casting of our world and this fantasy-esque China. Now, small spoilers will be present from here on out, so be careful. As the book continues, we learn that Antony (our love interest) has played a veryyyy large part in both the colonization and genocide of Ruying's people. And the reason why? He does this because of the climate crisis his world is facing. Sound familiar? To me, it felt like Antony's world is supposed to reflect the future of ours, with high levels of pollution and global warming. Critiquing this in fantasy seems to be a good idea, right? But, maybe it isn't such a good idea when the solution proposed is the colonization of another world. With an added side of torture and genocide. What makes this suggestion even worse is that the love interest, Antony, is highly involved. And although To Gaze Upon Wicked Gods condemns his actions in maybe the last 20 pages (if you can even call it condemning his actions when Ruying is still mooning over him), the majority of the book is spent defending his actions because they're being done to "prevent war". Huh?!?!? Are we supposed to understand, or even empathize, with him? Am I supposed to ship these characters? And something about writing "Rome" in a futuristic version of our world, a version that we may be quickly approaching, turning to colonization and the harvesting of blood to solve its problems just felt icky. And again, I probably wouldn't feel as strongly about this if Antony wasn't cast as a "good guy". If the Romans were always portrayed as the problem, these events would've been more bearable. But the idea that one of the leaders of their civilization was redeemable was disgusting.

Compared to my last critique, this one seems much more minor, but I also hated Ruying as a character. I should know better by now. I should know to avoid books promising morally gray characters, especially YA books. Because these characters are never morally gray. Theoretically, Ruying is this bloodthirsty killer who's made dozens of hard decisions. Where was this character? The character we got was naive, foolish, cowardly, stupid, and moral. And not moral in a good way. Moral in an infuriating way. Moral in a way that meant that we had to read the inner argument of "I can't kill him", "but my family!" a million times. This gets old fast. So incredibly fast. And not even to mention that the majority of Ruying's "descent" (if you can call it that) happened off-page... Mid-book, we skip 6 months and come back to Ruying being an established assassin. What??? When did this happen? And why did we skip the majority of that development? Especially when it theoretically solidified Ruying's descent into killing and also worked to build the romance between her and Antony. This choice made no sense. It made room for more romance, but believe me, more romance was the LAST thing To Gaze Upon Wicked Gods Needed.

Even if you ignore the problematic nature of the romance, it doesn't work. If anyone can tell me a single thing that drew Ruying and Antony together, I'll give them a gold star. Because their relationship made zero sense. Theoretically, Antony was "nice" to her. Since when is this enough to build a relationship off of? The act of comforting her after he FORCED her to murder somebody? Am I the only one who thinks that maybe, just maybe, this isn't a compelling reason to romance?

Somehow, this book was over 300 pages long and felt like both an utter drag and hundreds of pages too long. It took me forever to read. Because it was boring. And the characters were awful. And because the overall nature of it irked me. But at the same time, if any of it were to be redeemable, I needed more. I needed more worldbuilding. I needed more development of the romance (not that I wanted it). I needed side characters (seriously, the way this book treated the few side characters it had was atrocious). I needed so many more pages that explained what the hell was happening. But, we didn't get those pages, and To Gaze Upon Wicked Gods suffered from that.

And now I just have to return to the side characters. I can name maybe 4 of them? Baihu, Meiya, Grandma, and whatever the older prince was named? And of those, I think only Baihu played a significant role... Meiya had one conversation with Ruying (that I can remember), and it served only to justify Ruying's pity party. As for Grandma, theoretically, she was so important to Ruying, but I don't think she had a single line once we passed page 50. As for ANtony's older brother, he only existed to excuse Antony's actions. He could've been completely removed from the book, and nothing would've changed. And really, this statement is true for every single one of the side characters. Instead of feeling like dynamic additions that added to the quality of the story, they felt like chess pieces used only when necessary. It honestly felt like the author forgot about them until they had a necessary role. And then she'd use them for this role before discarding and forgetting about them once again. Which makes the blandness of the romance even more convincing. When the entire book is occupied by only two characters, how can those two characters have so little chemistry, connection, and characterization?

Recently, I've seen a lot of discourse on Booktok regarding the overconsumption of readers and how this has affected the publishing industry. I've seen people suggesting that publishing is beginning to resemble fast fashion, with speed and constant content being placed above the quality of that content. And I feel like this book perfectly encapsulates this issue. It feels like it needs several more rounds of developmental editing to figure out the plot and where this book is going. There are still major plot holes and inconsistencies that lead to a confusing and disjointed reading experience. In addition to that, I also found numerous copyediting errors. I acknowledge that I had an ARC and that hopefully many of these will disappear with the final edition, but some of these errors were pretty consequential. As a reader, it felt like this book wasn't quite ready to be released. Instead of feeling like a polished final product, it feels like it was hastily, written, published, and released. It feels like there should still be several more rounds of editing ahead. Maybe the final product will be better, but I don't care to figure that out.

Despite my complaints, I can absolutely see Booktok and Bookstagram eating this up. After all, it has a gorgeous cover that I can see Fairyloot or Owlcrate picking up. But as for the content, I found it unbearable. As soon as I finish ranting, I'm going to go read other negative reviews to assure myself that I wasn't imagining any of my issues with this book. I'm glad to have finished this, even though I'm not happy I read it. At least I can knock it off my ARC pile now.

Thanks to Netgalley for providing a free copy in exchange for an honest review

Thank you to the publisher and the author for providing me a copy through Netgalley!

"To Gaze Upon Wicked Gods" is a masterful Sci Fi/ Fantasy tale, that echos the horrors of Manchuria, and the abhorrent realities of a occupied people, who were forced to undergo horrific experiments by the colonizers. Prior to reading this story, I knew very little about the details of the occupation of Manchuria, and grotesque realities of Unit 731, but this fictionalized world and its author has encouraged me to learn more about this piece of history.
We need more works like this one, where the story mirrors a once very real reality, and sheds light on a history, while painted in a fantasy world within the story, that many may not be aware of.

While I agree with other reviewers on Goodreads that it was a very intense book, I believe it held true to the tone and pace of such a book that is based on a specific and very horrific event in our world's history. I think readers will have the opportunity to see the harsh realities of an occupied world, even it is a fictionalized world, and may even compare their own knowledge and understanding of the realities of occupations in our world today.

Thank you to Random House books and Netgalley for an advance copy of this book in exchange for my review!

To Gaze Upon Wicked Gods is a young adult fantasy adventure where we follow Ruying, a young girl blessed by the god of death with magic to kill mortals as she navigates trying to make the right choices and survival amid a harsh world controlled by violent and discriminatory Romans, poverty, and addiction. Ruying is committed to helping her family survive, and is willing to do anything to make it happen, including making an alliance with one of the Roman princes, Antony, responsible for her people's suffering. In exchange for Roman protection and riches, Ruying uses her gift of death at the disposal of the Roman prince.

At its core, this novel is ambitious in scope as it attempts to tackle themes of imperialism, revolution, growing up, loyalty, and love. Yet, I ultimately felt like it fell short due to underdeveloped political and cultural worldbuilding, repetitive writing telling the audience about the high stakes instead of showing us, and an romance subplot that I did not feel was believable to fully appreciate the emotional buildup or turmoil that would set this would be enemies to lovers dynamic apart. Ruying struck me as extremely naive, and while naivete is not a end-all-be-all bad trait, I felt that it did not quite strike the morally-grey, unreliable narrator that Chang may have set out to convey. Further, this didn't sit well with me in the fact that her naivete pulled her into what, at times felt like the prince grooming her to become his weapon. The major "twists" felt predictable and felt less like a reveal and more so like just another point in the story.

There are a few things I think would strengthen this book: (1) More political exposition so the reader truly understands the historical oppression and current stakes that makes the Roman and Panguling conflict what it is, and the outside rebel group that also has stake in it. (2) Showing more action scenes and relationship dynamics between Ruying and her family to we can see first hand not only what she is willing to do, but why. Similarly, the romance would have been more believable if there was more tension built in and scenes where we can get to know the dynamic between Ruying and Antony and root for them despite them both being extremely unlikeable. Finally, it was not clear to me that this is a young adult novel, and had someone not told me as I read, I would not have been clear based on the existing marketing.

All this said, there are a few things that I did enjoy. Chang writes with energetic, and often atmospheric prose that helped me remain grounded even when I felt some apparent gaps in the story. Additionally, the end of the book is setting up what seems like a potentially exciting start to book 2 in a very anti-imperialist revolution where Ruying learns more about herself, fighting for her people, and revenge. This storyline has a lot going for it, and I think by addressing some of the areas for improvement above, it can and will have no problem being a memorable and exciting YA series.

Truth be told, I applied for this ARC with no knowledge of the book, just knowing of Molly X. Chang's involvement in racism-driven review bombing. I wanted to read this book as my way of showing support.

So I went in knowing nothing. And To Gaze Upon Wicked Gods is a cool concept: the Roman Empire survived another thousand years after conquering the Qin Empire (which I assumed would be the IRL Qin Dynasty, meaning the beginning of modern China) and became even more corrupt. Our protagonist Ruying is just trying to help her opian-addicted (not sure why the author didn't just use opium) sister survive in a systemically racist and bloodthirsty society.

It's an ambitious plot for a debut. And it pains me to say that it was overambitious. There is an abundance of telling in this story, and the opening chapters is one of the worst I've ever read. It's just info-dump after info-dump.

I was also confused about the genre. This is not a fantasy, it's distinctly closer to a sci-fi or dystopian. It's also not an *exactly* alternate history of Rome and it doesn't utilize any classical Roman culture or events. (The only "event" would be my theory that this is an alternate history where Rome conquered China during the Qin dynasty, or before Rome was an empire. This is not clear in the novel.) This leaves me confused why Chang made this book take place in an alternate Roman Empire at all, since she literally only used the name. In some ways, it reminds me of Sarah J. Maas's use of Illyrians. Hell, Chang didn't even research the structure of Roman naming. Or the fact that Imperial Rome never had "princes."

Overall, I felt there was so much telling, yet it was nothing of major value to the novel. Chang chose to write a story that could have been a grand opportunity for major worldbuilding, but steered clear of a lot of options. I would have liked to see more of the society outside of Ruying's POV, and more detailed explanation of the world itself without info-dumping.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

2.5 Stars rounded down to 2

To Gaze Upon Wicked Gods is like the tale of Icarus – a story that soared high in the beginning only to plummet when it came too close to the sun. And boy, did the sun come fast. We opened with a beautifully poignant foreword from the author explaining that she is Manchu and this story is based on her grandfather’s “folktale” stories he told to her as a child; or what she thought were folktales. As she grew and learned more about her people’s history, she discovered that these stories were partially based in reality. Manchuria is a region in Northeast China that fell victim to some of the most vile and gruesome war crimes in human history during the Sino-Japanese war and WWII, carried out by the Imperial Japanese Army, Unit 731. This is incredibly important to remember during this review.

I’ll also go ahead and get this out of the way: I will not compare this to The Poppy War, another fantasy book based on the Sino-Japanese war and Japanese war crimes. TPW is an Adult book while this one is Young Adult. These are two completely different target audiences, and while this doesn’t erase the deep issues I have with this book, it’s not a fair comparison.

I’m going to give a very brief synopsis for brevity’s sake as this review is already going to be extremely long. Ruying is a Xianling (a person born with magic in the context of this world) who has the ability to pull a person’s qi from them until they die. This ability is dangerous for Ruying as the more she uses it, the more of her own qi she diminishes which will lead to her own untimely end. Her country of Er Lang fell victim to foreign invaders via a portal (think the isekai genre in anime or even Narnia) twenty years ago called Romans. Yes, these Romans are the exact Romans you are thinking of. It’s never explained, but the reader is to assume the Roman Empire never fell and survived into modern human history, conquering and laying waste through war to their own world. The Romans took over Er Lang in a single day thanks to their weapons and machinery and they have been ruling oppressively ever since.

Let me start out with the things I liked before I dive into why this book is an utter mess. I thought the prose was simply captivating – Chang is an amazing writer in this sense, I genuinely stand by that. This is some of the best prose I have read from a debut author and it immediately sucked me in. I really like the concept of magic vs science and how those two things are really conflicting forces. I enjoyed the emotions and strained connection between Ruying and Baihu in the beginning. Their relationship was truly the easiest to buy into and believe the entire novel and I thought the first scene between them especially was ripe with tension and emotion.

This is about where all the things I enjoyed ended. Let me break this into sections.

PACING

The pacing feels extremely off once we begin hitting around the 30% mark. I almost can’t believe this book is going to belong to a series considering the speed we are moving at. To a degree it seems like we’re rushing through very important parts: the romance, character connections, the plot just in general – all so we can wrap up the story within this book. A few questions have been left unanswered, sure. But to me none of these answers are worth sticking around for. We moved at a breakneck speed which made character and relationship development totally suffer. Even the worldbuilding itself flounders at the pace we’ve set.

GENERAL BIZARRENESS AND CONFUSION

• Why Romans? We’re all wondering it. Why not….another fictional fantasy group the author made up? Why is this book essentially an isekai/Narnia set up? I think these types of stories can be executed well, but they have to be done in a very specific manner that this story didn’t execute. It’s also extremely strange when you remember the entire reason for this story’s existence: Unit 731 and Japanese war crimes. I still can’t wrap my head around this decision. It’s jarring, it takes you out of the story almost immediately.

• The deeper you read, the more you see the YA cliches. I think tropes are fine within a novel, but you either must subvert them or do them really, really well. This book does neither. There are many, many instances of telling, not showing. This is a major issue for talking about the world at large and character backstories. Instead of writing a story that unfolds naturally, where information is given to us as needed, we are almost immediately loaded down with the history of the world in chapter one.

• The training explanations are just….half thought out when it comes to the grandmother. Sure, you would be able to pick up sword fighting better than the average person given that you have knowledge/have seen the training given to your brothers and children over the years, but having knowledge and being able to sword fight are two completely different matters. Ruying is able to waylay literal trained warriors with a sword in spite of never having been in a real sword fight with literally anyone else before. This takes the reader out of the story due to how unbelievable this achievement is. Speaking of the grandmother – not being able to see the extent of her grandmother’s brilliance firsthand requires a suspension of disbelief that is very difficult for the reader. I think having Ruying think about her grandmother’s past advice can be helpful, but it’s also….very common sense advice to a degree as well.

THE ROMANCE

Some people have said in reviews that this is a “colonizer romance.” At first I rolled my eyes. I thought this romance would be similar in vein to The Wolf and the Woodsman or maybe The Cruel Prince. After finishing this book, I can unfortunately say that I am inclined to agree with the reviews. I won’t outright call it that, seeing as I’m not entirely sure if the author is pulling something else. I think either way you look at it….regardless, the romance is just bad. It’s not well written in the slightest and their entire dynamic is really unbelievable. This is most definitely a case of lust at first sight as much as I hate to say it. Nothing about their romance is charming or butterfly inducing in the slightest before or after the plot twist.

CHARACTER ISSUES

• This story desperately, and I mean desperately, needed more scenes with the grandmother beyond the one we received. To give you a proper understanding of what I mean: we have exactly one scene with the grandmother towards the beginning of the story. Yes, one. Meiya doesn’t fare much better with her grand total of two scenes. Yes, this is Ruying’s journey, but her journey is intrinsically linked with her love for Meiya and their grandmother; her love for her family is her entire character motivation. Only having one scene with these two characters damages the story to untold degrees. I think them having extremely little page time while still letting the reader feel Ruying’s love can be achievable – Elizabeth Lim’s Spin the Dawn and Six Crimson Cranes both come to mind as an example. Both of the main characters in those stories spend very little time with their families in the beginning, but you feel the love pouring out from these characters in such visceral ways. I think an issue with this story is that these characters seem to have more agency/competence to a degree Lim’s did not. Ruying’s grandmother was the daughter of a war general who married an even greater one later on in life; she was the hidden driver behind her husband’s achievements. Meiya is an opian addict, yes, but she took to opian just so she could fall in line with the rebels. We’ve been told that these characters are either amazing, next level strategists or extremely gutsy. Why aren’t they doing anything within the story?

This book started off with so much promise and just…fell so incredibly flat. Captivating prose cannot keep a book afloat alone if everything else in your novel is falling to pieces.

First and foremost thank you to Netgalley and Penguin Random House for an eARC of this book! I was extremely thankful for an opportunity to read this early!

Unfortunately, the best part of this book was the last 1/4 that dropped important information leading into a sequel I imagine and I can only hope there's an improvement in the writing style and in Ruying's character development for me to read it.

I was excited to pick up this book because there's not enough Asian fantasy books or at least not enough of them getting exposed to me. The concept was interesting but execution left a lot to be desired. The book was very repetitive and mostly info dumping versus proper world building and allowing readers to be immersed in the story. The concept of magic also leaves a lot of questions that remain unanswered and overall for a fantasy, the story didn't feel fantastical.

While i understood Ruying to an extent she was not a main character to root for and all the things that should make her a badass FMC we don't ever get to see. Don't even get me started on the "romance" between her and her captor who's basically gaslit her into ignoring the atrocities he and his people have committed. I love a good enemies to lovers but this was not it.

Really disappointed — I was looking forward to reading this so much since the book was announced, but the actual reading experience didn’t quite live up to the promise.

You know how sometimes you can just see that a book had a cool idea and lots of potential, but sadly it just didn’t work out in the end? Now take that disappointment, add copious amounts of incredibly repetitive writing, infodump-via-dialogue, faux profundities that can be found on every single page and strange toxic infatuation based on literally nothing but maybe good looks, and watch it drown in the ocean of questionably handled and barely coherent worldbuilding.

I’m tempted to say that reading this book was like reading a romance-heavy YA fanfiction for the source material that had all the things the book, in reality, lacked despite the original claim (such as well-developed characters with consistent motivation, intricate world-building and a plot that made sense and had impact), but that doesn’t seem fair to fanfiction. The novel would have benefited by being tighter, rid of all the completely unnecessary repetitions that don’t shed any light on anything whatsoever and two random different POV chapters are cut out. It may have easily cleaved off a third of the book, maybe? A fourth? I don’t know if it would’ve made it more enjoyable, but at least I would’ve slogged through it faster.

Overall, a largely disappointing read and, I feel, falling short of the ambition outlined in the author's note at the beginning.

I didn't enjoy this book as much as I wanted to. I think the writing could have been developed a bit. I felt like there was background in every single chapter and it was becoming repetitive so I'd skim through those paragraphs. I like complex political situations, but I did not like the execution as much. Romans from a dying Earth essentially used a wormhole to find Pangu, where some of the people are gifted and have super cells. Unfortunately, this fact was not properly explained until I was mid-way through the book, so I think the set up and background should have been prioritized in the earlier chapters. The story focuses on Ruying while Pangu and the Romans are at the brink of war. There's a lot of focus on betrayal, politics, and allies while Ruying teams up with a Roman prince to save her people. I did like the short chapters as they were a lot more digestable.

Thank you Netgalley and the publisher for sending me an arc. All opinions are my own.

To Gaze Upon Wicked Gods is a thrilling debut about a war-torn empire,
Betray her people to keep her family safe or stand against the enemy.

The opening chapters do a great job of introducing the reader to the world and its current events. They give the reader an overview of how the war began decades ago and what has happened to the present. The clear dynamic between the colonizer (the Romans) and the colonized is painted. It immediately made me interested to figure out all the secrets and details.

I found the world-building incredibly intriguing to read about. It was complex and unique but still kept its ties to a part of history that tends to be glossed over. I don't claim to understand everything about the world yet because not everything has been explained in detail yet but I also admit that at times I read too fast because I was too excited which caused me to miss some details (this is where rereads come in handy)
From my understanding, there seem to be two "worlds". Ruying's world, Pangu, is filled with magic. Then the invading world, Rome, comes from a portal in the sky. Rome's world is well-versed in science, it can be compared to our present world.

I found the characters all very interesting and portrayed very realistically. The story follows Yang Ruying, the girl blessed by Death. With her unique gift, Ruying can suck the qi (essentially a person's energy) from their bodies and thus kill them. As a girl on the side of the colonized population, her point of view is (rightly so) tainted by anger and fear towards the usurpers who have ruined her country and murdered her people. What I found most interesting about Ruying's character is her unreliable narration. Ruying can, at times, come over as rather naive. She does not know what side of the conflict to be on. Throughout the book, her opinions and views change multiple times, portraying her uncertainty about her current situation very realistically. The reader gets a very limited view into the different sides of the conflict, all through the colored lens of Ruying which makes it tricky for us to figure out what side to root for. Obviously, we don't want to root for the side of the colonizers but is anything ever as simple as black and white?

Now we need to talk about the romance because let me tell you the ordeals I went through. Are you ready? Take a seat and make yourself comfortable because I'm about to tell you a story.

I began shipping her with the wrong brother.

Yes, you read that right. There are three evil prince brothers, two of whom appear in this book. Valentin is the prince people only have evil stories about. The guy doesn't have a kind bone in his body. Anthony has a more secretive vibe and there are mostly rumors about him but the people don't know much else because he's not seen often.
It was around chapter 14 when I realized what a colossal mistake I had made and it was at this moment I began to panic. Because I feared that this misship could ruin my reading experience. Why did my little twisted mind have to ship Ruying with the eviler of the brothers? Of course this happened.

Okay, Let's take a few steps back so that I can explain how I arrived at this unfortunate point.
I swear on my sister's and my mother's lives that I read the synopsis before requesting the ARC on Netgalley. But my cretin of a brain decided to do an amnesia plot and Anthony's name was burned from my memory. So what does my brain do when Ruying talks about Valentin and all his evilness?
My brain falls head over heels.
And thus commence the ship
Fast forward to the initial scene where we get a glimpse of the Big Bad Prince and of course, my cretin brain assumed that the prince Ruying had a little ahem--to say it gently-- run-in with, was Valentin.
Dear reader it was, in fact, not Valentin.
*Anthony has entered the chat*

Fast forward to when I reached chapter 15 at which point I realized I messed up. Royally (pun intended). This is where I paused for a moment to think about what I had done. I took a few deep breaths, went to get a cup of tea, and then proceeded.
My panic was, at that moment, thankfully short-lived and I quickly jumped ships when Anthony called Ruying "darling".

I'm a simple woman.

As I neared the halfway point, Anthony began to give me Warner vibes: bad guy who's secretly a cinnamon roll, who will burn the world down for his girl, who hides mountains of pain and trauma but carries it silently because all he wants to do is make a better world.
Naturally that made me fall in love with him.

But by the time I reached the 70% mark, I was no longer fooled. I stopped believing all the things Anthony said. I felt like his facade of sweetness and kindness was a honey trap. I much preferred Valentin's way of evil because he didn't try to hide that he was a menace to society.
Because I no longer trusted Anthony, I had trouble shipping him and Ruying. The whole time I was waiting for the other shoe to drop.
And dear reader, the shoe did indeed drop in the end.

Though the ending did not come as a surprise to me, it was a great ending that set the tone for the sequel. There has been a shift in Ruying's character that I'm excited to see come into play because I think it will finally allow her to use her full potential. Overall this is a very solid debut, written at a great pace with realistic character development. Fans of The Hurricane Wars and These Violent Delights will definitely enjoy this one! Meanwhile, I will keep holding out hope that my Valentin-Ruying ship will still sail because my deranged side craves it.

I loved this book so much , the characters are so morally grey that I couldn’t put down the book down.

Did not finish at ~50%

I was very excited to receive an ARC of this book to review since To Gaze upon Wicked Gods was a top anticipated read. Sadly, I cannot say I enjoyed this book. It is overwritten and melodramatic. The dialogue is bloated and repetitive. I think either the author or editor(s) should go back and take a look at how the dialogue reads out loud. The characters' dialogue go on and on and ON. One paragraph of dialogue could take up 2/3 of the eARC page and that would be considered the norm for To Gaze upon Wicked Gods. And this isn't even a formatting issue - there seems to be a monologue every page. It was excruciatingly frustrating to get through even half of this book. The quality of the writing is severely lacking. However, based on the 1st half of the book, I did like the minor characters such as Baihu, Taohua and Meiya (Ruying's sister) and thought they had potential. Reading monologues every page from Ruying or Antony was unbearable.

I honestly could not recommend this book to a Chinese diaspora audience because it does not feel like it was written for us as a target audience but more for people who want to see fantasy China get colonized for like the 3rd time in a row. That being said, I DNF'd this book before getting to the meat of the alleged "colonizer romance" people have been mentioning, so I cannot determine myself whether this has been exaggerated in other reviews or if they were right. The writing in To Gaze Upon Wicked Gods was enough of a turn off to me that I don't care whether the romance between the main characters is trashy or not. Frustration won over my morbid curiosity this time.

The cover art is beautiful. I strongly encourage publishing to focus more on quality of what is inside a finished book since it seems like they've got the beautiful cover game down already.

I really wanted to love this book. It sounded so promising and had such a lovely cover. I enjoyed it, but I didn’t love it.

I really loved the premise. It was such a good set up. I liked the tension that existed between Ruying and Baihu. I love a more ally grey character.

That being said, I found the worldbuilding rather clunky and hard to follow. I also wasn’t a huge fan of the Roman. He just felt rather flat and I didn’t really get any tension between them.

I also didn’t get a lot of inner turmoil from Ruying. She seemed pretty set in her ways, despite the killing.

All in all, it was an enjoyable read.

I had so much trouble finishing this book. I struggled with focusing on it. It was wrote well but the story and characters just weren't grabbing me and I had to push through it.