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.

Thank you to NetGalley and Random House for the arc. I was really looking forward to reading this book and I’m sad I can’t give it a higher review. First off the cover is gorgeous and definitely pulled me in.

Second I really enjoyed the writing style of this book and found it really easy to read. However, the world building at the beginning was not as detailed as I hoped it was so I found myself confused many times while reading. I found the setting really interesting and wanted to learn more about the lore and the magic. The magic system is what drew me to want to read this book, but I found myself asking more questions than the answers I was getting.

Out of all the characters Baihu was my favorite, he was a well done morally grey character. I was sad I didn’t connect with Ruying more, I found myself encouraging her to take action throughout the book. I thought Antony and Ruyings romance to be very rushed. I felt like she only liked his eye color, it was hard to feel her growing feelings. I love a good enemies to lovers, but this didn’t feel like that. I had a hard time finding any connection or interest in Antony as a character as well.

The pacing for this was both slow and fast. At times I was bored and had to push through while at other times I found myself lost. I thought Antony and Ruyings romance was very rushed while the political storyline was too slow in comparison. I thought this was an enemies to lovers romance, but the colonizer aspect threw me for a loop and made it hard to support and cheer on their relationship.

3.25/5

Overall, I really enjoyed the story, but a couple of things left me a bit unsatisfied.

Starting with what I liked
- The writing style was great in my opinion. I really enjoyed being in Ruying's head and found the writing to flow well.
- The setting was super interesting and I wanted to know more about the lore.
- Baihu, I can gush on and on about how much I love Baihu but to keep it short, he's a great morally grey character.
- The ending was so good and promised a lot for the next book which I am very excited for.

Now for some things that I disliked
- The world-building was pretty weak in my opinion. Maybe it just went over my head, but I didn't realize that the Rome in which the colonizers came from was our universe Rome. I thought everyone was from one self-contained universe
- Anthony and Ruying's romance is so underdeveloped + it's a colonizer romance. Now, I don't automatically hate enemies to lovers (albeit I am much more of a friends-to-lovers type of person) but it has to be done well. I want to see development between the characters and I feel like we got none of that between these two. Whenever they were together it was just Anthony gaslighting Ruying and her thinking about his beautiful eyes. This would be fine if the romance was onesided with Ruying liking Anthony because her views of him are very skewed, but there is a section where it switched to Anthony's pov where he thinks about how much Ruying has gotten under his skin and honestly feels very OOC of him because it comes out of nowhere. Like homie up to that point has only treated her like a tool and now all of a sudden they are in love??? I am definitely rooting for the other ship -- though maybe my bias toward friends to lovers is clouding my judgment.
- Ruying was not morally grey. I saw this being marketed as a morally grey main character, yet I feel like Ruying is not morally grey at all. She seems to have a firm set of morals and only starts to go against them once she is manipulated into it all while condemning herself for doing those things.
- Most of the killing happens off-page. We just learn about it in passing :( I was promised an assassin story, so that was a bit of a letdown.

Despite all of that, I enjoyed my time with the story and am eagerly awaiting the second book.

Thank you to NetGalley and Del Rey for the arc.

I really wanted to like this book, it was one of my most anticipated reads of 2024. This made it even worse when I realized the book was bad.

As stated in the book, the story was inspired by her grandparent’s experiences during the occupation of Manchuria. Which made the fact that the main character fell in love with a colonizer shocking. Throughout the whole novel you see Ruying (MC) adopt the ideology of the colonizer love interest, which is just wild to see. I think if the author wanted to honor her grandparents she wouldn’t have written something that so heavily sympathizes with colonizers, when she knows the damage and effects it had on her grandparents and other people. Besides this I found the writing repetitive which brought me incredibly close to DNFing the book.

“Courage in boys was bravery.
Courage in girls was foolishness.
From this day forward, I wished to be foolish.”

Inspired by Chinese history, this transcendent story touches on ancestry, family, hardships, colonization, wars, love, loss, magic, science, the search for self-confidence, and so much more.

Told in first person point of view, we follow Ruying who possesses magic from her tribe and homeland in the manifestation of death. She struggles to learn the truth of why Romans invaded her land decades ago and how they can stop impending war from beginning.

Throughout the story, I really felt the internal conflicts Ruying faced with who to trust, what side is right, and familial struggles. I had trouble figuring out who to trust even through the ending, but I think that makes the characters flawed and genuine. Real people are comprised of touches of evil and good, so to wholeheartedly know someone and their intentions is impossible. So, for this alone I feel like the characters were strong and relatable.

The conflicts really helped progress the story forward creating a steady pace for the plot line. I did feel like there were certain phrases that were overused like “once upon a time” and the mention of every time Ruying clenched her hands into fists until her nails bit into the palms of her hands. Also, there was a bit more info-dumping in the first third of this book than I typically like, but the magic system and cultures mentioned are so unique I was invested in learning about them.

This book contained political intrigue, rich cultures, a war between magic and science, friends, family, star crossed lovers, feminism, and enemies to lovers.

It touches on heavy subjects as well, like addiction, depression, abuse, racism, prejudice, sexism, death, and more.

I think this is an amazing beginning to what looks to be a trilogy.

It releases on April 16, 2024, so don’t miss out on this amazing story!

Thank you to NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group/Del Rey for this ARC.

Thank you to NetGalley, the publisher, and the author for giving me a free eARC of this book to read in exchange for my review!

The premise of this book was extremely interesting, and I wanted so badly to like it. Unfortunately, it fell short for me - while Ruying was a good character in her own right, I didn’t feel like the male lead developed at all, and the colonizer romance aspect left a sour taste in my mouth.

This book was very hard for me to get into within the first 100 pages. The main draw for me was the magic system. I usually enjoy a woman with an interesting power, however, it felt quite slow to get to this in the book.

The cover is absolutely gorgeous and I love the artwork, however, this book was just hard for me to get into in the beginning and to stick with it. The writing style was also a little hard for me to follow.

Overall, the main female character was interesting but the main male lead fell a little short for me. I did not love the colonizer aspect of the character, and he did not have very much development or change in his ways.

I will be reading book two!

Thank you for supplying the arc :)

Cool idea and the characters were interesting. I do feel that it could have used more world building and more showing the assassinations but this was pretty good. Thanks for the arc