Thank you to Netgalley and the publishers for this ARC.

I really wanted to love this one, but I ended up having mixed feelings about it. I'll start with the things that I did like. I liked how this was a blend of sci-fi and fantasy. I appreciated how this gave us a look at the effects colonialism has on those who are colonized. I also appreciated how the characters were morally gray. I thought that Baihu was the best example of morally gray character in this book. I'm interested to see more of him the sequel.

On to the things that I wasn't a fan of or thought could use some improvement. I thought that the worldbuilding was underdeveloped. The lack of worldbuilding led me to be confused about a few things as I was reading, especially when it came to the Romans. I thought that this world was interesting, but I would have liked to seen it fleshed out a bit more. I wasn't a fan of the romance between Antony and Ruying at all. I didn't like how she was developing feelings for her colonizer. It just felt icky to me considering how much Ruying talks about how much she hates the Romans for what they've done to her world. I also found Ruying to be slightly annoying at points along with being self-righteous.

Overall, even though I had my issues with this book, I'm interested enough to see what happens in the sequel. I was just really wanting more from this book, especially with a cover as gorgeous as this one.

First of all, I want to thank Netgalley and Random House for providing me with a copy of the book.

I was really excited to read this book. I have been loving books with intricate politics and court dynamics, and I was looking forward to reading from the perspective of a court assassin.

However, this book was challenging to get through. The beginning felt bogged down because there was a lot of info-dumping, all of which was happening between lines of a conversation. From there, the plot took off and it was exciting to read about the dynamics of Ruying's family, and the lead-up to Ruying being hired as Antony's assassin was exciting. I was really engaged until about half-way through the story as the romance started to become more prevalent.

It also took quite a bit of time to wrap my head around the concept of Rome being the invader's homeworld. I was excited to read about fantasy-Manchuria, and I understand that in this book, Rome is a fantasy-version of a country our world. However, it felt like a strange choice to have a fantasy world based on a country and its history, but also include Rome from Earth. I appreciate the author breaking the mold, but it was also a choice that broke immersion and still feels strange after finishing the book.

I will also say the romance between Ruying and Antony was extremely off-putting. I think that if Ruying's attraction towards him was spun more as a survival mechanism, it would be more understandable, but it just felt very unbelievable and unpalatable that Ruying would feel anything other than disgust and revulsion towards Antony. This romance also starts to develop after he forces her against her will to commit horrors, which honestly felt gross and made me put the book down for a while.

By the time I hit about 50% of the way through the book, I realized that I wasn't invested in seeing how anything really resolved. I found a lot of the characters unlikeable and the setting was confusing. I will say that I liked the ending a lot, and I'm interested to see how the author ends up resolving everything. I'm just not sure that I'll want to invest the energy into the rest of the series.

There was a woman who grew up hearing whispered stories of Nanking when the Japanese invaded & the atrocities they committed against civilians of that area. Her name was Iris Chang & she wrote a book called The Rape of Nanking. The forward of this book brings her to mind. But here is a tapestry woven of history, perseverance, beauty & hope. This is how a people rewove the atrocities that happened to them in a horror fantasy fairy tale. The rape of Manchuria under the Russians & Japanese was a holocaust that has barely been acknowledged because it is not politically accepted as comfortable, the same of Nanking.
What do you do to survive under the most impossible of situations with the tyrants of an invasion occupation? What to do to try and keep yourself & loved ones alive if never safe? How far are you willing to go when you can't get out from under the heel of never ending abuse, hunger & death at best mercifully fast? Occupation & the arrogance of the occupier's. I never will forget a black & white old picture I saw in some article when young of a pair of fashionable dressed pretty French girls withh baskets of rice in a court yard, apparently in Vietnam. They were throwing the grain to Vietnamese that had probably grown & harvested it [or around those that did] to see people scrambling to pick it up, almost fighting over the minute grains that pebbled the ground to feed their families. The look of craven lack of morals shown on their faces as well as the energy of desperation of the peasants gathering the kernels overwhelmed the senses.
Ruying is a girl just out of teens and we play the story through her eyes & mind. A survivor whose sister is an opium addict that she tries to keep alive through her connection with a playmate grown up that runs the main opium den & is a right hand pawn controller of the outside prince. England did well in its attempted domination of the giant Cathay using the dragon of dreams & nightmares to subvert & harness the Chinese into submission so heavily then with the invasion of others the die was already cast. A tainted would have been love story marriage to a lifelong friend due to invasion. Baihu, her former friend who now gave her opium for her addicted sister, was the illegitimate son of royalty & could be a puppet prince/king to the invaders if his legitimate cousin died. He want her to murder with magic the prince in charge of next to nothing to take his place. Some of her people havve magic in different manners and strengths but they can come at a cost to their energy taking from their very life span depending on type & amount. She has death magic or the ability to kill someone with magic which is the strongest type but it is also at a cost to herself every time she uses it. She badly choses a theft that almost costs her everything & puts her directly in front of the Princes of Rome and all that entails. A provocative read that evokes a lot of emotion. Good read

Thank you, Net Galli for this trial read. It is an amazing opening act to a larger story.

I really love the world building; I would claim two worlds were build at once. the world of Pungo and its magic system and the world of Rome. I look forward to finding out more about all of it. Molly X Chane did an amazing job, introducing us one step at a time to the current cetacean and expanding the world even peppering in some myths about the gods that I’m sure she will expand on in the next installments.

Besides the amazing world building, I love the characters. We follow initially and unwilling hero, who just wants to survive the atrocities of her world. When she’s forced to pick a side, she chooses to Hope; she does what every unwilling hero does, and chooses the easy way. I can’t wait to see what Ruying does next.

I also really like the side characters like Baihu and Anthony. I really like Baihus introduction and his further appearances in the book don’t disappoint.. I just know he will play a bigger role as the story progresses.

And it’s beautiful to discover the many layers to Anthony.

I can’t wait for the next installment. This is definitely a worthy read.

Beautiful writing style, with a fascinating introduction that expertly laid out the world, characters, and conflict. Unfortunately, I felt let down by the central romance, characters, and felt that the book didn't deliver on its premise. Ultimately, this wasn't for me.

Overall I really enjoyed this book. I didn't love the romance (it was very obvious that the love interest was a terrible person) but the prose, the worldbuilding, and the story all landed!

This Fantasy was so freaking good I couldn't not out it down for anything. I had to know what happened next. I could not get enough of it! So good! I loved this storyline, it was different and I liked that. 5 stars!
I just reviewed To Gaze Upon Wicked Gods by Molly X. Chang. #ToGazeUponWickedGods #NetGalley
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The book promises an interesting story. Unfortunately, it fails to deliver on several fronts.

First, I found the writing to be repetitive and flowery at times. There is a lot of telling not showing. In the first chapter, there is paragraph after paragraph telling us how horrible the Romans are except each new paragraph doesn't tell us anything new.

We are told multiple times about the kindness of a character or the brilliance of another. We rarely see said kindness or brilliance unless it is directed toward RuYing and often times this action has already happened and we are just being told about it.

And this leads into what I think is one of the main problems of the book - the main character. She is this interesting mix of accepting everything at face value, loving her family and being very impulsive.
This impulsivity and love are what causes the enemy prince to find her because she didn't seem to give much weight to the negative consequences if she were caught.

On the other hand, this impulsivity overrides her love for her family. When she first questions the prince's orders she doesn't think about what could happen to her, her family and her friends. And I think the author was trying to establish RuYing's morality and ethics. But RuYing has already agreed to be the prince's puppet assassin to save her family. She also doesn't know the prince well enough to question his orders. This questioning makes it feel like they are equals but they aren't. And RuYing is supposed to be aware of that but she isn't.

The prince, right now in RuYing's mind and in the story, is actively oppressing her. He is forcing her to kill. He is part of the family that started this oppression and as a result ruined RuYing's family, or sped up that ruin. I repeat, they are not equals. He shows her that the Romans can wipe her and her people out but that isn't anything she doesn't already know. She has to obey him.

As for accepting everything at face value, she buys into the prince's plans for a better world. But we are just told this had happened. And I understand that this buy-in is highly likely a defence mechanism on her part so she can sleep at night. And I believe people will do what it takes to survive. But we don't see how her distrust changes to trust.

And this is important because I feel like this buy-in is closely tied to her relationship with the prince. She has feelings for him while he is actively oppressing her. She kills because she believes in what he has told her. The change from hate to you-are-an-okay-guy happens within a flip of a page with a couple of paragraphs mentioning what has happened since. I found this very jarring and wished the author had written on how RuYing developed Stockholm Syndrome instead of skipping over it.

The romance makes me very uncomfortable. And part of me thinks the author wrote it to be this way because another character does call RuYing out on why she likes/loves the prince. However, RuYing seems to just ignore or block out this criticism.

Thank you NetGalley and RandomHouse Publishing for the advanced copy in exchange for a review. All thoughts and opinions expressed are my own.

The writing and imagery in this book was incredible and the author’s note set pretty high standards for the book to meet. Although there were some aspects of the story that I didn’t love, it was more a matter of personal taste then the author’s craft. It’ll be interesting to see how the story plays out throughout the series.

DNF - READ ONLY ABOUT 20%

First of all, thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for giving me an arc! The title and premise of the book seemed fascinating, and I was glad I got to take a look at it.

I want to preface this review by saying I very rarely do not finish books. Even if I really am struggling to make it through a book, I still try to skim my way through it to see what it ends up being like and then evaluating whether I should give it a chance again. However, I am sorry to say I could not finish this book due to two primary factors:

1. colonizer-protagonist romance
2. heavy exposition and under-developed protagonist

Again, please take my words with (many) grains of salt because I understand that I did not actually finish the whole book. However, I was already struggling a lot in the beginning of the book with the way that the writing basically info-dumps the background, the lack of depth to the thoughts and emotions of the characters, and too little nuance in regards to colonialist themes.

First, I think there is so much to explore in regards to themes of imperialism/rising against oppression in SFF books (note: Legendborn, Red Rising, A Memory called Empire, Babel). Some of those are adult, while others are YA, but my point is that I wish there was more worldbuilding that sets up the history, wars, dynamics/tensions between oppressor and oppressed, etc. Most of the information was put in long chunks of text at the beginning of the book, and there was barely any elaboration beyond that in the next few chapters. Maybe this changes in the latter half of the book, but the geopolitical situation just felt very badly explored.

Second, there is a lack of depth to the characters' emotions and thoughts: the characters feel extremely one-dimensional. A character with a power of death would be very cool, yet it feels like there's a lack of depth to Ruying's feelings regarding her own powers. She falls into the trope of the "can kill but don't want to be evil" protagonist, but there's no crucial moments in her character arc that move the plot along. This also connects to my biggest issue with the book and reason why I couldn't finish the book. The beginning hints of attraction she feels towards her childhood friend (who is now part of the imperial regime) already turned me off so much (threatening her family isn't cute! protecting someone isn't done using power!) But I could not stand the beginning of the development of attraction between her and the prince, who is literally verbally abusive towards her (and she still likes him regardless?) As the pages continued, I couldn't help but check out some of the other Goodread reviews to find that it would be the primary romance. Especially in a book that is supposed to be about imperialism and colonialism, being attracted to someone who is crucial to the oppressive regime left such a bad taste in my mouth. For me, I think I just have higher-than-normal standards for romance in fantasy books. I could not continue reading.

This was very very harsh but I genuinely want to say that I think the premise of the book is really cool, and there is definitely so much potential present. I just think giving more depth to the characters and also making the romance more...healthy(?)...would make me like this book way more!

can we just appreciate how gorgeous the cover is?

to gaze upon wicked gods follows ruying, a morally grey character with the “chosen one” trope, fighting for her country and falling in love with…. her colonizer? yeah, that was horrible (unnecessary even).

if i were to ignore the shoddy romance, there were still elements of the story that could be improved. the juvenile writing. the questionable choices of the main character. the worldbuilding was lacking information essential to the plot and the pacing was definitely unstable. however, debut novel aside, i found this story to be somewhat memorable for the fantasy aspects. who knows, maybe i just miss reading the poppy war.

This review was made possible via an ARC through NetGalley.

To Gaze Upon Wicked Gods by Molly X Chang is an exploration of science vs magic in a backdrop of colonization and romance. I really liked the explanation of the magic system and how Ruying’s power over death manifests. The colored ribbons are very cool.

I respect the author for the use of hanzi in the book for traditional Chinese concepts and then explaining or translating it instead of writing the words out with the alphabet. It adds an authentic touch to the book that plays well with the fact that Antony, the love interest, is a Roman who is later stated to speak almost exclusively to Ruying in his language rather than hers. Seeing her language be used as it would be written is political, both in and outside of the work itself.

There were a lot of turns of phrase that I really enjoyed and I appreciated the use of the Opium War, a very real time in the history of China and the UK’s relationship, that didn’t shy away from addiction or the negative effects that the War had on port cities on Chinese citizens.

The pacing felt a little off to me as we didn’t properly meet Antony until the 40% mark and I wish that we had gotten to see more of Ruying’s magic in action.

I would recommend this to readers who are looking for fantasies that explore actual historical events in a fantasy context. I would not recommend this to readers who are firmly uninterested in romances involving someone who is colonized with a family member of their colonizer.

The writing was so brilliant and detailed, I had so much fun reading this book! I felt that the book had a really nuanced description of the realities of colonization, and the desperation that drives colonized people to view the colonizers as either saviours or enemies - the MC Ruying herself goes through this whole range of thoughts and emotions (most of which felt uncomfortable and uneasy, which I'm guessing is what the author intended for us to feel?). This book pretty much puts Ruying through a gruelling emotional journey (her origin story!), and I'm very keen to say how this story ends! Can't wait for the next book!

TWs - colonization, genocide and senseless violence by colonizers, death and murder on page, heavy violence on page, gun violence, drug addiction on page (not the MC), physical and verbal domestic abuse (past)

-- ty to the author, the publisher and Netgalley for an advanced copy!

This book has a lot of potential. It tackles concepts such of colonization of people and the pressures it places on the invaded. It doesn't however I feel deliver on it's promises of women making hard choices and in the beginning we are asked not to judge Ruying. Despite this, she doesn't feel like a survivor, and judges others on what they do to survive. I'm also not a huge fan of stories that tell me what happens without showing me these thoughts and feelings of the character who's head I'm supposed to be in. Overall, it fell flat for me unfortunately.

Thanks Netgalley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review

Thank you to NetGalley and publishers for allowing me access to the E-Arc. All opinions are my own.

I enjoyed reading this arc. Ruying has no choice but to kill people to protect her family. I like a strong female main character. Her family is in poverty and dealing with the harshness of the world. The world-building was interesting. I didn't mind the love interest in this novel.

I personally felt like there could be more world-building. I didn't feel like everything was explained. Our main character was slightly all over the place in what she thought of herself and the choices being made around her. The romance kind of randomly increased. It didn't quite make sense. I needed more tension that grew over time.

I loved the world building of To Gaze Upon Wicked Gods. The descriptions of the cities and the mythology that was sprinkled in really captured my attention. I thought it was very clear how Ruying's world came to be what it is currently and you felt the ghost of what it was in the past. This made the book really interesting because you got to feel the the drastic effects the Romans had on Er-Langu. I could picture the grand cities Ruying described before the Roman's came. The mythology added a lot of depth to Ruying beliefs and highlighted the struggles she had a child blessed by Death. I loved how the traditional saying Ruying quote are written in Chinese characters and then translated into English. A reminder that Ruying learned the Roman's language as a means of survival and is not her first language.

Ruying is a very complex character as she is driven by her desire to keep her family safe over anything else. It was interesting to see how her prioritizing survival over anything affected her relationships with the people around her. Ruling's mindset did cause an internal struggle which I felt was the built up thought out the book. I feel the most important part of the story was not Ruying's relationship with Anthony but on how she grows as a person. This makes the last 50 or so pages of the book every interesting as we can see the cumulation of everything she learned and went through in the book.

There was a part in the book that I had a hard time reading, which I can not specify without spoiling. This does get resolved at the end of the book, which again made the last 50ish pages worth the wait. This does nothing to detract from the overall quality of the book but is simply something I felt myself focusing on the whole time I was reading the book. Again this was something that attracted my attention more than necessary but it did make the ending more satisfying because my gut feeling was right. It is did nothing to take away my enjoyment of reading the book but I felt I was waiting for this part of the book to be resolved the whole time I was reading.

I can not wait to get a copy of this book when it is published and to read the rest of the series!

Immediately on finishing this book, I was thinking 'I didn't dislike this as much as I expected it to' because I've seen lots negative GR reviews prior to mine. So I went in with very low expectations and was pleasantly surprised to not hate the entire book. However, upon further reflection, there's some parts that really rubbed me the wrong way too. Let's get into it below.

The story is essentially about Ruying a Panganese girl, whose country is colonised by people called Romans. Whilst the Panganese are blessed with magic and are a less developed civilization (essentially ancient China) the Romans are basically us (they have guns/mobile phones/cars). Ruying has the gift of Death, and after an accident, is captured by one of the Roman princes, Antony. She is then forced to make the choice of becoming his assassin or dying. She chooses the former.

Now the above^ points in the world building are not very well explained. The author does not make it clear that the Romans come from a separate universe (through a portal) so the reader is left in the dark about how the heck these guys have guns and stuff, as opposed to the Panganese. We get hints and tid bits dropped throughout the book about the world, but not a thorough explanation. I found the concept genius (especially because the Romans have destroyed their own world through essentially global warming and technology, so it's very poignant) but the execution of the world building was a bit vague and half-hearted.

One thing Chang did incredibly well was describe what it felt like to live in a colonised country.

"Slowly but surely, one violent act at a time, they had shoved our honor and legacy into the mud and built homes and lamp-lit streets over our ruins."


Whew! Need I say more? I have to say, in some parts this book had me seething. Seething for the suffering of the Manchurians, for the apartheid in South Africa, for the genocide of the Palestinian people that is currently happening right now. Seething for those who are being killed in the name of heritage and honour masquerading as greed and racism. Chang does a fantastic job of capturing the rage, the injustice, the hopelessness.

I also liked that Ruying was not an automatic hero but an indecisive girl, a coward girl. I wouldn't describe her as morally grey but as morally confused. Was it realistic? Yes. Was it well executed by Chang? Unfortunately not. Again, the concept was great, the writing left me wanting. We are forced to listen to Ruying's inner monologue for most of the novel and it gets very repetitive and boring. I understand her indecision about what to do, her internal struggle about using her powers to kill etc. but did I want to hear about it 50 times over? Not really. What doesn't help is that for the first 60% the novel nothing much happens, so we are left to listen to Ruying's thoughts for most of that part.

Ruying's assassin arc had me disappointed as well. Chang glides over those parts very quickly. We get no details, no training arc / character arc whatsoever. I would have loved to see Ruying grow into her powers, not just be told she did. Or actually witness Antony teaching her to shoot not just be told it happened. Instead of these fun, badass scenes we got lots of love story stuff.

Now, let me make one thing clear: I found the romance interesting. I liked that it was kind of messed up, I liked that (view spoiler). It was interesting. But(and it's a big but) I can't with good conscience enjoy reading romance that glamourises falling in love with a man that is responsible for colonising the FMC's people group. Or who gaslights her time and time again. Or who threatens her family’s safety. Can we please not pretend that any of these are symptoms of love?

Any other context, the enemies to lovers thing would've worked for me but not in the context of the MMC being a coloniser. Personally, I have to draw the line there.

I also find it odd that Chang (a POC writer) would go down this route. I'm kind of hoping that as the series develop we get an incredible character arc for Ruying where she ends up murdering Antony. I feel like that's the only way I could excuse the infatuation she has with him in this book. I'll probably continue the series just to see whether that happens or not. And if that’s not how the story ends up going I’ll have to lower my rating massively.

DNF. Unfortunately I am just over "enemies to lovers" romances that are actually just toxic. I think that romance really needs to break out of this box and go in new, more interesting directions, and it doesn't seem like this will be the book to do that for me.

DNF @ 40%. I just can't with this one. The setting makes no sense, and the MC is incredibly unlikable. The romance is so toxic and abusive.

Such a gorgeous cover, though.

Thank you to Net Galley for the review copy.

Before I begin this review, I want to thank Net Galley and Random House Publishing Group - Ballantine for allowing me to access To Gaze Upon Wicked Gods before publication. Check out this book on its release date of April 15th, 2024.

This book is brilliantly written, with the complex worldbuilding and design of the characters. While it has flaws, from the redundant writing style to more telling rather than showing the budding relationship between Ruying and Anthony, Chang still shows exceptional talent in tailoring a world unlike any other. This book draws upon Chinese culture and offers a world of magic and technology, perhaps beyond our comprehension.

I really enjoyed this book. There were twists and turns, and while I didn't agree with all the actions of the characters, the book as a whole is interesting and entertaining.

I like Ruying and think that, for the most part, she is pretty realistic. She does fall in love with the enemy prince, Anthony. Anthony admittedly does some pretty terrible things to Ruying and the people she cares about, but at the same time, I can't help but feel that Ruying just wants to believe that perhaps there is a peaceful way to resolve the conflict between their two people. I think Ruying is quite naïve in many aspects. This book is based on her trying to learn, grow, and understand how complex the relationships between the two empires are.

Anthony is humanized in some areas of the story, but it is still really hard to believe that she doesn't hold any major resentment against him, considering how everything plays out. While it makes sense that he has obstacles he has to face and can't just entirely fix everything that has been done, it still feels as if he could do something. I'm remaining optimistic, hoping that this author continues this series and that we see more of Anthony.

The book's plot is a bit controversial, as Ruying ends up working and falling for the ruler of Rome, an Empire that has colonized her land and people. The plot as a whole, though, is intriguing and well put together. It also dives into the complexities surrounding colonization, race, and culture.

I believe that worldbuilding in this book is fantastic! In an alternate universe, Rome is still a mighty empire and has made as many, if not more, advancements than we have today. Rome then colonizes Ruying's world, heavily inspired by Chinese culture. This means an exciting mix of magic and science and an intriguing clash between cultures, ethnicities, and beliefs.

Chang is a good writer who creates an intriguing story and plot that glues a reader to the pages. With that said, things were a bit dicey, and Chang appears to have a habit of repeating herself often on the same page. On top of that, there was a lot of telling rather than showing going on, which made me feel like I was missing a lot of information and characterization.

I would recommend this story to anyone who wants to read worldbuilding with Chinese inspiration, enemies to lovers, and complex conversations about colonization. The writing style and plot may not be for everyone.