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readwithsophsx's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
emotional
mysterious
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Deportation, War, Blood, Physical abuse, Violence, Gun violence, Hate crime, Medical content, Death of parent, Abandonment, Cancer, Child abuse, Child death, Kidnapping, Torture, Drug use, Murder, Addiction, Body horror, Confinement, Grief, Death, Drug abuse, Fire/Fire injury, Forced institutionalization, Genocide, Injury/Injury detail, Domestic abuse, Gore, and Medical trauma
bree_h_reads's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.0
First and foremost, this book is more of a victim of bad marketing than anything else. The book is not a romance; it includes a romantic subplot, and the intention is for the relationship between Antony (the coloniser) and Ruying to be toxic. However, that doesn’t absolve the books of all its faults.
I will give the book a few points in its favour. There were several moments where the writing really stood out to me. I was impressed and could see that Molly X. Chang has a lot of potential. I also think that the complexity and moral greyness of Baihu and Ruying was interesting. More focus and time should have been given to this aspect of the characters. It had the potential to offer a compelling commentary on what people do to survive colonization/oppression. It would have been captivating to compare and contrast them, to show them coming to understand each other, and to demonstrate how each has used their position to benefit those they care for. However, that didn’t happen. The repetitive writing gave the impression of inactivity. Additionally, there was a tendency to tell rather than show (I’ll mention this later in my dislikes).
Issue one and my personal biggest issue is that Ruying felt extremely stupid. Because there’s a six-month time skip, instead of showing us Antony gaining Ruying’s trust and isolating her and demonstrating to her why she should believe that he wants the best for her and her world, we’re told this over and over and over. And this isn’t emphasised for the reader. We don’t get demonstrations of him living up to Ruying’s view. We get Ruying questioning if she can trust him over and over before moving on like it’s not a big deal and him saying suspicious things. It’s fine if Ruying is an unreliable narrator, but I feel like the reader should either buy into or understand why she feels this way. It was something I couldn’t do. It just made Ruying feel like an idiot. Which ALSO emphasised a telling over showing issue because we’re told over and over how smart she is. Ruying was raised by the brilliant mind behind the country’s greatest general. She’s SUPPOSED to be smart. She’s SUPPOSED to know how to navigate politics and manipulate people. And she just doesn’t. That made the book far more frustrating in the end.
THIS NEXT SECTION WILL CONTAIN MILD SPOILERS.
Issue two, the sad kicked puppy coloniser prince, Antony Augustus. I found the book’s approach to Antony strange and dismissed it as Ruying being an “unreliable narrator.” This doesn’t excuse the issues. I was increasingly frustrated seeing this coloniser who is RUNNING human experiments framed as a sad boy who was just in a bad situation. He doesn’t WANT to do his experiments and kill people, but he needs to save his home world! He doesn’t WANT to kill the emperor of another kingdom, but he needs to ensure they won’t back out of their treaty. He WANTS to help Ruying’s people, but this can only be done by ruling over them. But that’s okay because he’s interested in their culture and the world! I couldn’t believe any of it, but Ruying did, so we had no choice but to watch this awful man be mooned over by his victim. All the language surrounding him was soft and gentle and traditionally romantic. If they had used more aggressive words to subtly convey a sense of unease, this would have been MUCH better. And it would have given the sense that deep down, Ruying knew something was off. Antony’s own POV chapter highlights this issue. The entire chapter focuses on making him a love-sick boy who’s dreading the heartbreak he’ll experience when his VICTIM realises that he’s been lying to her and experimenting on people like her. This cannot be justified by the use of first person or an unreliable narrator because the chapter, titled “Antony,” is written in third person. It also didn’t take much looking for me to find marketing for the book calling it “enemies to lovers” and stating it is “Zutara inspired”. And we can’t dismiss those as referring to Baihu. There was no romantic subplot with him in THIS book, AND a lot of that marketing EXPLICITLY referred to Antony.
SPOILERS END
Issue three, the writing was very repetitive. While I understand the repeating of ideas in a text, there are times where it’s too heavy-handed. While reading, I noted I was going to pull my hair out if I read “girl blessed by death” one more time. Multiple characters use that EXACT phrase and it felt tired. It was like the author was worried the reader would forget Ruying’s power. Not to mention the same ideas came up over and over and over for Ruying to angst over. Which CAN work, but outside of Ruying angsting I can’t provide a solid story of what happened in the book outside of the occasional assassination until you hit the last 20%. This repetitive writing also threw off the pacing. The book could have been great if it had taken more time to tell a story that delved deeper into Ruying’s angst instead of just paying lip service to it. Because the themes it wanted to tackle could have been interesting and complex and added depth to the story.
Issue four, setting the scene. This is the lesser of my issues, but it is the only other one to make this list. (As this review is already 1,011 words.) I found the writing to set the scenes the characters were in to be lacking. And while this was adequate when nothing was happening, I felt lost in action scenes. I found it surprising and disappointing that the author did not describe the settings in beautiful, flowery language, especially considering the amount used to describe Ruying’s inner turmoil. And as mentioned, since I had no sense of the space in action scenes, I felt so lost in what was happening. I don’t need every leaf on every tree described, it just felt lacking.
Overall, I think this book needed a few more editing passes done, a couple sensitivity readers, and better marketing. Molly X. Chang DOES have a lot of potential, her work just needs polish. I am currently planning to read book 2 after it comes out to see if the story improves, because I think it CAN be a great series.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Hate crime, Injury/Injury detail, Misogyny, Sexism, Child death, Death of parent, Murder, Drug abuse, Grief, Kidnapping, Toxic relationship, Confinement, Gun violence, Violence, Medical content, Vomit, Addiction, Death, Racism, Colonisation, and Drug use
Moderate: Child abuse, Police brutality, Sexual harassment, Blood, and Emotional abuse
Minor: Sexual assault, Sexual content, Physical abuse, Rape, and Sexual violence
pm_me_book_recs's review against another edition
challenging
dark
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
1.0
That's gonna be a no for me....
I was earnestly very excited for this book, but even before the first chapter was through, I had a bad feeling about it. My main issues are with the "romance", vague and shallow worldbuilding, repetitive dialogue, length of monologues, and the lack of action (despite marketing).
For transparency sake, I am a white, US based reviewer and am aware of the 1 star brigade this author experienced as a reaction to being an Asian Author. While I really hated this book, I plan on reading the other installment(s) after reviews are posted and will give other titles a shot as well. There were good ideas, but I had too many issues with the content and execution. Reviewers of global majority have done extensive analysis and provide in-depth criticism here, definitely read their words for more info! Hopefully the author is receptive.
As an abuse survivor, the "romance" definitely made me uncomfortable and furious-I kept waiting, hoping, for her to have been deceiving him into false security. But no, she's actually into it. Let's maybe leave romanticizing Stockholm Syndrome behind next time. Considering the amount of psychological, emotional, and physical abuse Ruying is put through by Antony, and then having it romanticized, this should not be graded YA... teens should not think this behavior is acceptable or normal from a partner.
The worldbuilding felt like it was supposed to be reminiscent of Nimona, a meeting of medieval China and cyberpunk... but it wasn't fledged out at all and was so confusing to digest with the little information given. It really broke the suspension of disbelief that Pangu (China) is given a fantastic name, but then we have ROME. Rome in helicopters and slinging guns? Like modern warfare Rome complete with hyper Latin names, statuesque blonde curls and handsome noses. And there's no real explaining where Rome is, they arrive via sky portals (which wasn't made clear until towards the end), and there are references to "their world"... but then it sounds like they ARE on the same planet?? This vague reference happens 2/3 through and threw me completely off. Do they have spaceships that were not talked about? What is going on?
The dialogue is either boring or immature, and much of the book is internal monologue of repetitive information dumps or rehashing traumatic events.
The description got me amped up for a high-action, dangerous fantasy (originally assumed that Baihu was the enemy-lover) but most of the action happens off-screen. There are a few fight scenes, but we only really see one assassination and it's not... action driven (which was best, in that case). Once I learned that these hyped up assassinations were her own people, I didn't want to read about it anyways.
Thank you Netgalley for access to this ARC.
Also, these content warnings are NOT given lightly!
I was earnestly very excited for this book, but even before the first chapter was through, I had a bad feeling about it. My main issues are with the "romance", vague and shallow worldbuilding, repetitive dialogue, length of monologues, and the lack of action (despite marketing).
For transparency sake, I am a white, US based reviewer and am aware of the 1 star brigade this author experienced as a reaction to being an Asian Author. While I really hated this book, I plan on reading the other installment(s) after reviews are posted and will give other titles a shot as well. There were good ideas, but I had too many issues with the content and execution. Reviewers of global majority have done extensive analysis and provide in-depth criticism here, definitely read their words for more info! Hopefully the author is receptive.
As an abuse survivor, the "romance" definitely made me uncomfortable and furious-I kept waiting, hoping, for her to have been deceiving him into false security. But no, she's actually into it. Let's maybe leave romanticizing Stockholm Syndrome behind next time. Considering the amount of psychological, emotional, and physical abuse Ruying is put through by Antony, and then having it romanticized, this should not be graded YA... teens should not think this behavior is acceptable or normal from a partner.
The worldbuilding felt like it was supposed to be reminiscent of Nimona, a meeting of medieval China and cyberpunk... but it wasn't fledged out at all and was so confusing to digest with the little information given. It really broke the suspension of disbelief that Pangu (China) is given a fantastic name, but then we have ROME. Rome in helicopters and slinging guns? Like modern warfare Rome complete with hyper Latin names, statuesque blonde curls and handsome noses. And there's no real explaining where Rome is, they arrive via sky portals (which wasn't made clear until towards the end), and there are references to "their world"... but then it sounds like they ARE on the same planet?? This vague reference happens 2/3 through and threw me completely off. Do they have spaceships that were not talked about? What is going on?
The dialogue is either boring or immature, and much of the book is internal monologue of repetitive information dumps or rehashing traumatic events.
The description got me amped up for a high-action, dangerous fantasy (originally assumed that Baihu was the enemy-lover) but most of the action happens off-screen. There are a few fight scenes, but we only really see one assassination and it's not... action driven (which was best, in that case). Once I learned that these hyped up assassinations were her own people, I didn't want to read about it anyways.
Thank you Netgalley for access to this ARC.
Also, these content warnings are NOT given lightly!
Content Warnings
Graphic: Misogyny, Drug abuse, Emotional abuse, Gaslighting, Physical abuse, Classism, Cultural appropriation, Colonisation, Police brutality, Addiction, Confinement, Death, Racism, Death of parent, Toxic relationship, Drug use, Grief, Genocide, Gun violence, Hate crime, Injury/Injury detail, Kidnapping, Medical trauma, Murder, Slavery, Torture, Violence, War, and Xenophobia
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