Reviews

To Gaze Upon Wicked Gods by Molly X. Chang

ahargenrader's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional mysterious tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

fakemerida's review against another edition

challenging tense slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? N/A
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.5

first_edition's review against another edition

dark 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

Ruying is one of the most cowardly, selfish, hypocritical, and idiotic characters I have ever read about. There are absolutely no redeeming qualities to this girl! She continually defends Antony in order to justify her own horrible actions towards innocent victims—many of whom are her own people. And worse yet, she not only befriends, defends, and protects Antony, but she somehow immediately falls for him, too! There is absolutely NOTHING romantic about this toxic, manipulative colonizer “romance."

Most of this book focuses on Ruying simping over her captor, Antony (colonizer romance), which makes this a very difficult and uncomfortable read. Ruying's story is insensitive and infuriating. I certainly do not want to read from the point-of-view of such a disgraceful, weak, and unrelatable main character. The author should not have created such an inappropriate, unfounded romance within a traumatic story that is based on real-life events.

Meiya and Baihu are the ONLY noteworthy characters in this book—I would rather read this from Meiya's POV and have the romance be about these two instead! Ruying definitely does NOT deserve Baihu, and I can't for the life of me figure out WHY Baihu is even attracted to Ruying.

unareads11's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional informative mysterious reflective tense fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

 One thing about Del Rey, they’ll always publish books that stand for something. They’re my fave imprint for a reason. I really appreciate what Chang has done in this story by highlighting the Century of Humiliation, a period in history we often overlook. The long-term implications of imperialism on oppressed populations are written very well in this story and I think Chang does a fantastic job at juxtaposing the dichotomous nature of what is considered “right.” 

fishy27's review against another edition

dark 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

1.0

 I initially put To Gaze Upon Wicked Gods on my TBR because the cover was beautiful. Then I reinforced my decision because it was targeted by racist attention. Then I thought about removing it because I heard some god-awful reviews from trusted sources. However, I decided to pick it up because I wanted to engage with the book for myself and come to my own conclusions. 

I can confidently say that I did not like this book–TIL I learned that I do not, to no one’s surprise, like colonizer romances. 

Mari has a great review that really outlines most of my thoughts, and for the sake of saving my energy and not trying to re-articulate well-written thoughts, I’ll just leave that here. 

A huge element of this story that was missing/unclear was Ruying’s motivations for doing, like, anything. I know that there is a challenge in East Asian stories to communicate the character motivations to Western audiences because of the cultural differences. That wa snot the problem here. Readers are supposed to see a conflict in character motivations (i.e., “for my family” vs “I am doing the very wrong thing [and probably because I am falling for a colonizer]), but that does not clearly come through. Instead, we just get a weakly written MC who just seems ,,, stupid? I hate to say that about an FMC, but truly, Ruying was infuriating. 

The side characters here are very weak, but the worst part was that the opium-addicted sister was the one who should have been our MC. Her morals were strong, and her story would have been so much more compelling. 

The romance was appalling. I never once liked the love interest, and I think that her childhood friend should have been the love interest here rather than the colonizer. 

Worldbuilding here was non-existent. Mari talks about this in her review, but the only possible reason I can think of that Rome would be the colonizers here is because Chang was looking for a European country with a mythology. I expect that, in future books, we’ll see more of that mythology coming to play as the “science vs magic” thing bleeds across cultures. I really, really hated how Chang handled that conflict because it made it extremely unclear when exactly this book was taking place. The colonizers have guns, but our MC doesn’t know what surgery is? Seriously? 

The author’s note and the text itself just feel like they were completely mismatched. From what the author said she was writing about, I thought we would be getting a story more akin to what The Poppy War was doing with a stronger focus on a romance plot, but that was absolutely not what happened. 

I will not be continuing this series, nor will I ever recommend to anyone.  

sunrae_booknook's review against another edition

dark slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? N/A
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? N/A
• Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A

0.75

Ooof, so like…… I really wanted to give this a fair shake since this book was involved in not one but two scandals. But it’s really just … not good. 

dtsuji92's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

This is a story of manipulation, colonization, and war.

winkiie's review against another edition

1.0

the Romans have PhDs lol?

malakabdullah's review against another edition

1.75

I appreciate the inspiration for this story. I liked the glimpses of the world before Rome. There was lack in depth of character building and world building of the time during the occupation. I enjoyed the pangunese proverbs. I did not like Antony- too flat for someone we were supposed to believe Ruying fell for.

extinctpanda's review against another edition

Woeful.