Reviews with content warning for Death - To Gaze Upon Wicked Gods

I really wanted to like this book, and if the entire story had been written more like the last 20% this review would have been mostly positive.

Let me start with what I did like: the world was really interesting. The Romans are a direct reflection of the modern West, but with access to a world that was relatively unspoiled by pollution and exploitation of natural resources. Pangu is a world built around magic which the Romans don't have and this setup has so much potential in the science vs magic.

However, the story is hindered by the first 70% of the book in which it felt like very little happened except a lot of internal monologue of the main character. The book spends so much time telling us how the FMC feels and what she's thinking without showing us the world or characters around her in any meaningful way. The last portion of the story gets better with a bit more plot but I nearly stopped reading so many times leading up to that.

Overall I was disappointed by the pacing and limited view of the world and characters. I'm not sure if I will pick up the next book or not at this time.

Thank you Netgalley and Random House publishing group - Ballantine for the opportunity to read and review this book prior to publication.

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cneighbors36's review against another edition

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challenging dark tense medium-paced

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

2.25

"To Gaze Upon Wicked Gods" is Molly X. Chang's debut novel. I was really torn with this review for a few reasons. First, the book was not what I expected at all. The book is really heavy and deals with very deep issues, which I did not expect going into it. Additionally, I did not like the MMC or the romance at all. The relationship honestly felt very problematic and more of a controlling power dynamic. The ending did make me feel somewhat better, though. I enjoyed the author's writing style as it was very descriptive, but Ruying's thought process did feel repetitive at times. The world-building in the book is intriguing and unique. However, it can sometimes be challenging and could have been explained better/more. I am unsure if parts were left out due to the FMC not knowing it, and we are supposed to be learning as she does, or if it was just a mistake on the author's part. I will probably pick up the next book to see which direction the author plans to go with the series, but I won't be in a hurry to do so. In the next book, I hope we see more detail on the world-building and magic system.

Thank you to NetGalley and Random House for sending me an e-ARC in exchange for an honest review!

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booksthatburn's review against another edition

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adventurous reflective 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

5.0

*I received a free review copy in exchange for an honest review of this book.

TO GAZE UPON WICKED GODS is a collaborator's view of colonization, as a girl with the power to wield death agrees to work with a prince among the colonizers because he promises to use her in pursuit of lasting peace.

Ruying has been trying to keep her twin sister alive and their grandmother cared for even as everything else is falling apart. Their city is divided, literally, with half of it carved away for use by the Roman colonizers from another world who have held the city in their grip for more than two decades. The Romans brought a powerfully addictive drug with them, promising it would unlock the people's magic but all it has brought is pain. After losing their father to the drug, Ruying is trying to wean her sister off of it, bargaining away whatever possessions she must in order to keep her family together. Already in this precarious state, Ruying is unable to say no when a mistake lands her in Roman dungeons, faced with torture and death unless she agrees to help one of the princes with his dreams of peace through Death like only Ruying can wield.

Ruying is a fascinating main character. Normally I don't like characters who make terrible decisions when a better option is clearly available, but that's not quite what's happening here. There's an ongoing discussion of which definition of "better" should be applied. Ruying's choice might not be the one I would make, but I completely understand why she does what she does, and I don't know for sure if I'd actually disagree under the same circumstances. That tension makes for an excellent story, with Ruying fully committing to her choices once they're made, but then remaining open enough to reevaluate her situation as new facts come to light. At her core, her goal is to protect her family at any cost, and that drives her to a great many things which she would not otherwise accept. Ruying isn't the only one making such choices, early on she interacts with a sort of friend who has been collaborating with the Romans in exchange for access and power. She judges him at first, then comes to understand why he does so. Ruying finds herself in a colonized/colonizer romance, always aware of the coercion which is inextricable from her position. She cares for Anthony, but any safety she feels is always at his discretion. He might really love her, but there's no risk for him in that, not really. Whereas Ruying knows that if she loses his favor, she and her family could lose everything in an instant.

The worldbuilding is excellent. It focuses on the people, the language, and culture, frequently including passages and their translations. There are also frequent reminders of how the Roman invasion changed things, never letting the reader forget that it hasn't always been this way, even though for the reader, it has, because this is our first view of this world. As the first book in the series, this doesn't have to resolve any particular major plot point because it's still setting things up for later. Ruying makes an important decision towards the end in a way that serves as an emotional resolution/climax of the story, while establishing a new status quo for the sequel.

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christinesmith205's review against another edition

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medium-paced

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

3.5

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quakinginmybooks's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional mysterious 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

First things first, I requested Molly X. Chang's "To Gaze Upon Wicked Gods" after hearing about it from the review bombing scandal. I generally don't read YA and probably wouldn't have paid attention to the book otherwise. That said, I'm glad I read this book and I'll eagerly await the next in the series.

Chang built a fascinating world divided between magic and technology; a fictional magical Manchuria suffering under colonization and Roman colonizers fleeing a world they polluted to death. As a xianling, someone capable of using magic, Ruying possess a terrifying power. She's able to pull another's qi from their body and release their souls; at the cost of harming her own qi.

Likable and despicable at turns, Ruying makes morally grey choices in a morally grey world. Ruying is both victim and villain, hero and coward. Willing to kill or do whatever it takes to protect her family, but afraid to face the problem of colonization head on. She desperately wants to live out a dream of peace, falling for Anthony, one of the two Roman princes despite herself.

I don't always care for romance, especially not spicy tiktok books, but this "enemies-to-???" was well blended in and didn't become an annoyance. The paranoia and distrust I felt for Anthony was quite fun, trying figure out his deal. And what a "deal" it was.

As someone learning Chinese, I enjoyed the bilingual bonus. The inclusion of Chinese hanzi (characters) and chengyu (idioms) delighted me, especially puzzling them out before the provided English translation.

There were a couple spots where some editing could be done, but I read an ARC copy. This book is very much a set up for the rest of the series, a ton of world building and the main character overcoming the "refusal of the call to adventure." That's not to say it's boring, the story kept me engaged and interested. I want the next part of the story and absolutely look forward to reading it.

I received this book as an ARC from NetGalley

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sol_journal's review against another edition

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dark tense medium-paced

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

4.0

Thank you so much Random House Publishing- Ballantine, Molly X Chang, and NetGalley for the eARC! All thoughts and reviews are my own!
Posted to: NetGalley, Goodreads, and The StoryGraph
Posted on: 8 December 2023

3.6 (rounded up to 4) out of 5 stars.

I’m trying to beat the colonizer romance allegations away with a stick, but I’m not educated enough to even begin defending why I think it’s not one, so bear with me, readers, because this is gonna be A Ride as I get my thoughts together.

Okay so, I like the premise of this. I throughly enjoyed the idea that Chang has here. I just feel like it was lacking in the sense that… okay yeah, it’s a YA book but I almost wish it wasn’t so more topics would be hit further in depth than the rating would (I assume) allow. I’ll probably end up flagging this as a spoiler-review because there’s no way I can avoid mentioning a few key details throughout it.
But TL;DR: Ruying isn’t a full apologist. There’s a lot of potential to be had with the story and the characters, but it also feels like it’s lacking in some places. (I go more in depth below!).

When people say that death happens off-page more than on- yeah. It does. Well, there’s some of Ruying’s abilities being displayed at first (to show how her magic works), but once we as the readers have an established sense of the ‘how’, it does a bit of a time-skip. We get Death’s brief point of view (which I kind of almost want to see more of but I digress) and then it continues on with the story where we see a few more deaths done by Ruying. I think that readers are meant to feel the weight of these deaths by the constant mention of Ruying doing it for the Roman side rather than fighting for and with her own people. We are shown her guilt for her work, the constant back and forth between ‘is this right?’ and ‘is this wrong?’
It’s kind of hard to feel for Ruying (and many characters in that matter), in my opinion, because I couldn’t connect to her. I feel that we could have learned more about her personality and her motives besides being family-driven. Chang writes in instances that make Ruying care for her sister and her grandmother, but I think I wanted to feel more? This isn’t to say that Ruying is a bad character, but rather, I just would’ve liked to see more of her. There was almost a bit more tell not show. I understand that YA novels do have length limits and that this is also a series (so more may be uncovered later), but if it was longer, I think it could have been fleshed out more to include some more scenes of her past that explain who she is now with the knowledge she has now. We’re told that she can sneak around easily and knows how to fight some because her grandmother was the actual brains behind her grandfather’s title so she showed her grandchildren these skills to help them. I would’ve loved to be shown some of this though, or add some flourish or something to it? Just- it felt like something was missing throughout. The characters (not just Ruying!!) felt a little flat to me. I hated the villains for the sake of what we are told they did, but I wish there was more to their character like- show me how vile Valentin is. Show me why the Ghosts and the Phantom are on thin ice. Show me why Baihu is doing what he is. Show me more of this revolution and the tension. That’s one of the issues with first person because it limits the readers to what this character sees and feels, and I think that (for me at least) I would’ve loved to see more of the surroundings and the people interacting with Ruying, and how they come into play more than just the surface level understanding we get. Her family (the whole reason she’s roped herself into this mess) also eventually fades off into the background some and I would’ve loved to see more of them (or some split POV with Meiya because I feel like she’s going to be a larger piece on the board soon).

And now, on to the romance side of things. The reason I say this isn’t inherently a colonizer romance is because Ruying doesn’t excuse what Antony does. She <i>knows</i> that he is bad and is doing so much bad, but she can’t help how she feels when he treats her nicely. She’s captivated by this different, poor boy side of him that relates so much to her. She feels that he’s different than his family. She never fully excuses his actions and even tries to nip these feelings in the bud because she understands that he still had a hand in killing her people and making a wreck of her home and her world. I feel like that’s what separates this from an actual colonizer romance because Ruying doesn’t make excuses nor apologizes (she does claim that Antony is helping both sides though, but this is also a thought that she half-believes when put up against the people she’s told to kill for him). I think it really depends on how one defines a ‘colonizer romance’. I don’t really vibe with the romance plot in here either though, because she is still falling for the enemy and not in the sense that the enemy is just a morally grey villain- he’s literally the adopted son of the Roman leaders who are wanting to take Jing-City for their own survival (all explained in more detail literally the last few chapters of the book). I didn’t really like the way their romance tried to play out, but I can also see why it was playing out because Ruying is singled out, alone in this cold side of the world where she doesn’t fit in and suddenly somebody is unafraid of her magic and her past and finds her beautiful. I just didn’t vibe with the idea of who this somebody was, ya know?

I really thought this book would be almost like Song of Silver, Flame Like Night (and spoilers here for that book real quick) but if after Lan was captured by the Elantians, she didn’t escape and was forced to help them find the demons instead. It had similar premises with the colonizers raiding lands not their own, all for more and more power. I even liked the magic system Chang has established in To Gaze Upon Wicked Gods. It’s explained more how it works also at the end of the book, but it’s a solid system that really makes me want to see more.
Do I think I’ll stick around for the rest of the series? I think so. The way this one ended did make me want to see more of it, but it definitely hasn’t been my favorite read. It’s right up my alley in themes that I like, all the way down to this young, hungry, and desperate girl willing to do anything for her family to survive. There’s just some places that it lacks in and places that it could be better played out in.

If you stuck around to the end of this review, I commend you! I literally did not know how to get my thoughts together to lead this nor how to end this beyond saying that it’s a pretty good read! It does read like a YA though (which I don’t know why I was expecting a more adult book when I knew it was YA????). I feel like I’ve also rated it higher than it’s initial 3 star I was planning because it has a lot of potential! It has redemption in the next book, and it just has the type of character I want to see all the way through to the end. Ruying is desperate for the chance to keep her family safe. She’s entirely naive to the way the world is and relying on just what she knows and what she wants to believe to be true. She has a lot of room for some growth and change, and I think I really do want to see that happen enough to continue with the series.
There’s a chance I’ll come back and edit this review after sitting on my thoughts more, but as of now, I’ll leave it at it's initally earned 3.6 (4) stars.

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reading_ray's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional hopeful mysterious sad 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

4.0

I was given an e-arc from NetGalley for an honest review and I was lucky enough to find a physical copy of the arc at a local little free library!

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 it 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 felt 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.

A 4/5 star read!!! I can not wait to get a copy of this book when it is published and to read the rest of the series!

Trigger warnings for the books: death, violence, torture, and addiction

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