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494 reviews
To Gaze Upon Wicked Gods by Molly X. Chang
2.0
Well, I read it. I agree with the people who read this and thought it was a colonizer romance. No matter how it ended up, you cannot deny that Ruying spent just...too much of this book romanticizing Antony. Whatever the author set out to do, she did it poorly. Is this the book's biggest crime? Mostly I felt nothing reading it. It wasn't fun to read. It wasn't sad to read. It wasn't emotional in really any way, except maybe irritating.
The top rave reviews rave about the love interest being morally gray and the enemies to lovers actually being good. The only romance developed in this book is between Ruying and the colonizer prince Antony. So I think it's incredibly disingenuous to say that this book never meant to or doesn't romanticize Antony.
The writing style might be the thing that bothered me the most about the whole book. Because at least with the colonizer stuff, I can understand that the author had good intentions (even if it wasn't executed well). The writing was just plain irritating. Not every sentence needs to be its own paragraph. The last chapter is pretty much verse with how many line breaks there are. You can also tell when the writing is trying to be profound and poetic.
Because of how many paragraphs there are, the reading experience was incredibly choppy, and that carries over to the plot as well. Nothing really flows; scenes just happen.
Enemies to lovers is my least favorite trope. I do not care how it ends, it is developed as enemies to lovers for 95% of the book. I have a hard enough time believing romance when characters actually like each other. I have absolutely no clue why Ruying likes Antony, besides him being hot I guess. You're telling me she threw away all her morals just because this guy was kind of nice to her? She killed so many of her own people but couldn't even fathom killing Antony because oh he likes her? Girl shut the fuck up. I have no sympathy for Ruying. At all. And I'm saying this as a coward myself. Nothing she did was justifiable. She did it "for her family" but did she? Did her family want that? Everything she did was selfish.
To be honest Ruying's 180 at the end barely makes sense. Why was that the thing that sparked the change in her? Everything else before that wasn't enough? She basically knew about it before, like it wasn't that surprising. And she only cared because it was someone she knew getting hurt. Again, she killed her own people just like that for Antony. But it was okay because she didn't know them personally.
Ruying is a bad person. Morally gray or whatever. I straight up don't care what happens to Ruying. She deserves it.
I also dislike that the colonizers are the Romans. I think it would have been more significant if the colonizers were Japanese-adjacent, because it's important to remember that the Brits and the French and all those white people were not the only colonizers. They get a lot of flack for it, as they should, but they were not the only ones. Colonized peoples also mistreated and displaced other indigenous folks. But I guess that would be too complex for this story.
The top rave reviews rave about the love interest being morally gray and the enemies to lovers actually being good. The only romance developed in this book is between Ruying and the colonizer prince Antony. So I think it's incredibly disingenuous to say that this book never meant to or doesn't romanticize Antony.
The writing style might be the thing that bothered me the most about the whole book. Because at least with the colonizer stuff, I can understand that the author had good intentions (even if it wasn't executed well). The writing was just plain irritating. Not every sentence needs to be its own paragraph. The last chapter is pretty much verse with how many line breaks there are. You can also tell when the writing is trying to be profound and poetic.
Because of how many paragraphs there are, the reading experience was incredibly choppy, and that carries over to the plot as well. Nothing really flows; scenes just happen.
Enemies to lovers is my least favorite trope. I do not care how it ends, it is developed as enemies to lovers for 95% of the book. I have a hard enough time believing romance when characters actually like each other. I have absolutely no clue why Ruying likes Antony, besides him being hot I guess. You're telling me she threw away all her morals just because this guy was kind of nice to her? She killed so many of her own people but couldn't even fathom killing Antony because oh he likes her? Girl shut the fuck up. I have no sympathy for Ruying. At all. And I'm saying this as a coward myself. Nothing she did was justifiable. She did it "for her family" but did she? Did her family want that? Everything she did was selfish.
To be honest Ruying's 180 at the end barely makes sense. Why was that the thing that sparked the change in her? Everything else before that wasn't enough? She basically knew about it before, like it wasn't that surprising. And she only cared because it was someone she knew getting hurt. Again, she killed her own people just like that for Antony. But it was okay because she didn't know them personally.
Ruying is a bad person. Morally gray or whatever. I straight up don't care what happens to Ruying. She deserves it.
I also dislike that the colonizers are the Romans. I think it would have been more significant if the colonizers were Japanese-adjacent, because it's important to remember that the Brits and the French and all those white people were not the only colonizers. They get a lot of flack for it, as they should, but they were not the only ones. Colonized peoples also mistreated and displaced other indigenous folks. But I guess that would be too complex for this story.
Remnants of Filth: Yuwu (Novel) Vol. 3 by Rou Bao Bu Chi Rou
3.0
I need to know what's up with Murong Chuyi
Salomé by Oscar Wilde
3.0
pas trop difficile, mais je l'ai lu très lentement. also traumatized by subjunctive, I was too aware of it every time it was used
The Happy Prince and Other Tales by Oscar Wilde
5.0
I already read "The Happy Prince" and "The Nightingale and the Rose" in The Snow Queen and Other Winter Tales. "The Happy Prince" is my favorite. I also liked "The Remarkable Rocket," which I think was the most humorous. "The Devoted Friend" was also perfectly ironic.
Biography of X by Catherine Lacey
2.0
biography of a pretentious art person. I appreciate what Lacey set out to do, but I was incredibly bored for most of it, with the the few interesting and/or insightful tidbits being far too repetitive. it is written just like a biography, and I don't like nonfiction.