Reviews tagging 'War'

To Gaze Upon Wicked Gods by Molly X. Chang

33 reviews

lucien_png's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional sad tense slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

I really liked this book's exploration of of a colonial relationship between two nations. One thing that was annoying to me was I felt like the author over explained things and tended to repeat things just a few pages apart, though this became less of a annoyance after the first part.

Spoilers for the book

I feel like Ruying was too quick to trust Anthony, and took too long to lose that trust. I understand why she helped him but I was surprised that she basically lost all skepticism towards him and his actions.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: War, Violence, Trafficking, Torture, Genocide, Xenophobia, and Toxic relationship

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

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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

thewickermage's review

dark 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

4.25

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Content Warnings

Graphic: War, Violence, Addiction, Colonisation, Murder, Death, Drug abuse, and Genocide

madscientistcat's review against another edition

challenging dark reflective slow-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

4.25

This is a deeply human, complicated, slow paced dark fantasy. A story of an idealistic but unknowingly naive young woman trying to do the right thing without any true understanding of what that is or what it means. This isn’t a romantasy, it’s The Poppy War.

There’s no easy fantasy escapism story here - only murky, morally gray characters caught in a losing battle on all sides. It wasn’t perfectly done, but I really appreciated seeing a very real depiction of humanity where we don’t have all the information, where we don’t magically know the right answer or find the ideal solution. We stumble in the dark and do what we can with what’s in front of us. And, all things willing, we learn from the consequences.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child death, Colonisation, Gun violence, Medical trauma, Xenophobia, Death, Violence, and War

Moderate: Murder

Minor: Child abuse

kbairbooks's review

I really wanted to like this book but at almost 60% I just couldn’t continue. I didn’t like any of the characters, the book was 75% inner dialogue and the rest actual things happening, I was bored, and found myself just trying to slug through it. I found this book to be affecting my mood anytime I read it and I wasn’t looking forward to picking it up. Im calling it quits with the hopeful thought that it will find the readers it’s meant for.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Blood, Child death, Colonisation, Death of parent, Terminal illness, Misogyny, Murder, Torture, Classism, Cursing, Toxic relationship, Violence, Grief, Gun violence, Addiction, Confinement, Death, Drug abuse, Police brutality, Vomit, Emotional abuse, Genocide, Kidnapping, War, and Injury/Injury detail

knlipke's review

dark tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? No

3.5

okay HEAR ME OUT!!!!

Is there a colonizer romance? Yes

Is this book a lovers-to-enemies trope? Also yes

Do with that information what you will


[Side note: this better stay an enemies to lovers trope or else I’m giving this review 0 stars]

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Drug use, Drug abuse, Toxic relationship, and Colonisation

Moderate: War and Torture

bookboxbabe's review

the writing is so circular and confusing at the same time and i just can not read anymore of it. i have been trying to read it for a month and it’s just not happening, i’m sorry

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Drug abuse, Fire/Fire injury, Colonisation, Classism, War, Death, Drug use, Murder, and Racism

booksalacarte's review

challenging dark emotional mysterious sad tense slow-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

3.5

To gaze upon wicked gods- 3.5⭐️ .5🌶️

Fantasy

Dual POV

Magic

Eastern Asian influence

Colonized nation

Rebellion

Intrigue

Coming of age

War

The cover of this book is beautiful. Truly.

The plot was interesting, bringing up the question of technology vs magic. Whether the magic would stunt an empire from growing to their full potential because of the reliance in the mythical… and how it would hold up against technology and modernism. I found the call to look at the morality of power and what it means to different people to be a good topic to pursue. I appreciated the book showing the birth of a political assassin, even if it was really annoyingly that the FMC’s grandma taught her everything that she needs to know about fighting, stealth, knife work… a bit too conveniently.

The pacing of the book was broken up quite a bit by repetitive inner dialogue as well as for-shadowing mentioned multiple times, making the twists and turns fairly predictable.

The characters were fine. The FMC having her inner struggle of morality was interesting… both FMC and the MMC being morally grey was ok… but having feelings for the MMC with the oppression and emotional manipulation was icky. It gave Stockholm syndrome vibes and not necessarily in a good way. The book was mostly in the FMC’s POV, with a single VERY short chapter in the MMC’s POV. It almost felt like we were meant to sympathize with the MMC? While he was painted as a terrible person TO the FMC the whole time. Ugh.

Anyway… I wish things were a little deeper, when it came to the side characters. They felt very surface level. 

Over all, this book gave post-apocalyptic earth realm colonizing other realms. Finding a love story in the opposing sides is hard to empathize with. I think I want to know what is going to happen, but at the same time I hope this is just a duology.

Thank you NetGalley, Random House Publishing Group- Ballantine and Del-Rey for the eARC of this book. All opinions are my own.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Kidnapping, Grief, Addiction, Classism, Colonisation, Drug use, Emotional abuse, Racism, Confinement, Gaslighting, Genocide, Death, Drug abuse, Gun violence, Misogyny, War, and Murder

apersonfromflorida's review against another edition

why are the romans here and why do they have fighter jets.

the more i thought about the world and the potential the worldbuilding had, the angrier i got. you can't have a dichotomy of magic and science and fail to intertwine the two aspects to make a coherent magic/science system. is there something about diminishing magic that's affecting how scientific discoveries are made? are there new magic systems now that pangu is exposed to the science of the west? does pangu have it's own version of "science" via alchemy/divination? so much was thought about so little it makes me genuinely angry. so many books handle the magic vs science aspect so much better, even in books like The Poppy War by R. F. Kuang or The Vorrh by B. Catling.

even with how the "inspiration" for unit 731 was handled without grace and used to shock readers before even going into the meat of the story. if you want a better handling, read "The Man Who Ended History: A Documentary" by Ken Liu in his short story collection The Paper Menagerie. 

and that doesn't even cover the gross orientalism and colonizer romance that this entire book devolves into. It left a bad taste in my mouth. One Star.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Toxic relationship, and Colonisation

Moderate: Death of parent and Drug abuse

Minor: War

abeautifulshelf's review against another edition

dark emotional informative mysterious tense slow-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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Content Warnings

Graphic: Torture, Violence, Murder, War, and Racism