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

Reviews tagging 'Death'

To Gaze Upon Wicked Gods by Molly X. Chang

38 reviews

raven_nivhaar's review

reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Diverse cast of characters? Yes

2.0

I did not enjoy this book. I tried, I really did but by the end I was skimming just to make it go by faster. I don't feel like I lost anything for doing that because the emotions were the same throughout the entire novel.

And full disclosure, I only requested this book so that I could hopefully be a positive review in a sea of negativity. But unfortunately, I failed.

I read an uncorrected galley, and I am desperately hoping that most of my issues were the fault of it being uncorrected. However, with that being said, I am still going to review this book as I read it, faults and all. And I will state a theory of mine at the end, but I want to keep the focus on the book for now.

Now, the story itself sounded very interesting, and the magic system was the strongest aspect of the novel for me, but unfortunately that was about it.

To start, everything felt melodramatic, to the point where moments that were SUPPOSED to have an impact, just didn’t. There were some truly beautiful lines in this work, and the author is clearly very talented, but the fact that the flowery nature of the text was allowed to go unchecked did a disservice to the author and the story she was attempting to tell, in my opinion.

I don’t even feel like I had a full grasp of what the book was trying to say because it just kept getting drowned out by the constant airy prose, which had nothing to ground it. It was just too lyrical all the time. There was also a feeling of repetition going on that took me out of the story, despite the actual actions taking place not being repeated.

And this very well could be the author attempting to input traditional Chinese lyricism into her novel (which I hear is very poetic and flowery, though I can’t confirm this as I unfortunately don’t speak/read any Chinese dialects), but if that’s the case I just don’t feel like it worked as it was intended to. When everything is running on full cylinders, then when something truly nightmarish and horrible happens, it loses whatever weight was intended because the whole book was that way.

I felt like Ruying wasn’t a very strong character, despite her abilities. Which sounded amazing! I mean, someone who can channel Death into people by removing their Qi? That’s so cool! But I think that Ruying’s personality was just too timid, despite the attempts at giving her strength.

And for me, Antony was just an oily weasel. He would go from appearing sympathetic, back to the monstrous Prince in the blink of an eye. And as Ruying was so sheltered, it was easier for her to fall to his manipulations.

It felt like the author wanted to ground the story in our reality instead of fully diving into a fictional one, which it would have benefited from. Admittedly, the mix of magic and science that this book promised didn’t really appeal to me to begin with, however the Roman’s being the villain and having Romeo and Juliet mentioned on one occasion just proved my point. The fact that the villains carried such a recognizable name hurt the book, I feel. I am totally down for a story inspired by true events, but this felt off in a way that I can’t wholly articulate and didn’t sit well with me.

Now, my personal take is that this simply wasn’t ready for publication. And this is indeed based off the fact that I read a galley ARC and have not had an opportunity to properly check it against the final product. But the fact that the purple prose wasn’t corrected, there were numerous errors that could have been corrected, and edits that should have been made to make the story flow better weren’t there. It makes me sad for what could have been a legitimately good book.

And the fact that this is the author’s debut just breaks my heart. She very clearly has talent, and the fact that this is inspired by a subject which was close to her heart through her grandfather just makes it even more heartbreaking.

My main critique is directed more so at the publisher and editors. Why didn’t you correct this? Why didn’t you give this book the treatment it deserved? Especially after the fiasco, in which book and author were victim? That should have given you MORE incentive to make sure this was as perfect as could be. Instead, we get this. Which feels more like an attempt at saying “We’re inclusive! See? Look at this story! Look at this author!” and it strongly feels like this was pushed forward before being ready just so the publisher could say they have a diverse author on the roster.

And that both enrages me and breaks my heart. Because no one deserves this. This book could have been amazing.

But the publisher and editor/s failed this author and her work.

But hey, at least the cover’s pretty.

Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC.

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jebecky's review

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Ugh, I hated all the characters, the story felt really unoriginal, there was no character development. The reason I almost finished the book is because introduction by the author was so interesting.

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readwithsophsx's review against another edition

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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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thewickermage's review

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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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madscientistcat's review against another edition

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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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bree_h_reads's review against another edition

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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.

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kbairbooks's review

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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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knlipke's review

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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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kaylurzz's review

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challenging dark emotional mysterious sad 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

2.5

Ruying did nothing wrong!!!!

I'm so conflicted on this! There were parts and ideas I liked, and then parts not so much...

I thought the world and magic system were interesting but why make the other world Rome? Why not another fictional place?
The prose while beautiful at times just talked in circles and made it hard to follow.
The time jumps were jarring and I wish we spent more time with Ruying AND Antony to see their "relationship" develop more.

These are my major complaints but I'm interesting in possibly the next book in the series....

Also

KILL HIM RUYING!!!!

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bookboxbabe's review

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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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