Colored Pages Blog Tour: To Gaze Upon Wicked Gods (Molly X. Chang) – ARC Review

To Gaze Upon Wicked Gods, Molly X. Chang
Audience: Young Adult
Genre: Fantasy
Publisher: Del Rey
Length: 368 pages
Contains: drug use, imprisonment, torture, adult language, human trafficking and experimentation
Rating: 3.5 stars
Summary: She has power over death. He has power over her. When two enemies strike a dangerous bargain, will they end a war . . . or ignite one?

Heroes die, cowards live. Daughter of a conquered world, Ruying hates the invaders who descended from the heavens long before she was born and defeated the magic of her people with technologies unlike anything her world had ever seen.

Blessed by Death, born with the ability to pull the life right out of mortal bodies, Ruying shouldn’t have to fear these foreign invaders, but she does. Especially because she wants to keep herself and her family safe.

When Ruying’s Gift is discovered by an enemy prince, he offers her an impossible deal: If she becomes his private assassin and eliminates his political rivals—whose deaths he swears would be for the good of both their worlds and would protect her people from further brutalization—her family will never starve or suffer harm again. But to accept this bargain, she must use the powers she has always feared, powers that will shave years off her own existence.

Can Ruying trust this prince, whose promises of a better world make her heart ache and whose smiles make her pulse beat faster? Are the evils of this agreement really in the service of a much greater good? Or will she betray her entire nation by protecting those she loves the most?

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Welcome to my stop for the Colored Pages Tours’ book tour for To Gaze Upon Wicked Gods. You can find a list of the other tour stops on the Colored Pages Tours’ site.

I received a gifted copy from the publisher and Colored Pages Tours in exchange for an honest review.

⭐⭐⭐⭐

Rating: 3.5 out of 5.

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“Heroes die, cowards live.”

You know the whole “every villain is the hero of his own story” thing?

That’s pretty much what Molly X. Chang explores in her debut novel. At first glance, To Gaze Upon Wicked Gods seems like your typical YA fantasy, but it’s a messy little book set in a brutal world filled with harsh choices, monstrous princes, and unfair odds. Despite the elements found in your usual YA SFF–a handsome enemy prince, a rebel group with a mysterious leader, and a girl willing to do whatever it takes to protect her family (I volunteer for tribute)–this is less of an enemies-to-lovers, Chosen One-joins-the-rebellion story and more of a “cool motive, still murder,” make my your villain kind of a story.

“‘Tell me Yang Ruying, what are you willing to die for?’
My sister’s smile, my grandmother’s warm hands, cupping mine. I straightened. ‘You are asking the wrong question, my prince.’ I spoke slowly, words sweet. He would like a docile victim. Grandma had also taught me how one caught more flies with honey than vinegar. Too bad I didn’t want flies. I wanted this false god’s beating heart, clutched in my hands.
‘What is the right question, then?’
‘You shouldn’t ask the girl blessed by Death whom she’ll die for. You should ask whom she’ll kill for.'”

Yang Ruying is the girl blessed by Death whose only goal in life is carve out a semblance of normalcy for her aging grandma and her estranged, opium-dependent twin sister. Unfortunately, she’s an orphan clinging to the dregs of her once-great family legacy just trying to survive in conquered nation decimated by poverty and addiction, and while her powers may be great, they’re costly, taking pieces of her soul and shaving hours from her life with each kill she makes. But sometimes, when you live a in harsh world, all your choices are bad ones, so when Ruying finds herself at the hands of her enemies, she agrees to work for one of the conquering princes in exchange for her family’s security. But achieving his vision for peace for both their worlds is complicated, and Ruying finds herself walking the knife’s edge between protecting her family and betraying her nation.

To say Er-Lang Baihu was a villain would be a stretch. To say he was innocent was a lie. He existed somewhere in between: the gray between black and white.

At its heart, To Gaze Upon Wicked Gods is a story about how far one would go to protect her (or his) people. Chang creates a world in which the only options are tough ones and throws in a protagonist who wants simple desires in a world that’s anything but. The result is a complicated cast of characters with messy motives, delusions of goodness, and questionable morals.

As a reader, you’re not really sure who to root for because everyone’s kind of messed up in their own way–including our illustrious “heroine”–and while it may be hard to like many (or any) or the characters, I think Chang does a good job of making them, at the very least, understandable. They’re, as the saying goes, heroes of their own stories and are so convinced they’re doing the right thing at the end that they’re willing to do things that are very, very wrong. The age-old question rings throughout the story like a refrain–does the end justify the means? (Personally, I’m thinking no.)

I’m the kind of reader who doesn’t love villain origin stories (or villain romances), but despite a few dicey moments, I don’t think To Gaze Upon Wicked Gods fits into either category. It’s a messy book full of characters who, whether real or imagined, find themselves with their backs against the wall, stuck between a rock and a hard place. I feel like I spent a good portion of the book watching them run around, thinking, well, that’s a choice.

At face value, the romance can seem problematic. I know it caused a bunch of controversy, but I wanted to read it for myself and tried to avoid the drama so I could look at it objectively. I couldn’t block out all the noise, but I’m not really convinced To Gaze Upon Wicked Gods is an actual love story. I’d call this a light romance at best, but even then, my gut instincts tell me that the real romance hasn’t quite started yet and that the actual love story–if there ends up being one–will go in a direction most readers might not expect. (Fingers crossed!)

“Between survival and honor, I chose survival.

Really, the main focus of the book is the constant tension between struggling for survival (no matter what the cost) and doing what’s right. The central question seems to be, is it better to turn a blind eye and cling to the pretense of peace or to fight a losing battle in pursuit of it? Antony, who’s constantly spouting his questionable maxims like some kind of macabre fortune cookie, is really just another means (albeit one with pretty jade eyes) to highlight Ruying’s internal conflict.

The pacing in To Gaze Upon Wicked Gods is a little weird. It’s a pretty slow, meandering story for most of the book. I personally didn’t mind the pacing as much, but this does very much feel like an introductory book leading up to the actual story that I’m hoping will be told in subsequent books. Ruying’s character arc, for example, barely starts by the time we reach the end of the book. It’s not necessarily how I’d want to kick off a trilogy–an argument for a tighter story and stronger plot can definitely be made–but it’s a pretty prose, easy-to-read kind of a book, and my brain has been quite tired lately, so it wasn’t a huge deal for me.

That being said, I do think the story could’ve been developed a lot more. The world building is a huge disappointment for me. I was really excited for another Asian-inspired fantasy world, but it’s not particularly detailed or fleshed out. If anything, the bits of information we get are kind of confusing. I can’t tell you how long it took for me to realize Ruying and Antony’s nations weren’t just on separate continents but from completely different worlds (slash dimensions?? I’m still kind of confused.) It definitely doesn’t help that “Rome” isn’t the Roman Empire that’s on everyone’s minds, but the way the worlds are introduced are clunky and hard to piece together.

In terms of the characters, it’d be nice to see more growth and development over the course of the story. I get that we still have two more books, but part of what makes series fun is the emotional attachment you get for fictional characters. As I mentioned early Ruying’s nascent arc is just starting to kick off towards the end of the book. When the pacing starts to pick up, it feels a little rushed and some characters (Antony) start to do things that seem a little out of character. The side characters are really interesting, and I wish we’d gotten to see them more. I would love to learn more about Ruying’s military-minded Grandmother or her treasonous traitor of a childhood friend, for example, but they only make brief appearances throughout the book. (Am I hoping they play a larger role in the next two books? Absolutely.)

To Gaze Upon Wicked Gods really feels more like the buildup to a larger story than a smaller contained to the first of three books. I am really interested in seeing where Chang goes from here (and if my predictions are right,) so I’m definitely keeping my eyes on release info for book 2 and hoping we get some stronger world building the next time around.

Born in Harbin, China, Molly X. Chang was raised on folklore told by the grandparents who taught her to take pride in the heritages and cultures that shaped her life, and the harrowing history of the ancestors who’d come before her. To Gaze Upon Wicked Gods is her debut novel.

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