soap&diamonds

2.75 / 5 stars

To Gaze Upon Wicked Gods is a fantasy retelling of World War Two era China. It’s magical and inventive in its retelling and also aggravating.

Normally, I don’t place my opinion in the summary, but I feel particularly strongly about this book. As Soap can attest, reading this book made me rage in ways I never thought possible.

My only gripe is with the romance. Considering how the romance runs through the entire book, it’s a major gripe.The enemies to lovers, villain is love interest kind of romance that this book markets itself as is completely misleading. My opinion of this book has slightly lifted after reading the second book’s summary but I’m still pretty upset about being misled that the entire series would feature that one main love interest. To put it simply, it’s an oppressor x oppressed romance. I wouldn’t go as far as to say it’s a colonizer romance, but to have the love interest be the oppressor feels like a blatant slap in the face to the actual historical events. The experiments, the rape, the blatant disregard for life that was displayed during that period of time; in short, they were not very well expressed in this book. Having that time period be the core focus of this book only to market it as a romance between Ruying and a prince from the land that’s occupying and causing all of these atrocities feels like there’s no actual sentiment behind the authors note where Chang states she wrote this book after being inspired by her grandfather’s stories of World War Two.

I feel as though I do need to give this book some praise because it genuinely was a pretty good book. The writing was great and I love Chang’s writing style. It helped make the characters feel real and while I was frustrated with Ruying at times in the book, it was due to her being a well rounded character with a headstrong personality rather than a flat character. The magic system was well realized and explored throughout the narrative. The magic felt realistic in the sense that Chang wasn’t using it as a fix all solution to problems which made the plot feel like it had actual weight to it. The political consequences of Ruying’s actions actually made real sense and helped her actions feel slightly explainable when I was exceedingly frustrated at her during the middle section of the book. While the world was a little hard to visualize, Ruying’s sister’s struggle with opium addiction was raw and heart wrenching. It was so realistic and actually follows how people with addiction struggle.

I’m looking forward to the second book, especially now that I know that the actual love interest of the books is no longer going to be the oppressor. Overall, I don’t think I’d recommend this book. Even as a big proponent of reading a book series in order, I think it’s more worth it to find a detailed summary of the book online and just read the second book when it comes out. 

Diamond Out!