Name: To Gaze Upon Wicked Gods
Series: Gods Beyond the Skies #1
Author: Molly X. Chang
Publisher: Del Ray
Format: Hardcover & Kindle eBook
Genres: Young Adult, Fantasy, Romance, Science Fiction
Spice Rating: None
Rating:
Synopsis: Goodreads
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?
Review:
To Gaze Upon Wicked Gods is an Asian-Inspired fantasy, and it draws on Chinese history for inspiration. Molly’s author’s note goes into some detail about the research she did as she learned the truth’s behind her Grandfather’s stories from her childhood.
To Gaze Upon Wicked Gods at its heart is about many things. It’s about the forgotten histories of China’s Century of Humiliation, the hard choices one has to make in order to survive a merciless world. It’s about an Asian girl who is taught to be quiet, but longs to be loud. But at its heart, it’s a story about immigration and its sacrifices—crossing oceans and worlds, enduring hardship and uncertainty—to give those you love a better life. (from the author’s note at the start of To Gaze Upon Wicked Gods)
I found To Gaze Upon Wicked Gods to be a bit slow to get started, for the first third of the book I really had no connection to any of the characters and had no ideas as to what story was trying to be told or what could possibly be going on… Almost as soon as I complained about this and considered that perhaps Fairydale had put me into a reading slump, everything started picking up.
It wasn’t until the halfway mark, unfortunately, that I started really getting into it. At this point, I was starting to get opinions of the characters! Ruying is an excellent FMC, she faces moral dilemmas and doesn’t make the right or correct choices all the time just because she’s the main character – she messes up, she has to justify decisions to herself, she’s flawed… She’s very human in that aspect. And I grew to love that about her.
At the same time this started happening, doubts started creeping into my head about the other characters that were getting page time and theories started brewing. And whilst the twist at the end of the book wasn’t what I was growing to expect, I still liked how we got there. I think book 2 has the potential to be really good! Book 1 just took too long to get going for me to be raving about it.
I’m comfortable with a 3.5 star rating, but I will absolutely read book 2 once it is out! Because I am invested in Ruying at this point, and I can’t wait to find out what she does next.
“You shouldn’t ask the girl blessed by Death whom she’ll die for. You should ask her whom she’ll kill for.”
Reading With Tyler 
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