To Gaze Upon Wicked Gods, or To Not Gaze Upon Wicked Gods?

A colonised Asian’s [very lengthy] perspective on an Asian “coloniser romance”.

EVERY SINGLE SPOILER THERE COULD BE AHEAD!

That’s what the internet has dubbed Molly X. Chang’s debut science fantasy TO GAZE UPON WICKED GODS.

Gorgeously detailed cover, might I add.

I learned about this book during the Cait Corrain saga—we’re not talking about it again; I refuse—and had zero interest in it at the time, just like I had zero interest in all the books I discovered through that debacle (I’m a nonfic and poetry reader ‘til the day I die).

What made me finally curious was when the discourse of TO GAZE UPON WICKED GODS, which I’ll abbreviate to GODS going forward, being a so-called “coloniser romance” began to emerge.

There was a lot of drama that came up too about Molly allegedly intruding on review spaces, something about doxing and harassing reviewers and arguing with them through burner accounts, blahblahblahblahblah. I found out about that after the fact since I don’t have twitter anymore and never will again considering that just the worst people live there. I read the statement Molly put out via a screenie I forced a friend to send to me [at knifepoint] and my eyes glazed over fr—I do not care about some interpersonal drama; that sht is so brain-numbingly boring to me. I don’t give a fvck what other author you have beef with—do you know how many authors I have beef with? All of them. I log onto Instagram just to start fights!

However, in the words of a modern philosopher, “given that I’m on the side of the culture war that doesn’t cherry-pick examples to make legally-dubious arguments and then celebrate being proven wrong by… lying,” I decided to take on the task of reading GODS myself to see how I, an indigenous, colonised Asian person, feel about it.

BEFORE PROCEEDING

Please help aid my friend Deema and her family’s escape from Ġaza to safety in Miṣr by supporting their GoFundMe. Whether you do so through donating to it yourself, or simply sharing the link to it.

They have a big family and are so close to their goal.

Don’t forget to keep helping a comrade with type 1 diabetes afford insulin.

Ⓐ

Some Backgrounding

For those curious, while my dad was born in Russia, he actually grew up in a non-Russian village in Ossetia down towards the Middle East—literally one of the southern-most colonies of the RF—and he didn’t speak Russian as a child. His family settled there as a result of having to flee the early-1900s genocides perpetrated by the Ottoman Empire, as they are indigenous to Anatolia, or Asia Minor, modern day settler colony of Türkiye. I was also born in the Far East of the RF, meaning I was born so deep in East Asia that I was basically born in North America.

I am involved in a lot of indigenous and minority West Asian and North African, SWANA, advocacy as… ya know… this Substack kind of makes evident. I definitely have a lot of East Asian admixture in me, given that I’m also Turkic—shoutout Türkmeneli—but I don’t claim East Asian heritage, I don’t look remotely East Asian (although Russian kids would on occasion make fun of me by pulling back their eyes…), never lived in East Asia proper. My anti-Orientalism advocacy, too, focuses on anti-SWANA, anti-South Asian, and anti-Slav Orientalism specifically as they are distinctive and especially violent, and also something I have extensive personal experience with (anti-SWANA and anti-Slav, at least).

Colonialism in particular is a subject I’m highly educated in and continue to become more and more educated in given I’m also… a child… and that was my primary draw to reading GODS. I’d consumed a lot of content apropos of it, and had many thoughts, but felt they wouldn’t really be valid if I didn’t read the work for myself and formulate independent opinions.

My biggest reason for reading GODS, however, was actually because I felt really, really bad for Molly. As an Asian woman, even a light-skinned East Asian one, she experiences a kind of unique racism that no one else does that primarily revolves around disregard and normalisation, something we the Middle Easterners are familiar with arguably the most (or among the most).

Sooo… this was kind of a pity read.

I honestly wanted to defend it, and I admit that that colours your bias during the reading process, but nobody whose review of GODS I’d watched had gone in without expectations around this subject.

And you know what? Even with mine not being a fiction reader anymore, this book was almost great.

But it had a fatal flaw.

I’d asked my YouTube and Instagram communities how they wanted me to present the plot of GODS in its video essay form, and most people favoured a long video with a skippable recap. Said recap is also present in this essay, in its first footnote (the second footnote is to easily return to the discussion part of the essay).

Fair warning, the recap is 3,000 words long because I’m allergic to conciseness I guess, but I do have things to say about the details, and if you, for whatever reason, don’t need the recap, literally just skip~➵¹

Content Warnings:

Colonialism, drug use and addiction, empire and imperialism, genocide, human experimentation, misogyny, murders of freedom fighters, racism, xenophobia, discussions of abuse of various forms, discussions of sexual violence.

Let’s Talk

So,² I want to start off with the positives because, out of the reviews I’ve consumed, I actually think I have a little more praise to give than the average person.

After Ruying kills Antony’s old tool (whatever he was), at 152 out of 353 pages, I admittedly enjoyed TO GAZE UPON WICKED GODS.

Straight up: I loved the writing style. It was flowery, and pretty, and full of metaphors which I adore in writing because I’m one of those people who criticises quote-unquote “anti-intellectualism”.

Yeah, Molly’s descriptive prose was quite repetitive and some metaphors were a little out of place. There was also a solid chunk of exposition—almost as if the narrator is a chronicler (which honestly would’ve been pretty cool). I don’t mind this—I actually quite like info-dumps, but it is noteworthy. The same thing was also described multiple times in multiple ways, and descriptors were recycled. This was Molly’s debut though, and I think she has the potential to develop a spectacular writing style, so long as the instant-gratification publishing industry doesn’t force her to dumb it down.

Genuinely 9.9/10 on the prose.

I do actually think there’s good set-up for Antony to be manipulative and cunning, and for Ruying to be vulnerable and insecure and afraid. Did the “Stockholm” set in fast? Yes. But that sort of “criticism” is quite frankly victim shaming. There are people who genuinely wouldn’t cave at all under these circumstances, and there are those who would fold immediately—quicker than Ruying. One thing I see with discourse around GODS is a lot of said victim shaming, and that sht is not for this comment section. Keep it to your nasty fvcking twitter accounts.

I think Molly should’ve shown a few more of the assassinations Ruying committed during that timeskip we got, even if in a sort of montage style. However, this didn’t really detract all that much for me personally, because I know what occupation does to a colonised mind; Ruying very obviously has a colonised mind, and I do think that’s something diaspora often overlooks. I can also imagine that Ruying dissociated during her forced killing spree.

Something I thought Molly did excellently were the emotional scenes. Her descriptive and flowery writing style really lends itself well to bringing out an emotional response and I genuinely think there was some serious skill demonstrated in GODS with respect to that.

I also really like that the magic in this world has a very concrete price. That’s how I write magic in my duology as well. I appreciate the stakes.

Now, I have some things to say that are sort of critiques, but also just questions.

At some point, I actually started to wonder if things were edited pre-release after all the ARC reviews started to come in. For example, was the chapter interlude “The Girl” there in the ARCs? If you know, let me know. At the end of chapter 34, for example, whilst being conflicted over having to kill Emperor Sihai, Ruying thinks to herself that she may be wrong in her faith in Antony. I wonder if this is a post-ARC edit to better hammer home to readers what the story Molly wanted to tell is actually saying. I read a post-publication copy, so I don’t know how much has changed since the ARC.

I also have a few logistical and worldbuilding questions.

So, first of all, I feel like the actual meaning of “Pangu” wasn’t made very clear. Is Pangu a continent? Is it the whole world? Is the whole world just China-inspired? How big is this world?

However, a bigger worldbuilding gripe I have is with this parallel dimension the Romans are from.

They came through a rip in the sky, paralleling the Nüwa story Ruying told Antony. We are sort of led to believe that they are from Earth, what with the environmental destruction, resource depletion, melted ice caps, and also with the Romans being an “if Rome never fell” premise.

That leads me to ask…

In the world of this story, this multiverse of sorts… is there no China? Like the side of the tear from which the Romans arrived, the one being presented as an Earth analogue. Is there just no China? If Pangu is supposed to be a fantasy China, we could assume there’s no OG China, or the Romans would be like “yeah you guys are so similar to this culture we have back home”. Is OG China occupied by Rome? Even if that was the case, there would still be Chinese people and Chinese culture. Chinese people have always been among the more numerous populations, and even under the most autocratic colonial occupations, indigenous culture remains.

Is the parallel world in GODS just Rome, like Pangu seems to be just fantasy China? Antony mentions Hades, Zeus, and Poseidon, meaning that this Earth-like world has at least Greeks in it. Then does it have Minoans? Poseidon’s name comes from Linear B which is adapted from Linear A from whence also sprung Cypriot Syllabary which begs the further question of okay are there Cypriots in his world—is there Cyprus? Zeus’ name has a Proto-Indo-European etymology and he is also referenced in the Rigveda, and has cognates in Albanian and Messapic. Dawson’s name means “son of David”, David deriving from the Biblical Hebrew Dāvíḏ (דָּוִד), itself from Biblical Hebrew dod (דּוֹד) for “beloved”. Also, Dāvíḏ beat Golyāṯ (גָּלְיָת) who was a Philistine. So, further, does this world have Albania, Apulia, the Indian Subcontinent, Philistia, and Jews?

Also, Baihu says to Ruying at one point:

“He [Antony] calls you his equal, but have you noticed how the two of you always converse in Roman, and he only speaks Pangunese when it suits him?”

He said “converse in Roman”… So the Romans don’t speak Latin?

These seem like trivial questions to ask, but I don’t think they are. I think it’s very reasonable to ask if the parallel world in GODS which is alluded to being Earth—because why else would the Romans be called “Romans”?—have China in it when the fantasy world has China in it.

As Shakespeare said:

„ვაზროვნებ მაშასადამე ვარსებობ“

I know there was some discourse about whether this book was adult or YA, and I personally lean more towards YA. Certain passages read very much like the book wasn’t trusting its readers to read between the lines, but also… I honestly don’t blame it given the current literacy rate of the West…

I’ll show you what I mean:

“Though they had already annexed half of our city, the Romans continued to take more because they knew they could. Because it seemed no matter how much they took, they would never be satisfied.”

You know? Like, an adult reader doesn’t need that spelled out. Or, shouldn’t, ideally.

Here, is where we come to some major issues I have with TO GAZE UPON WICKED GODS, as well as some things that are simply personal preferences. Here, is where the fatal flaw will ultimately be revealed.

My first big issue is with the villains of GODS being Romans.

The Sino-Romans relations weren’t very prominent. The most common forms of interface were indirect through the Indian Ocean trade routes and the Silk Road, and major occupation or even invasion events never took place.

On the other hand, Unit 731, which the author cites as an inspiration, was perpetrated by the Japanese and heavily swept under the rug with the help of the USA. Unit 731, or Manchu Detachment 731, was among the most atrocious crimes against humanity in the history of the world, committed by the Japanese during the Second Sino-Japanese War and World War II, with potentially an upward of 300,000 victims the majority of whom were Chinese and a significant minority of whom, appropriately 15%, were actually Russian, particularly White Russians, meaning loyalists of Imperial Russia who fled the Soviet Bolshevik uprising. Lethal human experimentation and biological and chemical warfare testing were the primary exploits carried out by the Imperial Japanese Army in Unit 731, located in occupied Harbin, Manchuria where Molly X. Chang is from.

Clearly (as if you can see me??), I’m not Chinese, however, my mother’s people were affected by Unit 731, even if my mother’s people were Red Russians meanwhile those detained in the Manchu Detachment were White Russians. Like I said, Unit 731 was covered up with the help of the USAmericans, and while twelve Unit 731 researchers were arrested by Soviet authorities and tried at the December 1949 Habarovsk war crimes trials [albeit being sentenced disproportionately to some Siberian gulags], those researchers detained by the US were given immunity and a stipend in exchange for their research findings. The Soviets also took and used these findings, they just got them out through torture and threats as opposed to diplomacy. It’s like Operation Paperclip: while seppos welcomed Nazi concentration camp researchers with open arms, the Soviets kidnapped and forced them to hand the information over. The result was ultimately the same.

As such, it didn’t feel right to have the villains of GODS be something as much of a non sequitur as the Romans. Why are they not Japanese? I personally didn’t like that. Imagine I wrote a story inspired by the Turkic colonisation of Anatolia, but made the colonisers… Ghanaian…(??) I don’t personally think that’s appropriate, especially considering, once again, Unit 731 was covered up by the Americans, and you can assume that most of your readers will be Americans. Molly states in her author’s note that GODS was inspired by the Russian and Japanese invasions of Manchuria, but I don’t personally feel that’s quite enough considering that a huge portion of people doesn’t know about Unit 731 to begin with—even some Chinese reviewers I’ve consulted hadn’t.

At the same time though, I can see how Molly possibly wanted to build a sort of protective barrier between herself and what she was writing. For us who have lived colonisation first-hand or ancestrally, who feel and live its legacy to this day, it can be something extremely hard to discuss with full frankness. In my case for example, the political climate of my duology, THE HYPOSTASIS OF DISSENT, is inspired heavily by the most repressive periods of the USSR, particularly under Stalinism, and the history of my duology’s setting is somewhat informed by the early 1900s Ottoman Empire, such as the complete extermination of the Atarisi people being a loose reference to the extinction of Mlaḥsô (ܡܠܚܬܝܐ), a Central Neo-Aramaic language wiped out due to the Sayfo (ܣܲܝܦܵܐ), the Assyrian Genocide. However, I am someone who suffers from an extreme degree of intergenerational trauma that can make certain things almost debilitating for me to write [outside of poetry], and so my duology’s setting, in its appearance, language, etc., is inspired instead by Venice, Sardinia, and the Etruscan Civilisation. Therefore, I can understand why, potentially, Molly may have made this creative choice. There’s no way she doesn’t have the same kind of intergenerational trauma as me, whether hers is as severe, lesser, or more so, doesn’t really matter.

Then again, in the spirit of being radically nuanced, HYPOSTASIS doesn’t really revolve around the subjects of active colonialism and occupation all that much, as my setting exists in the post-colonial period, so rather focuses on authoritarianism and tyranny which I have direct personal experiences with having grown up in a police state. TO GAZE UPON WICKED GODS, on the other hand, takes place at the apotheosis of colonisation, directly inspired by Japanese and Russian invasions of Manchuria, not just loosely so, and therefore I personally think the villains of GODS should have been Japanese. Or at least not Romans, since we also have a clear opium analogue with “opian”, most likely a reference to the Opium Wars which were waged by the British and the French against Qing China.

That’s just my opinion though.

This is a lesser complaint, and something that is a personal opinion as opposed to objective, but between chapters 43 and 44, I actually had to step out of my workplace (recall that I read exclusively on company time) and go to the bathroom. to cry. because I got triggered.

What happened was, around that part of the book is when the Ghosts, the rebels, attacked the boat of the Sihai Emperor where Antony and Ruying were. The primary cast were thus fighting against the Ghosts; the story is also largely limited to Ruying’s perspective. Because of this, there was a lot of justification of and even, in a sense, praise for the killing of Ghosts—these rebels.

You might not know this about me, but I find the murder of freedom fighters extremely traumatising. But it’s not necessarily simply the killing of freedom fighters that triggers me, as much as it is the justification of it which is what was presented in GODS. To make it clear, it made complete sense for it in the context of that part of the story, it was just something I hadn’t expected and that I find personally upsetting.

Another less subjective issue I had was the Empire dick-riding. And I mean the empires of Pangu.

“Our once noble magic. Our once imperial history.”

“Men in silk robes stopped us on the streets and greeted Father with bows and pleasant smiles, talked of court politics and the dwindling wars.”

“I liked to think he and Sihai’s Emperor would be similar. Kind eyes and gentle smiles—such a rare trait among men of power.”

So… I don’t know who needs to hear this… but all Empire is bad. Especially when we’re talking about China, one of the most prolific colonisers historically and to this day. Stand up, please.

Also, do the Romans have qi as well? Ruying pulled Dawson’s qi. How biologically different are the Romans to the Pangulings? I personally think it would’ve been more interesting if the Romans had something that was similar to qi which Ruying could still pull, but that is a little bit harder to pull, and thus would give her some confliction like “Well did I really stop myself short of killing Dawson that night, or is it just that I can’t pull his life force as easily as qi?” It just feels a little too convenient that these, logically, you’d think, different species of humanoid have the exact same biology.

By the way, the qi-cell thing:

“Qi-cells are a special thing. Once harvested, a single cell can hold a hundred times more energy than the fuel that powers our cities without the dangerous by-products that have polluted our rivers and air.”

This high-key gives blood libel even, but idk…

Finally.

TO GAZE UPON WICKED GODS’ fatal flaw.

Chapter 43

A disclaimer I have is that I actually did not see any of the marketing for this book; I only looked into it retroactively. I have TikTok but I hate its interface and therefore don’t browse it (also it lags), I don’t have twitter, and I never followed Molly on Instagram because I don’t follow authors except if they’re poets. The only “marketing” I saw was Rachel from Reads with Rachel listing out a few of the tropes. One of them was “childhood friends to enemies to lovers” which, legend has it, was what the marketing was changed to after the backlash for the initial “Zutara on steroids” marketing.

Reading GODS, Baihu and Ruying’s relationship itself was the one that read to me as enemies to lovers, or rather childhood friends to enemies to potentially lovers down the line. This, however, doesn’t align with the alleged early marketing that made it clear that the “enemies to lovers” was the prince and the girl, which to me did not read as romantic at all given the very clear abuse and manipulation…

It did not read as romantic at all until Chapter 43.

In this chapter, we get the book’s only Antony POV, and it completely blows out of the water the image that had somewhat unsurely but definitely intentionally been cultivated by Molly thus far of Antony manipulating and abusing Ruying. The way he love-bombs her and then goes cold. The way he holds threats over her head consistently. The natural imbalance of power between a colonising royal and a colonised kidnappee.

In Chapter 43, however, we discover that Antony has romantic feelings towards Ruying and would supposedly do anything to keep her safe. That he trusts her. That he likes her.

The validity of Stockholm and Lima Syndrome[s] is pretty dubious, considering there are no clear parameters for such diagnoses, the fact that most of them are made by media as opposed to psychiatrists, and specifically Stockholm Syndrome’s historical application in silencing female victims. In general, it does not feel appropriate to employ a thing that, in reality, extremely rarely occurs. Lima Syndrome has essentially one high profile case—the 1996–7 Japanese embassy hostage crisis in Lima, Peru—wherein a lot of elements pointed to it being potentially isolated and not a psychological “syndrome” at all, but rather a conscious choice by the captor because it would be favourable to build rapport with the captives who were largely elite diplomats.

Like it would be beneficial for Antony to build rapport with Ruying. A powerful sorceress.

That is what Antony’s chapter should’ve revealed. Not that Antony had some cheesy Sad-Boy upbringing with Platonic morals, or that he actually feels something deeper for Ruying, but that he is pragmatic and calculating, understanding that him treating Ruying well would make her easier to manipulate.

The kiss scene that preceded this chapter (I don’t actually recall if it preceded or followed, but it also doesn’t matter in the grand scheme), even in retrospect—once we knew what Antony was thinking, felt violating to read. You are witnessing a coloniser and a colonised kiss. A Russian soldier and a Ukrainian civilian. An “Israeli” soldier and a Palestinian martyr. A Malian elite and an Azawaɣ Tuareg. An Azerbaijani trooper and an Armenian captive. This is not the silly-goofy “enemies to lovers” that you think it is. This might be inflammatory to say, but it is comparable to rape. Yes, they did not have quote-unquote “sex”, so “rape” might be too specific, but it is sexual assault. Colonisation itself is defilement; it is rape. Consent cannot exist in scenarios of active occupation and subjugation, and I’m not talking about laypeople of these opposing communities, I’m talking about what we have here which is the perpetrator of colonial, imperialist violence.

A “coloniser romance” is not something that can ethically exist.

And if Molly X. Chang wouldn’t have gotten all this “coloniser romance” backlash, would she have kept Antony as the endgame love interest? Was Antony ever supposed to be a love interest at all?

Some time ago I posted to my community:

Someone replied to me with:

To this, I said, and this is where y’all have to hear me out:

And I do think there’s merit.

I think—allegedly!—it may have been possible that her agent, her editors, even her publisher had pressured Molly to play up the “romance” to appease the market.

And I say that because I’ve been there!

When I market NON SERVIAM, I do include “enemies to lovers” as one of the tropes despite the fact that there are only implications of a future romance in the first book of the duology with one very quick kiss scene that isn’t quote-unquote “real”, because I know btches hate when there’s no romance!

I think there’s potential that Molly got lost in the sauce. Once again, like I said, that’s just speculation on my part. To be honest, from all the reviews I watched of GODS, I expected Ruying to be gushing and falling over this green-eyed white man and describing his eyes as “jades” every other page, but there’s nothing like that. As mentioned, she does think he’s “achingly beautiful” and mention what he smells like (ocean salt and sandalwood, if I may remind you, which is, again, revolting), but it’s really not as bad as I anticipated, though it also wasn’t great either. Ruying’s internal monologuing of the way Antony makes her feel, like burning etc., is way too reminiscent of the way things like that are written in actual romance, which does feel dubious. Exhibits:

“Antony was so close, the heat of his body was warm against mine. The scent of him. Ocean salt and sandalwood, enchanting as a spell. If I wished, I could press my lips against his. I could taste him, and he could taste me.”

“For I knew this fire would burn us to ashes if we weren’t careful.”

But, once again, we are talking about a victim here.

His eyes being constantly compared to jade could honestly be read as a misdirect—almost another thing that manipulates Ruying, given that jade is an auspicious stone in Chinese culture. Although that would have been more effective had Antony been actually portrayed as the cunning Svengali like I’d described previously.

Concluding Thoughts

In the end, my rating for TO GAZE UPON WICKED GODS was 3.25

Rounded down to 3 for the garbage bin of an app that is Goodreads.

One whole star was earned by the very pretty writing style; I love flowery prose; I honestly wish it was even more poetic.

The 0.25 was for the impact of the emotional scenes which, once again, I think Molly wrote very well.

That leaves about 2 stars for GODS without the elements I liked.

The fatal flaw was the death knell for what was nearly excellent—if Antony was presented in the way he would logically and realistically be in a plot such as this, I would’ve easily given GODS a 4.5. Unfortunately, that fatal flaw undercut a lot of the story for me and I think it was a serious mistake by everyone involved at every step of publication.

I genuinely wish Molly X. Chang luck.

She clearly wanted to do something incredibly heartfelt and important, but it evidently fell flat for a lot of readers due to the “coloniser romance” undercurrent they perceived.

Do I think TO GAZE UPON WICKED GODS is a “coloniser romance”? Now that all this backlash has transpired, I’m honestly not sure, because we don’t know how the trilogy would’ve panned out had the backlash not taken place. I think GODS was mis-marketed, and I think the publishing industry is complicit in that, because I don’t think romance should’ve been highlighted. If it had to be, like the machine just had to be fed, I think a romance between Ruying and Baihu would’ve been a lot more compelling to get readers interested. Two people on opposing sides of morality, one attempting to convince the other into the darkness amidst growing political tensions under colonial occupation? But that’s also my preference. I hate anything involving rich people which is something BookTok&co. clearly disagree with me on.

Ultimately, I went into TO GAZE UPON WICKED GODS with hopes of defending Molly X. Chang. On some level, I could. And I did. But on another level, it simply wasn’t plausible. I guess I leave GODS as conflicted as I entered it, albeit more enlightened.

I’ll end this section with some quotes from Baihu that I wholeheartedly agree with:

“Don’t try to sway me with his lies of the greater good.

The Phantom didn’t start all of this, […] Rome did, when they unleashed opian on our people, when they tore open the sky and invaded our lives like demons from the eighteenth level of hell!

A life on our knees is no life at all.”

Algerian freedom fighter Djamila Bouhired (جميلة بوحيرد)

~Sfar~Ⓐ🧿֎⨳

Skippable Plot Recap

told channeling the flippant humour of Big Will (sorry for the robbery; at least I’m admitting to it…[?])

1. The book opens on Pangu, a China-inspired world populated by Pangulings, the locals, and Xianlings, the locals with magic. Pangu is colonised by a technologically advanced people from a parallel dimension.

The Romans.

Our main character is Ruying from Jing-City, who goes to her old friend, now turned enemy, Baihu at the Lotus Tower with the tuxedo, who is also the bastard son of the Emperor’s uncle, to purchase “opian” for her sister Meiya who is an addict; their parents are dead and they live with their grandmother; their family used to be top-ranking military officials because war is good.

Baihu tries to convince Ruying to use her magic, the magic of Death, for some sort of purpose. She refuses, because boys have cooties, takes the opian, and leaves.

On her way home, she sees a Roman give a coin to a Panguling beggar girl. She (Ruying) snatches up the coin pouch he left idle and turns tail, on account of not liking rich white people very much. Sounds like reasoning I’d give for crime.

When she’s attacked by a guard (taken to be this Roman’s bodyguard), she pulls at his qi to almost kill him, which is how her magic works, and gets away with the help of her friend Taohua, a female Xianling commander of the Empire’s (not the Roman Empire’s) army, because war is good, with superhuman strength. Her arrival felt a little Deus Ex Machina-y, but it’s a science fantasy, plus she was brought up earlier in-narrative.

Taohua walks Ruying home, they talk a bit—Taohua tells Ruying that disappearances are becoming frequent and some bodies are washing up drained of blood—and then Ruying leaves. She finds her room in disarray because Meiya raided it for the last of the stashed opian. They debate liberation which ends in an argument just like all my conversations with my mother.

Sometime later (the timeline is notoriously blurry), with Ruying’s grandmother off to search for suitors for Ruying, Romans come to raid Jing-City and kidnap Ruying.

She wakes up in a cell. On her wrists are cuffs that block her magic. A soldier who had tackled her the night she stole the gold from a Roman—Dawson, which is a white-ass name; is he like from 43 CE when Roman emperor Claudius invaded Britain?—comes over to gloat and be creepy and racist, and then leaves. Standard cop activities.

Ruying stays locked up for an unspecified length of time. There, she witnesses Taohua being incarcerated.

After some time, Baihu comes by Ruying’s cell. He promises to get her out before leaving in a haste, but she views him as a traitor so this isn’t a positive interaction. Just like my interactions with my mother.

She (Ruying—not my mother) is eventually taken to what seems to be an observation room where she and other Xianlings are being watched by the Roman princes. One of them, Antony, she recognises as the one she stole money from. He is the younger brother.

Xianlings are forced to present their powers to impress the princes. If they’re unimpressed, the Xianling is taken away, we at this time presume likely to be executed.

Ruying is instructed to kill a boy with her magic after her cuffs are removed. She does the same thing she did with Dawson and renders him only mostly dead. She then slips a hand into the pocket of a soldier who comes over to her, turns off everybody’s cuffs, and makes a runner but unsuccessfully. The eldest prince, Valentin—creepy cvnt, tries injecting her with opian to control her but Antony stops him because drugs are expensive. Why would you give them away for free? He also claims he wants Ruying for himself. She’s returned to her cell.

A wound Ruying sustained during her attempted escape gets infected.

Antony comes to her cell to offer her a “chance to live”.

He speaks her language; he sounds so benevolent—book’s words. Standard coloniser activities.

They have a back and forth, he tortures her a bit by making the cuffs electrocute her, but eventually she succumbs because literally what choice does she have? Antony says he doesn’t want to destroy Pangu, but he does want Ruying to kill powerful Panguling targets so that supposedly war doesn’t break out.

Importantly, Ruying makes Antony promise that he will ensure Taohua is let go.

Antony has himself and Ruying driven out to the Lotus Tower (the place where Baihu with the tuxedo sold opian to Ruying). We finally get a time marker: 7 days since Ruying’s kidnapping.

At this point, Ruying very clearly calls the Romans “monsters” (as she should). She does think Antony is “achingly beautiful” though, despite the fact that he is just white and I must free my Asian girls from this madness.

Baihu finds Ruying—apparently, he’d summoned Antony to the Tower as a decoy—but before he can manage to help her in any way, Antony interrupts and Baihu has to leave on account of being xenophobic to Roman people.

Antony taunts Ruying about the lack of technological development of her people and I want to slap him till he’s dead.

He hands her a gun and makes her kill a random. She hesitates and refuses, so Antony does it himself to show ‘em who’s boss, and then takes Ruying to her family home. In an understandable panic, Ruying grabs Antony’s gun and holds it to his head, demanding he leaves her family out of this. He taunts her to pull the trigger. She does. It’s unloaded. He takes the gun back, loads it, grabs her by the throat, and holds the weapon to her head, making her swear under duress that she will never do something like that again.

Here, we are told that Antony apparently smells like “ocean salt and sandalwood” which is a disgusting combination and inappropriate timing.

The next chapter we see them being driven through the Roman-occupied side of Jing-City which is pristine and populated by the most horrifying creatures known to mankind.

Wealthy white people.

This is happening ~20 minutes after the previous events.

Antony takes Ruying to his estate and tells her again that he wants peace unlike all of his family, and that Ruying being his assassin would help him prevent war, because apparently war is suddenly not good.

Here is where I notice that each individual chapter is incredibly short.

In the basement of sorts of the prince’s manor, there’s a captured man Antony wants Ruying to kill because he’s partial to a little bit of that Ultraviolence.

We get a chapter learning about Ruying’s past, how her first kill was the first boy she kissed when she was seven. They had fallen into the water together due to a prank pulled by some other kids, and in a panic, Ruying grabbed onto his qi and pulled it all out because who needs it anyway, after which she became a sort of pariah.

Back in the basement, the bloke Ruying’s tasked to kill has the power of multiplication. Seemingly, he was Antony’s old tool, but has outlived his purpose, whatever that means. They are made to fight each other. Ruying wins, i.e., kills her opponent, feeling like something inside her died with him. We also learn here that her using her capital-G “Gift”, meaning her magic, occasionally heals her despite also costing her a lot, like shortening her life and seemingly destroying her organs.

Antony holds Ruying—very clearly an act of manipulation and an attempt to trick Ruying into seeing him as somebody safe, someone who empathises with her; he even tells her that killing will get easier; it did for him. He weasels under her skin a little more with reassurances, and by telling her that he’s actually adopted and came from poverty, and that his adopted father made him kill his biological family to be pardoned and thrust into the lap of new-found luxury. He is now a “spare” because his adoptive father thought Valentin mightn’t be able to shoulder the empire. Talk about a metaphorical castration.

After this trial of Ruying’s, Antony shows her one of the many Roman armouries. This is clearly a fearmongering tactic.

We then get a 6-month timeskip of Ruying having committed countless assassinations for Antony, supposedly of both bad and good people. 48 of them in total, soon 49. She feels very guilty but Antony always quote-unquote “comforts” her. He is also funnelling money to Ruying’s family for his end of their so-called “bargain”.

Next, we see Ruying watching her grandma and sister from afar. Meiya is still a user and addicted, but Antony is apparently having her be supplied with a “cleaner” and “better” opian so she at least looks superficially healthier. She’s still a bargaining chip though so, clearly, Antony can’t allow Meiya to be weaned off.

Ruying is suddenly taken by a bloody coughing fit, because blood is gross, and get it out of me right now.

This is also from her over-exertion of magic.

On her route away, she is apprehended by Meiya who is incredibly disappointed in Ruying—she seems to know of her predicament from Baihu. Meiya tells Ruying off, that Pangu will never know peace under Roman occupation which is correct and she’s completely in the right. With that, Meiya disowns Ruying and leaves like the girlboss that she is.

Ruying returns to the Roman side of the city late, and Antony’s guard, Dawson, the one Ruying almost killed and who is tasked with watching Ruying, activates her magic-smothering cuffs to electrocute her on account of not liking women very much.

When Ruying finally returns to Antony’s home to report on her latest kill, she is greeted with the unfortunate sight of his older brother Valentin drinking wine and looking out over Jing-City.

He is verging on drunk and starts to tell Ruying about how their world, presumably Earth, is polluted and ravaged by pandemics and natural disasters. That he envies Pangu. Their people want a new home after they’ve supposedly destroyed their previous one. “Know that the only way to save Rome is to destroy Pangu,” he says.

He lunges at her with a syringe like last time and threatens her, because he’s just a little bit silly like that. Ruying punches him off herself. Antony comes in and diffuses the situation.

Ruying is then seen training with Antony to shoot guns. They talk. There’s weird romantic tension. He keeps talking in Ruying’s language and reciting proverbs to her which makes me recoil.

He says he has the next assignment for her in Donghai: the capital of Sihai, another… I guess Empire? of Pangu? There are supposedly rumours of Sihai and Rome planning to sign a treaty. He intends to brief Ruying once they get there, and then gives her time off. Before she leaves, he deactivates her magic-smothering cuffs. He also gives her a badge symbolising him, so she essentially has quote-unquote “free reign”.

She takes a nap. Has a nightmare. Decides to go to her people’s side of the city to feel some normalcy because women be shopping. A boy robs her, but clearly wants her to follow him. She is led to Lotus Tower and Baihu.

He asks her for help to kidnap Antony and confesses to being a spy for the Phantom: the resistance. The pair argue and I agree with everything Baihu says because I don’t respect women’s wrongs.

Ruying, offended by this, leaves.

Next, Ruying and Antony are sailing for Donghai. He reveals to her that he wants the Sihai Emperor killed after the treaty is signed because then, once the son ascends the throne, he would be required to heed his father’s final decree.

They meet the Emperor; his son Sihai Feng is potentially a gay icon, or is ace.

The whole time, Ruying is conflicted. She is obviously afraid of dying, and just afraid full stop.

That night, before the day of the treaty signing, Ruying sneaks out of her quarters to go warn the Emperor and his son. She discovers that the Emperor knows what Antony intends and is resigned to it like God intended.

On the day of the treaty signing, in the morning, the Sihai Emperor and heir take Antony and Ruying on a cruise along the rivers branching through the city—it’s one of those many islands type cities; Donghai’s nickname is said to be “the City of Ten Thousand Rivers and Ten Thousand Bridges”.

While on the ship, they are attacked by the Phantom’s rebels: Ghosts. Antony takes an arrow to the shoulder for Ruying. The boat gets garrisoned by iron curtains against Ghost arrows. Imperial healers rush to heal Antony’s wounds and obviously Ruying notices the scars on his body because the romantasy code decrees a villainous man is suddenly sympathetic if he has daddy issues.

The iron curtain gets blown up by rebels and they get aboard. Scuffle, scuffle. Ruying hears a Ghost say that the Phantom wants her alive.

A Ghost launches a fire blade at Antony, but the Sihai Emperor gets jealous, jumps in front of Antony, and takes the hit for him, thus dying.

The rebels turn tail.

In a fit of grief, Sihai Feng unleashes his water magic and just obliterates everything and everyone.

Ruying and Antony fall into the river.

Ruying wakes up some time later with a bandage around her arm and a fever setting it. She’s in a room in some abandoned cottage. Antony saved her despite being supposedly unable to swim well, so Ruying’s brain is bamboozled once more over. They end up lying in bed together for #warmth!

Ruying asks Antony, “Am I a fool, Antony? For thinking that, beneath everything, you’re a good person and not the monster everyone else believes you to be?” to which I, someone not named Antony, answer, “Yes!”

She still has conflicting thoughts, and it’s growing pretty frustrating.

And then they kiss...

And then they fall asleep.

The next chapter belongs to fvcking Antony, and this is where I start to lose it.

He goes on and on about how his grandfather taught him not to love anything but Rome, how strict he was, how cold, and that he loves Ruying and would destroy the world for her but “nooo she would totes hate me if she knew The Truth™” and oh my GOD I don’t care.

Ruying’s wound becomes infected again because I guess her blood is just so tasty to bacteria.

She tells Antony the story of the Celestial Serpent Goddess of the Wucai Mountain, Nüwa. I won’t recount it, but one takeaway is that she created life, and humans were her favourite. The ones she crafted by hand supposedly became the Xianlings, whilst the rest became non-Xianlings. In the end, she sacrificed herself to save humanity. This story parallels the Roman invasion of Pangu, as they came from a tear in the sky, which is where Nüwa’s enemy came from too and what she sacrificed herself to fix. Therefore, I hope this is a foreshadowing to Ruying sacrificing herself for Pangu, because I too am partial to a little bit of that Ultraviolence.

Antony tells Ruying he is afraid of becoming like his tyrannical grandfather. Don’t care; didn’t ask.

In the cottage, they are ambushed again by Ghosts because I guess they’re just on one. They demand Ruying to hand Antony over. She walks him out with a knife to his throat as a decoy. They manage to run together because Antony pulls Ruying with him despite her initial intention of buying him time. They are apprehended by fire magic.

Antony convinces the Ghosts to let Ruying go. She runs. He stabs himself in the chest. Ruying runs back to him because no one can follow basic instructions. Romans descend to dispatch the Ghosts and quote-unquote “rescue” Antony and Ruying.

They’re flown back to Rome-occupied Jing-City in a helicopter; Antony is taken into surgery; Ruying is stressing about him surviving and gets sent back to her apartments (where Baihu is waiting) because she’s just being a little bit annoying. In a last-ditch effort, Baihu tells Ruying about Antony’s underground laboratories and takes her there on account of not being very good with women.

Turns out it’s the exact place she was kept after her initial capture.

Once they arrive to a laboratory observation room of some nature, they see a young woman getting dragged in below. Ruying realises it’s Taohua. If you recall, Antony had promised Ruying that he’d have Taohua released.

Taohua, who had been experimented on, is drained of blood, just like those Panguling bodies that she herself said would supposedly be found washed up.

Baihu hands Ruying some documents. She finds out that the raid on Jing-City was specifically to get Ruying, which I’d assumed had been alluded to already, but I also have the tendency to think.

Ruying doesn’t make a decision yet; she wants to know why Rome wants Xianling blood, to which Baihu advises she ask Antony.

Two days later, Antony awakes. Ruying comes to his hospital room.

She finally forces him to tell her about why he needs Xianling blood. Apparently, it has something he dubbed a qi-cell in it that contains immense amounts of energy. He thinks this is what gives Xianlings their magic. Antony wants this energy for Rome’s sake because their world is dying suuups’ not alike our own Earth.

Opian, it is discovered, stimulates the growth of these qi-cells, but said growth exhausts the body and makes it addicted because it’s unable to sustain the energy required for this accelerated growth. In that way, it’s almost like a form of blood cancer.

Ruying lies to Antony that she trusts him, and the book comes to an end with Ruying finally deciding to side with the resistance and going to Baihu.

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