What is it with modern day authors thinking that "enemies to lovers" means oppressor x oppressed 😭

Yes this is exactly like zutara… if Zuko was Ozai.

he’s making her use a power that diminishes her life?? and she’s in love??

Honestly, the only way i could think of this story line being saved is if she had the intention of murdering him and his family the whole time. But that would require her to have dignity, moral values and common sense.

I feel like the marketing and forward really make this book stomach turning for me. If you know the gravity of unit 731, of what happened to your family, how could you instead turn around and use it for clout and a bulwark when people question you for reducing the gravity of colonization to mere set dressing for your poorly written romance? It feels exploitative of family tragedy. Even in the forward where she describes the chinese army as fighting with bows and arrows against superior technology makes me think that the author desperately needs to do some internal decolonization because how are you really going to say that when the Qing army had guns too! Any colonized people has their own history of development and science, including China! It's reflected in her infantilization of Pangu as not having "science" and only having "magic"--the same orientalist mysticism she's applying to her own image of China.

Why would she try to kill him with a gun if she has magic that can kill people? 😂😂😂 Girlie lost a golden opportunity to kill the main culprits behind the invasion and war.

I cannot imagine using something like unit 731 as a plot point in a fantasy novel without taking the time, care and sensitivity to explore the horror and gravity of that situation.

So, i'm Malaysian Chinese. My grandparents suffered the Japanese occupation during WW2, and that piece of dark history is well-known to us. For this author to reference it and write a book like this is well, beyond "uncomfortable" to me. I really wanted to enjoy this novel, but I DNF real quick.

zuko and katara did NOT go through three seasons of character development to be turned into watered down caricatures

Zuko got like kicked the fuck out/ran/excommunicated/whatever and WAS NOT RUNNING A 731 UNIT. Antony and Zuko are NOT the same.

You either fully commit to an evil colonizer love interest and all the moral implications that entails- or you write a conflicted love interest that goes through a redemption arc and rights their wrongs (which is what I thought it would be like because of the Zutara inspiration)- you really shouldn’t have an objectively evil guy but then treat him and the romance like everything is fine

a little part of me died when you were reading the passage of them "'''flirting"''' wtf omg

Okay, so I've now watched the entire video, spoilers and all. From the sound of it, this book encounters the same pitfalls that a lot of TikTok-popular 'dark romance' books do. Most are heavily marketed based on tropes and specific scenes from the book that sound good when taken out of context. I'm not one to knock common book tropes, but I feel like there are certain topics that cannot be squeezed in to fit these tropes. In my opinion, the word 'enemies' in enemies to lovers applies to two people who are more or less equally matched in skill or power but dislike each other for other reasons. A bully and the person being bullied are closer to an abuser vs. victim dynamic. The same applies to a colonizer and a person from the land his people have colonized. Topics like colonialism and imperialism are serious and complex. They need to be discussed keeping that complexity in mind, or you end up writing a selfish main character who doesn’t care for the people her love interest is involved in brutalizing until it directly affects her in some way.

Everytime you say pagulin, I think of the anteater, pangolin. My mind has irreversibly replaced all the humans with anteaters in this story.

I think the story would've had been much better if the main character had just been pretending to like the prince, like she tricked him to get leverage so she could then save her people. It would've made more sense.

As a Singaporean Chinese who had a grandmother telling me stories about the Japanese Occupation, this book’s subject is horrifying. And to make references to Unit 731? And make this a romance? I cannot even.

From everything I've heard, I think this book would be much better served if it had committed to the bit and gone full villain protagonist dark romance. Trying to paint Ruying as a mostly good person who'd just pushed to do bad things makes the fact that she genuinely fell for Antony look really bad. A good person wouldn't fall for the person holding her family hostage and subjugating her people. Ruying comes off as either deliberately ignorant or extremely callous. Also don't tie it to real-life atrocities. Kinda takes the fun out of the fantasy

The Poppy War is another fantasy book that uses allegories for unit 731 as well as comfort women, but those books aren’t romance and are fully focused on war and its atrocities which is why I feel like in TPW it works

Writer clearly doesn’t understand Zuko or Katara if this is their attempt to emulate anything about either of them….

Every once in a while, a book comes out that makes people go "Why?"

Im not even renotely joking when i say that my ARC review of this book was a page and a half on google docs before i put it into goodreads. And i was going to give Chang benefit of the doubt that maybe she was oblivious to the actual issues arc readers were having with her book. but then on instagram when she tried to gaslight readers that this isnt a colonizer romance but instead Ruying is manipulated, and she tried to frame the issue as ppl hate reviewing bc of the book having an interracial romance. And she deleted my respectful comments to another person explaining the issues arc readers had went way beyond "interracial romance" and instantly destroyed any credibility she held in my eyes

i honestly had thought the "colonizer" guy would be like the child of some nobles from the colonizing side and actually against all their policies and they would work together to overthrow them crusty dusty fossils from the description on goodreads. kinda like elend from mistborn, he is the son of a noble and the nobles are extremely oppressive but his heart is in the right place and he is trying to change things, and when the revolution comes he thinks that the historical event he'd been waiting for is happening but he's on the wrong side of history so he immediately tries to help the revolutionaries.

Having recently listened to a deep dive into Unit 731 I simply cannot imagine someone understanding the events of that and thinking “yeah that’s a good thing to use as a point of comparison for my dark romance novel”

my main issue was calling the enemy Rome when its based off of Unity 731 which is Japan. Why create Pangu based on China but you can't think of another name for the enemy? I feel like making it Rome and them being white was a lazy show of colonization when Japan colonized other countries.

Great video! In Molly X. Chang's words, Antony/Ruying was never going to be endgame, while the marketing (done both by the publisher and by her) and the framing of their relationship within the narrative suggest otherwise. A lot of those problems stem from the time skip. We meet Ruying, who is afraid to use her powers and skip to the point where she's grown completely desensitized to murdering people. But why is she suddenly okay with that? The author skipped that over, probably because she was to scared to make Ruying too unlikeable and that's a shame. I think it could've tied nicely to Ruying's relationship to Antony as well, if Molly X. Chang committed to the bit and made him a manipulative abuser. We know that Ruying's home life is far from peaceful and Antony is the only person who treats her nicely. In order to not lose his regard, Ruying kills people Antony orders her to kill. A lot of abuse victims do things that they're uncomfortable with, because they're conditioned to think that if they do their abuser will love them more. Usually, the victim's action is rewarded by the abuser, and that's what makes this cycle hard to break from. Molly X. Chang could've written how after each kill Antony gives Ruying gifts or praises her. The kicker is that the reader sees right through the manipulation, even if Ruying doesn't. So all the reader has left is to wait in suspense till Ruying realizes that she'd been manipulated. Also, I've seen a lot of people comparing To Gaze Upon Wicked Gods to the Grisha Trilogy, and I can see where the comparison comes from. Antony experimenting on Ruying's people was, apparently, supposed to be this big reveal. But the thing is, making Antony a twist villain a-la Darkling doesn't work, simply because of who he is (a colonizer) and who Ruying is (a colonizee). Alina and Darkling at the beginning were on the same side, he was considered a Ravkan hero and even then the reader was given enough clues to piece together that he was not that good of a person. Sorry for the long comment, haha!

What annoys me is how people are like “listen to poc voices” but then with this book, they’re calling the VALID, WELL written 1-2 star reviews from asian and other poc review bombing or saying they’re white…

only 4 minutes in and I'm already dreading what's to come after hearing 'unit 731' and 'dark romance'

I think more aspiring authors should read Ursula K. Le Guin's novels AND her manual to write fiction. She wrote a phenomenal portrait of a coloniser in "The word for world is forest" that did not turn him into a love interest. I really do not know why this novel of hers is so little known, when it is so relevant for decolonisation in fantasy. I also heard that the Poppy Wars was a better anticolonial novel inspired in China.

It might be a crazy idea, but I think that it would be interesting if Ruying allied with Anthony specifically because she hated her fellow countrymen. Like, if before the Romans arrived her and her family would have been social pharias, that were nobles at some point, but lost their privelege due to the scheming of other people. This way Ruying is justified in feeling no sympathy towards her people and actually feeling vindicated when the Romans arrive. This way she would feel no qualms about joining the Romans, because for her it is more of a enemy of my enemy is my friend type of deal. But that would mean deliberately making Ruying unlikeable and being prepared that the readers wouldn't like her. And that's not the reaction the author wanted. That's why Ruying doesn't kill anyone on page. I believe the author has written somewhere to not judge Ruying harshly for her choices.

Oh, and like, Antony's backstory is perfect for Antony to pretend he's against the Romans. It would have been such a great story if he offered her a job in order to "save her" from his family and slowly he gained her trust and explained how he's trying to dismantle the empire. And this leads to Ruyin eventually introducing him to the resistance only to find out he was just lying to get inside into the rebels. That would be so much understandable for Ruyin's character.

As an Indonesian, I heard things from my late grandma (she was born in the 1922, lived through both Dutch and Japanese occupations). She's had privileges, like for example went to school with Dutch kids, something most other indigenous kids can't do at the time, because my great grandfather was one of the local officials. But even with those privileges, she's still had traumatic stories. Imagine what happened with those without privileges in their everyday lives. So to see someone like this author using her grandparents' traumatic experiences as an aesthetic for her "romantasy" made me sick. To be real honest with you all, after knowing this book from Cait Corrain drama, I added this book to my TBR right away without thinking twice. And then ARC reviews with valid criticism started to appear, I was still want to give this book a chance. Until the reviewers doxxing drama. A disclaimer that I'm still not sure who's right here, but lets say for the sake of the argument that it wasn't true, that Molly wasn't doxxing anyone, but her way of handling the issue was just not it. I didn't expect her to bow to all criticism because trolls and bullies do exist. But when she chose the defensive way, refusing to at least listen to valid ones, and just gaslighted us like "haters gonna hate lol", that's when I decided to bye Felicia-ed her, never to touch her books if she doesn't have any plans to do better and be more respectful when handling things based on tragic historical events. P.S.: And LOL to those who accuse valid critics of being a hater on interracial couples. DUH, the valid criticism exists because Antony actually experimenting on Ruying's people, FFS. People's opinions including mine would be different if he's someone who questions his nations actions towards Pangu and other nations they colonized.

unit 731 was more than a tragedy, it was one of the most evil and disturbing acts ever committed by man. i genuinely cant believe someone put it in their YA novel.

Also, I remember a controversy surrounding the author (wasn't huge, but was definitely something that caught my eye) about how the author described her identity as 'Manchurian bred', which to a lot of twitter users well versed in chinese history/chinese themselves, it was super red flaggy, as that was the imperial japanese term for china that no one uses unless you like...supported imperial japan. I honestly don't care much about the book, but remembering that in the context of everyone's criticism is...definitely something to think about!

As soon as you said unit 731 and "romance" I screamed "what" so loud I woke up my cats

It's crazy to me how - the author's underdeveloped writing abilities aside - so much about this story could have worked way better with a little more research and creativity. You know how you can get someone to overlook atrocities being done to their own people? You make them believe that they are separate from their people. Better than them, chosen, different, etc. Why couldn't Antony have, for example, starved her to break down her resistance, then made himself look benevolent by feeding her and "freeing" her, or by dangling her family like a carrot in front of her, etc.? Why couldn't Antony have broken her spirit and then fed her lies about her own people until she believes those lies, to the point that she thinks that being his assassin is for the greater good? To go along with that, I could have believed that Ruying's parents would be "proud" of her for serving Antony - if the author built up her parents as, again, believing themselves as separate and better than the rest of their people, so they do favors for the colonizers and are rewarded etc. etc. So we as the audience are disturbed at how we can see how colonized in the mind these characters are, while a kernel of Ruying's true and more rebellious self is buried down somewhere deep but is still alive and casting doubt on her own actions and on her family. Like don't get me wrong, that's really dark stuff, but it seems like that's what the author imagined her characters being in her head, but what ended up on the paper was disjointed and poorly thought through and unwilling to break from the oddly soft romance angle.

Thank you Cat for this insightful review! I am so glad you gave your perspective as a member of the Chinese diaspora and very accurately pointed out the orientalist treatment of Chinese culture in this book. If there's anything for me to add to this already pretty comprehensive review it's that the author could not deliver on the portrayal of Manchu or Northeast Chinese colonization and culture that was promised in the marketing and author's note. I'm not sure whether the author uses Manchurian to refer to the ethnic group or geographic location, which muddies the water even more. Nevertheless, the vast majority of the book's description of Chinese culture and colonization fits southern China better than northeast China. The deity Nvwa who is somewhat important in the story originates from Miao and southern Han creation myths, and Pangu is also from southern China. There is virtually no representation of Manchu mythology. Even the emperor's name Yongle is borrowed from a real-life emperor (lazy nomenclature, but I digress) who is Han. Regarding the portrayal of colonization, it reads much more like a pop history version of Britain's colonization of Hong Kong than the occupation of Manchuria by Russia or Imperial Japan, especially with the use of opian/opium. The only plot element that parallels the occupation of Manchuria specifically is Unit 731, which is unfortunate considering how much you could do with that underrepresented part of history. Especially with the author emphasizing how much she was inspired by "true stories of Manchuria", it's just so off-putting! I really wish no readers are misled into thinking Nvwa is a northern Chinese myth or that the Opium Wars colonized Manchuria. There's a lot of weird things in TGUWG that are easy to miss if the reader doesn't have knowledge of Chinese culture or colonial history, and I think that's part of the reason why many Chinese critics received backlash from fans of the author. A lot of critiques were brushed over as ethnonationalist attacks or from people who were "oversensitive" and wanted to censor dark romances, but Unit 731 is something that really isn't taken lightly by Chinese audiences. It's a mindset that's difficult to understand for outsiders, but when you actually read how Chinese victims were treated when these atrocities occurred, it's difficult not to be sympathetic to how people process national trauma. It's just not a good book for learning about Chinese culture and history, and most of the "Chinese culture" it puts out (with all the random Chinese words that aren't even cohesive and are sometimes translated improperly) is just an orientalist farce used to make itself look representative. Well, and also the fact that one of the "idioms" used in the book is the name of a romance Chinese TV show.

I think she's not a good enough writer for this book to work. She can't make the romance compelling enough for you to understand how Ruyin falls for Antony. She doesn't even show how he manipulates her so you can't feel like he's this mastermind and she's a poor victim. The whole colonization and rebels plot was so underwritten you have to wonder if Ruyin is just a bootlicker. If she was a good writer this could have been a really interesting book, but that requires skill. I don't think she's trying to romantize Unit 731, I think she went in over her head with this book. Edit: and hey, writing a book is fucking hard. Finishing a book, even if it's bad, is a feat. But if you're gonna use these very heavy themes, maybe wait until you can do them justice??

I was going to borrow this from the library, but now I'm convinced that I shouldn't waste my time. I also learned from another reader's twitter review that the author used a lot of modern slang and even the actual title of a Chinese TV show and passed it off as proverbs or some shit to sound exotic which icks me to no end.

"She wonders if shes betraying her country" uh shes killing her own people so yes? This MC is so dumb 😂

There's literally so many ways this could've been done right - she could've committed to truly make Antony evil and show that Ruying was manipulated and abused. She could've shown that Ruying had colonial mentality and was selfish - make her unlikable, and then gone and done the work to show her growth and change. So many ways. But to me, who's people were colonized 3 times (I'm Filipino) I'm with you with the sentiment that certain things just shouldn't be "morally gray" like colonization isn't one of them.

One way I think the romance aspect could have worked is if he was against the colonisation but was too scared to disagree with his ruthless family to do much about it, until perhaps his older brother kidnaps the main character. He meets her and they bond over him wanting to be less cowardly and fight his family's atrocities, and he helps her rebel from within the main hub of the colonisers. Essentially, she inspires him to defect and betray his family to help the Pangulians, and the romance is a subplot to the espionage/assassination of the high ranking colonisers that they work together to achieve

I think whats crazy to me too is that if you look on Goodreads for example, those who are giving the book 5 stars are either white people or people who clearly haven't even read the book but are literally saying they're giving the book 5 stars because they feel bad for Molly. Meanwhile actually bipoc reviewers who've actually read the book are giving it 1 or 2 stars. I dunno, the whole situation is absolutely bizarre to me. Yes, what Cait did was bad and racist, but not every bad review is because someone is trying to be racist. And then there's the fact that this book was even able to be picked up by a literary agent and then sold to a publisher with an editor and marketing team and no one ever stopped to consider the major red flags???

The lost opportunity to make a "couple" in which the oppressed acted like a hero with a betraying heart, an oppressor who's disgusted with himself and the target of his desire for having this kind of feelings, and a self-destroying ending in which none of them wins because that's how war is

Imagine having the power to kill your oppressors... and not using it to kill your oppressors 🤔 Can anyone explain that to me? 😅

She must have thought she could do a Shatter Me stunt, but at least the villain was not villaining like this.

Scalding hot take: getting review bombed by cait corrain was the best possible thing that could have happened to this book

I was never a huge Zutara fan...but I love how those usually make (valid) points why the ship isn't really a colonizer romance, only for this author to put out something Zutara-inspired which is a full blown colonizer romance

I do think that a more thoughtful author could write a good colonizer/colonized dark romance novel, i'm a strong believer in the idea that any plot can become a good story with a good writer. It's just that a good writer would not name real life tragedies like unit 731 and expect a compelling, believable romance to occur.

(Edit: this comment is very much an inconsequential rant about a not-very-important aspect of this whole saga-there are far bigger and more real-world impactful issues with this book (i.e how it capitalizes off of the horrors of Unit 731) than this tiny aspect of its marketing) The author marketing it as Zutara-esque irks me so much. Zuko is a prince who was burned and exiled by his own father when he was _fourteen_ and who comes to deeply regret the actions he took during the literal darkest periods of his life when he still just a young teen, who works hard to redeem himself, forge his own path, aid and fight for the people his family and nation oppressed and colonized, and heal from his own abuse. Reducing Zuko down to just “colonizer” ignores his growth and redemption-and reducing Katara down to just “colonized” ignores how she, very actively and on more than one occasion, fought for, defended, helped, and healed Fire Nation civilians, as well as forgave Zuko after he helped bring her closure regarding her mother’s death (without their field trip, she never would’ve known why exactly her mother was murdered.) Whatever _waves hand_ this is, is not Zutara

I don't have much else to add other than what you've already said, other than: why would they not develop any science and tech "just because they have magic" when magic shortens their life and can even kill them? 😭

I think this book is very ironic because somehow the Prince and Ruying both are great representations of the world right now, of humanity and the atrocities going on in the world. Take Palestine into account, people wanted to condemn Hamas, a resistance force built because of the oppression the people of Palestine had to face over the years, every single time their excuse was, "but do you condemn Hamas?" And how it is ok for Israel to be occupying a state that is way older with evidence of it's existence even though the colonizer, the bastards they are keep trying their best by getting people to buy into this propaganda and for them to be massacring those people because it is what? Self defense? What a joke humanity has become. And now that it has come to genocide, no one can actually do anything except wait and watch on live television as countless more innocent lives are taken and we are still trying to justify and argue about if they had a right to live. Wow I did not intend to rant like this I apologize but watching this really made me chuckle more than a few times when you were describing how problematic and inconsistent Ruying's logic was because all I could think of was wow this is exactly the reflection of what is wrong with so many people around us in this world.

See there was this little thing about Zuko’s character called a redemption arc? I feel like that might’ve been like important or something and without it he’s just a bad person?? But idk 🙄

I think if Ruying's fatal flaw was her cowardice, this story would make more sense. Because then it would totally make sense why she'd so easily be manipulated by Antony who offers her more protection than she could ever have dreamed of. She could even have deluded herself into believing that she's not selling out her country out of cowardice but out of practicality (and to protect her family). Maybe she was even too terrified of death to ever use her magic on anyone and Antony fed her lies to eventually get her to not only use her powers but to get really good at them. Moreover, her contempt for her childhood friend's involvement with the Romans would also make sense cos she'd see anyone taking any active action as stirring the pot, putting them all at risk or something. Then her character arc in this book would've been her coming to terms with her cowardice and how her actions could lead her and her people to total annihilation. Honestly, the more that I think about it, the more I kind of wonder if that was the original idea for Ruying but someone higher up wanted the MC to be more of a girl boss than a deeply flawed individual

Full disclosure: I'm not East Asian, but I'd like to think I have a decent level of subject-area knowledge in Chinese history (as in, have studied it academically). I can't really speak exactly to Molly X. Chang's life particularly, but I've noticed a trend wherein a lot of stories are marketed as "authentically Asian/African/Latin American/etc..." because they're written by a diasporic author. A lot of the time they end up just as shallow, pastiche-y, orientalist, or culturally homogenizing as any shitty novel written by Westerners about the exotic wonders of the mystic East. This isn't to say that diasporic authors aren't capable of portraying their ancestral cultures well-far from it-but when the notion of Own Voices is applied by people who have no idea why it's actually good to let people tell their own stories and just view it as a marketing trend, it ends up horseshoeing into this race-essentialist ideas that being ethnically Chinese gives you an innate understanding of Chinese history that somehow makes you especially well-suited for telling stories about China. And, well, the problem is that it doesn't work that way, and that's how you end up with "Unit 731 but make it Sexy" or, like, all the bad ahistorical samurai mysticism that takes conservative/fascist mythmaking about the innate warrior spirit of the Japanese people at face value because they don't think of Japanese history as something that can be understood and interpreted and retold differently by different Japanese people, they just see it as a monolith. That being said, this whole book could be redeemed if there's a book 2 love triangle introduction a la ACOTAR where the badboy love rival who shows up to steal colonialism-boy's girl is an obvious Mao stand-in, because that would be hilarious. Give me Sexy Badboy Mao Zedong!

22:40 this killed me 😭😭😭 w how empty this world building seems i could probably argue that misogyny wouldnt even work in a world full of magic like this , esp considering the scale of the powers ruying has

As a Singaporean-Chinese person whose very existence is a result of my grandparents escaping death during the Japanese Occupation of Singapore, I have words for Chang, and none of them particularly pleasant. What also got my goat was her decision to highlight her Manchu heritage and bleat about minorities in present-day PRC; it's bizarre and a bit silly, given that the Manchurians were the conquering, colonising final imperial dynasty of China that persecuted the majority Han, oversaw genocides in pursuit of massive expansion, deteriorated in the 1800s to the extent that coastal Chinese cities became a playground for western imperial powers, squandered their chance at a Manchurian nation that Japan handed to them on a plate, and last but not least, laid the groundwork for the eventual Rape of Nanking. The fact that Manchurians were not persecuted by successor governments is probably a historical aberration as well, and given minority privileges in the PRC, most are quite happy to be known as such in the census and leverage on it. The way she's framing this all is damned weird.

Early in and the "We have magic so why would we put effort into science?" shit drives me insane when you pair it with "Oh yeah using magic also uses up our life and can kill us :)" aspect. Like, I dunno maybe you'd develop technology that would make it so you aren't killing yourselves everytime you try to solve any problem?? Maybe the fact people seem to have certain kind of magics would make relying on any type really inconvenient as a way to run x and y? It feels so handwavey.

When you've been writing the book for so long, you forgot that you had your MC tortured..

Ngl I was gonna read it for the pretty cover, oh dear, this is not a story I can get past

Okay here are my thoughts, 1. As someone who had to research the pacific front of WW2 I wonder how they thought that was a good idea for the basis as a romance considering what many women had to go through when they were captured 2. Why use Romans? If this was suppose to be about Japanese and Russian occupations 3. “Zutarra” on steroids while I don’t want to ship shame, various Zutarra shippers tend to strip Katara of her firery personality, her agency and use her as a standin self insert, and this reeks of that type of fanfic. 4. My god Ruying is a moron.

Some things I've noticed in this book review I think are worth mentioning: 1. Antony says that he's the only one in the royal family who doesn't want to obliterate everyone. This comes off like a lie. Most people back in Rome are likely cool with the idea of colonization over full genocide and he's actually saying this to bring the protag closer to him. 2. If the author were to go the full route of the protag being manipulated by kind actions from Antony, it would've been better if he went all the way with the kindness. Take her back to Rome and let her live in opulence. Slowly but surely bring her closer and then have her use her death powers if she wants to continue living this life of luxury. To do this, she could also get the safety of her family guaranteed from Antony as another manipulation tactic.

Not going to read this book, but i have one question. If she's so powerful, why can't she use her gift of death to kill her oppressors? Seems like such a stupid plote hole. Or is it explained in the book?

firstly, you are a very eloquent speaker and it was a pleasure to listen to u !! secondly, i agree with everything u've said, of course, and it pisses me off that the book was marketed as being perfect for zutara fans lol, because one thing atla never tried to do is excuse zuko's actions. his entire arc was dedicated to unlearning the propaganda that he was taught his whole life, culminating in him helping aang defeat the fire lord and fight azula. katara's arc parallels his and culminates in her fighting alongside someone who she had once seen as the personification of evil. if they were to get together at the end, it would have been a good ending for both of their characters. here, none of the characters were written as meticulously, and as u had mentioned in the video, they had no personalities to speak of. this is nothing like zutara and its giving the ship a bad rep, pleaseee hahaha

*acts shocked*

The idea of mentioning one of worst human occupation atrocities OF ALL TIME as a real world reference on the inside cover of a colonizer romance is... really gross to put it kindly.

Zutara on steroids? More like Zutara on dehydration

okay what the fuck. I recently did a history unit on Korean history (also occupied by Japan obv.) and would NEVER have considered someone would try to write something like this, jesus christ, omg. This is actually so foul I cant. To make a "dark" romance about Japanese occupied countries when there is a history of trafficking and sexual slavery in the Pacific War (and ya know, germ warfare and massacre in the Nanking area) is irresponsible and gross, jesus fucking christ arghghhgsdgfhdgshsh I would be curious to know what research (or lack thereof) the author had done about this period in (rather recent) history before writing this, because I find it hard to imagine that someone can have great knowledge of the occupation and not feel too upset and appalled by it to create this sort of fiction is beyond me. Idk sorry if this came off overly emotional im just like actually shocked someone would write this (and acknowledge the historical basis behind it too !! ) hgkdfhjgdf

So she has the power to kill but she never used them against the Romans even before meeting Anthony. But she uses it to kill her own people Lol that makes sense

There was an arabic series about romance between Syrian woman and French soldier During the occupation I hated it sooo much And he killed her in the end!

White Tears Brown Scars is a nonfiction book on white supremacy and colonialism. It mentions the Princess Pocahontas stereotype of indigenous Americans. Basically, Princess Pocahontas falls in love with the colonizer and prevents her people from killing him. In the sequel, she falls in love with a different colonizer. Then the author of that nonfiction book claims that the Princess Pocahontas stereotype legitimizes the conquest and colonization of the indigenous peoples of America. To be fair, Pocahontas is a Disney movie… made by a settler colonialist nation… and it is pretty damn obvious that it’s the story that the settler colonizer wants to tell. Of course, it’s going to be offensive for the people on the colonized side. Who wants to be conquered and dominated? No one. It sucks to be on the receiving end of the conquest. I have not read the novel yet but it sounds like Princess Pocahontas to me. I should expect this anyway. I feel like people get so uptight about what gets published or not, that they forget that publishing has never been about being right or wrong. It just allows people to share stories in book form. Obviously, this means book critics would come later, and I would definitely encourage the book critics to critique or criticize the book. Talking about the book’s inaccuracies is part of the critiquing process by the book reviewers. It doesn’t have to be before printing. Literary critiquing can occur after printing and distributing.

along with the darkling being shown to be a manipulator, his cause also was like an understandable cause. This guy is just out to colonize her people and experiment on them. I think this had a lot of potential but the way she leaned into romance just isn't it here.

Okay as I'm watching this, I honestly think that maybe Chang tried to do something similar to The Poppy War - Rin is an extremely morally grey character and she does have powers because she becomes a shaman. There is a colonizing force and Rin lives in the country thats being attacked (however her actual background is different). Ppl do find a semblance of a romance between her and Nezha but it never comes to be at all and the point isn't the romance, it's the war and Rin as a character and how far she'll go for power. What seems to be the problem is, as you said, we don't have Ruying's (?) end of the line, her limit to push on her morally grey characteristic. Also Rin is also captured and there's a scene where she gets experimented on (for not being entirely a normal human) but it's never ever showed it as an add-on to a weird romance dynamic lol

Not gonna lie, creative writers come off as the least educated group of people sometimes, and this book rly revealed the lack of basic background education in history & politics that I have observed in my own time in creative writing circles (as a writer myself)

The moment you mentioned Unit 731...In a ROMANCE novel, I already knew this was gonna be really problematic.

The only way to fix this is if we find out she HAD been drugged the whole time

seeing so many books in the back i've never heard of was so exciting! only 3000 subscribers SHOCKED me, i really enjoy the way you present your ideas and just the general cadence of your voice. so glad to sub 💗💗

Thank you for taking the time to share and review this, I believed the voices of people who said this was a colonizer romance - oxymoron much - and didnt want to give her my money. I cant believe she used a wordwide tragedy and trauma to sell her half-backed "romance." This is disgusting.

The thing is this book would be WAY more interesting if the MC’s thoughts and ideas were challenged. Getting to see a coward/traitor stand up against the oppressor would legitimately be an interesting character study. But the fact that none of the MC’s actions are questioned by anyone, is disappointing. Edit: and the fact that she doesn’t support the rebellion doesn’t sit right with me.

you perfectly put into words exactly how i felt about this book, thank you. it was an anticipated read but i think this project was beyond the author's scope and abilities.

"So that is her meet-cute"🤣🤣🤣

YOUR SWEATER IS SO CUTE

Taking the time to show those 6 months would have made all the difference. The scenes where you can watch him isolate her, gaslight her, emotionally blackmail her, and her not figuring it out. Like show him further colonize her mind on more levels... Show how she was dragged down to the pit! Those six months were CRUCIAL and they were skipped! That wouldn't have fixed the marketing issue but if those six months were shown, this could have been amazing. I see the bones of a good story in it and I think tiktok trope demands just took over. Also, Zuko was on a redemption arc. Antony is NOT. So how is this even remotely Zutara?

really thoughtful in depth review

Are we sure this isn’t written by someone who actually despises dark romance? Because this sounds almost satirical, it’s so bad. No one would write this and find it romantic, right?

That sleeve sweater is beautiful!

Thank you for teaching me about unit 731 and America’s coverup, I can’t believe I didn’t know this sooner!!

Ooof this is a sensitive issue. I notice this trope with the musical Miss Saigon and the Sheik by E.M Hull.

This could have been done better in three ways. 1) the opium needles can act like jurda panem in six of crows where her powers become elevated and out of control plus the addiction. Tracker jacker venom from hunger games that brainwashes her. Serum in divergent which is a combination of the other two, in terms of writing. 2) both protagonists are evil and they become that version of a power couple and the main story is about her family having to witness this and fight against her, 3) if someone really wanted the romance element, let’s do the cliche of the adopted prince being a double agent and being reasonably angry while feeling trapped. They work together to escape and fight with the colonized. Her people hate him at first and he has to earn her trust and her respect. I can also picture the guard just being corrupt, not taking the prince’s orders and just likes torturing her secretly for the fun of it.

Oh wow... the direct quotes had my jaw on the floor. I can't even. Thank you for the review -- I had this one on my watch list and now I can safely take it off.

Purely based on the title and the cover when xiran jay zhao mentioned it in her cait corain scandal video i was so excited for it. All i can say is oh.

Okay here’s the thing. I think sometimes problematic romances can be written like a colonizer x colonized people ship is messed up but it is also okay to write in the same way that toxic relationships can be written or something following an enemies to lovers trope. These things can be written if the author really really wants to (idk why) because it’s what they like. But moralistically… it should be made clear that such a book doesn’t condone relationships and that in the real world, such relationships are unhealthy. It should be made clear that in a fictional world of a book, things like a morally dubious relationship can end up feeling romantic bc it is fantasy and written in a fictional lens. Like I think it’s fine to write a romanticization of a fantastical problematic relationship- it just must be made clear that this is bad in the real world. Honestly this book would be preferable as a fanfiction-type story because it could be tagged with trigger warnings (and the fact that this was actually published gives it a sense of authority that could be dangerous for actually condoning colonizer/colonized romance). As a YA book… the author should be prepared to face lots of criticism as she wasn’t clear on her stance

I would recommend people to try Ken Liu’s books and short stories instead. He writes about imperialism, Asian culture, and the immigrant experience so evocatively and respectfully. “The Paper Menagerie” is a story about a kid who is ashamed of his Chinese culture due to racism and loses connection with his loving mom bc of it… it’s so moving, I still remember it and tear up. “The Man Who Ended History” still traumatizes me to this day.

"So that is their meet cute..." LOL!!! That's exactly the moment I decided I did not like the book. There's no recovering from what he did to her. I could never understand her attraction to him throughout the book. After reading the NetGalley arc I cancelled my preorder. I agree with every point you made. I was excited for this one but it was just not good.

How do you "almost kill" someone? Is she killing someone by draining their life force or by causing actual medical bodily harm? I have so many questions about her power... If it's the latter, she can just burst a critical vessel in the brains of her enemies and let the nature of brain trauma take its course. She might not kill them instantly but they will die soon and it's hard to repair in some regions. I bet if she practiced this properly, she can minimize the energy put into it so she isn't risking her life by a lot I feel like I became too grown up to enjoy stories without being very critical about them

"i would start wars for her" bro you're basically halfway there already when you got hidden human experiments under the land that YOU occupied😭😭

the way i dodged a bullet i almost bought this yesterday

The author probably should have shown the build to the characters Stockholm Syndrome, at least that's what it kind of sounds like she has in the book to me. This does not sound like a romance of any kind, maybe she should have said dark romance at the least, so the twisted relationship would not be as shocking. I think I'll skip this one. It doesn't seem like my style.

My jaw dropped at unit 731

This book was a hot mess from start to finish 🥴

UNIT 731???????? IN A ROMANCE NOVEL??????????