Table of Contents
Preamble
Jade City continues the trend of me reading books that have been in my to-be-read pile for years. I don’t remember when I first heard about Jade City but I am pretty sure I heard it through Mint and the book has been in my to-be-read pile ever since. This is my first time reading anything by Fonda Lee.
This was another library hold and I was pretty excited to see this particular book arrive because I have been looking forward to reading it due to the very interesting premise. Asian inspired fantasy revolving around rival clans battling it out in a city with the fantasy powers granted by jade? Sounds right up my alley.
Let’s get into it.
The Book
Jade City like many other fantasy novels, opens with maps of the fantasy world of the book. Normally, I don’t pay much attention to these maps as I find them to be extraneous worldbuilding flavour that usually ends up feeling disconnected from the story. Unlike those novels, Jade City does a good job of making such worldbuilding actually matter to my understanding of the world.
Right from the very beginning, I got the sense that this book is going to be grittier than fantasy novels I’ve read before. The author does a fantastic job with setting the scene – we’ve got a gritty fantasy set in a city with two rival clans battling each other for territory and I could visualize the city and its vibes very well.
The fantasy element in this book is limited to the use jade which gives these so-called Green Bone clan members supernatural abilities. This is more a crime family drama with a sprinkling of fantasy. I think it works quite well, I enjoyed the family drama combined with high stakes action. It reminded me of a couple video games – Yakuza 0 and Sleeping Dogs but with a bit of magic in the mix.
The use of jade requires eight years of training and is divided up into six disciplines – Strength, Steel, Perception, Lightness, Deflection, and Channeling. The fight scenes in this book make use of all of these disciplines without them getting overly convoluted; they are easy to understand. The fight scenes weren’t drawn out either, they never over stayed their welcome. More fight scenes in books should be like the ones in this book.
I love the cast of characters in this book. From the hot headed Kaul Hilo, to the even keeled Kaul Lanshinwan, the smart Kaul Shaelinsan, to the antagonistic and cunning Ayt Mada – they are all interesting complex characters in their own right. We don’t get much of Mada in this book which makes me want to read the rest of the trilogy to find out more about here. Even minor characters like Bero, the jade thief from the beginning of the book plays a small but crucial part in the overarching narrative.
Jade City is the first fantasy book I’ve read where I genuinely felt like I was in a movie, the book felt cinematic in the way the characters talked to each other, the way scenes played out, the way the fights happened, the talk of honor and family – all of it felt straight out of a action movie. The back of the book has a blurb from Ken Liu comparing this book to the best classic Hong Kong gangster films. I haven’t seen any of those films but that seems like an apt comparison.
Conclusions
I very much enjoyed reading Jade City. It was a thrilling action packed read with a gritty dynamic world with interesting characters and a easy to understand magic system in a high stakes cinematic world. I think Jade City goes on my list of books of the year for this year alongside other fantasy favourites like Blood Over Bright Haven.
This is the first book in a finished trilogy and I very much want to read the next two books in the series and see where the story goes. I think I’ll save the rest of the trilogy for the end of the year as a little reward for me when I’ve reached my reading goal for the year (52 books). Thank you to Mint for the recommendation!
That’s all from me this time around, see y’all in the next post!
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