Book Review | Jade City by Fonda Lee
My first book review of 2022! Today, I’m talking about the first book in the Green Bone Saga: Jade City. This is a book I’ve been excited to read for quite a while. I often see it mentioned by people who enjoyed Evan Winter’s books, so I came in with the expectation that I’d enjoy it, too. This was a pretty quick read compared to most of the books I read last year—I think I had it finished in a little over ten hours—however, that’s not because of the length, but rather because of just how much I enjoyed it. This was a serious pageturner… but how does it stand up critically?
Summary
Jade City is an urban fantasy story. It’s hard to tell exactly what era it’s in, but I think it roughly equates to the 50 or 60s. It takes place in a large city that is divided between two clans: Mountain and No Peak. The two clans have peace treaties between one another and agreements with the city’s government in an effort to ensure that the city isn’t reduced to a bloody mess, as you’d expect from such powerful criminal organizations. There’s no point in ruling over a city that’s nothing but broken windows and dead commoners. However, this peace is tenuous, and it’s near its breaking point. The tensions between the Mountain clan and No Peak serve as one of the core plot threads, but this particular book is less about their conflict and more about the family that leads No Peak.
In my opinion, this book skews heavily on the family drama side and not so heavily on the fantasy or conflict side. I imagine that’s something that will change in the upcoming books. Jade City is really focused on developing the characters and the setting as opposed to progressing the story. Don’t get me wrong, there’s plenty of story progression, but this is definitely a book that is dedicated to setting up the larger story that takes place in the books that follow. This is effectively a thorough character introduction more than anything else, which is perfectly understandable for the first book in a series, just don’t expect the pacing to be all that rapid. Things unfold very gradually in this book.
Magic System
The core fantasy element of this world is jade. The book even clarifies that it’s a specific kind of jade, indicating that there are “lesser forms” of the mineral. This particular strain of jade grants a few useful abilities and enhancements to the individuals who hold them, but there are significant risks associated with the use of jade. This is established extraordinarily well, in my opinion. However, my big complaint is that while jade is so important to the story and is mentioned consistently, the powers of jade just weren’t showcased all that frequently. We rarely got to see it used, even though it appeared in just about every chapter. I felt like we were building up to some epic, insane battle that would really show us, in detail, what jade was capable of… but we never really got it. All of the combat sequences were over in a snap.
I’m mainly disappointed by this because I know that Fonda Lee is a martial artist herself, so I was hoping for some remarkable combat sequences that really showcased not only her own knowledge but how jade enhances that combat and makes it even more incredible. I’ve seen in interviews she’s done that she wanted jade to essentially be a rational explanation for the kind of crazy stuff you see in martial arts movies where people are basically floating through the air, doing numerous flips, sensing attacks before they happen, and more. That sounds really cool, but Jade City never showcased that very effectively, which was disappointing.
Because this is the focal component of this story that makes it a fantasy novel, I’d say that Jade City is light on fantasy. The elements are certainly there, but we don’t get to explore the magic system all that much in this book. I’m holding out hope that the powers granted by jade will play a more significant role in the coming books. I’d love to see some more detailed, thorough combat sequences or some other jade-enhanced encounters in the upcoming novels, which I’ll definitely be reading.
Characters
With the fantasy elements and criminal tensions being off to the side for much of the book, the reader’s focus is put on the characters and their relationships with one another. This is definitely Jade City’s strongest suit. Fonda Lee has written these characters and their interactions incredibly well. There is something to love and hate about every single one of our main characters. They were all very well-rounded, but you didn’t get a true sense of how much depth they each had until you got to experience multiple chapters featuring those characters, allowing you to see them from a variety of viewpoints. Fonda Lee uses the multiple viewpoints in her story to tremendous effect.
Her characters are all multi-dimensional, and we’re shown this quite effectively because we get to see them from multiple different perspectives. The leader of a gang will always be a different person in different situations and with different people. He’ll treat his lover, henchmen, grandfather, brother, and sister all differently. Each character has a great deal of depth and unique relationships with the other characters in the story. This makes them absolutely fascinating. They are, essentially, consistently inconsistent. The characters of Jade City are absolutely its strongest feature.
Writing
There are some strengths and weaknesses in the writing of this book, but I think that the weaknesses really just boil down to personal preference rather than actual flaws. I can see why Fonda Lee chooses to do some of the things she does, they just weren’t really to my taste. Specifically, there are parts of the books where there will be a sentence or two that feels largely unnecessary, which interrupts whatever is going on to establish some sort of history. Sometimes it’s the information we need, other times… it doesn’t really impact anything. Especially after finishing the book, I felt like I was given a lot of information that really didn’t matter by the time everything was done. Some of the characters we get a backstory for just weren’t relevant at all in this book. If they end up being relevant in the following books, receiving that backstory information in that book would be more important.
Again, this really just comes down to personal preference. Sometimes these interruptions may have just been for worldbuilding reinforcement, but most of the time I just felt like they were things that could have been cut entirely.
Rating
Let’s get to what you’re here for…my overall rating for Jade City. This book definitely feels like the first book in a series. That’s perfectly fine, though I personally prefer when the first book of a series also feels like a standalone (see the Mistborn trilogy). This doesn’t mean it’s not a good book, but it does mean that when I’m considering rating Jade City just based on its own merit, the rating isn’t really going to be as high as I feel the entire series might deserve. I’m stoked for the other two books in the series, so Jade City did its job with getting me excited, but as far as the book itself, I’ve been hovering between three and four stars for it. Just a reminder, three stars means average, which is not a bad rating.
After thinking about it for a while and ruminating over my experience with Jade City, I’ve settled on a three-star rating. I enjoyed it, but as a single reading experience, I feel like it was lacking in terms of the overall experience. I was really missing some of the fantasy elements that I had expected to see in this book. Maybe that was just a result of my own expectations, but ultimately this just didn’t quite hit for me in terms of a single book. I do have high expectations for Jade War, the second book. Its name alone implies that I might get exactly what I’m looking for from that book.
Conclusion
There you have it, my review for Jade City! I can’t wait to get started with Jade War and in fact, I’m going to start reading it shortly after I finish filming my review for this book, so stay tuned for my review of that book coming out pretty soon! I’m really excited because while Jade City was a bit of a miss for me in some aspects, the overall story that it’s setting up is thrilling and I can’t wait to see where it goes. I really hope that I get to see some cool uses of the magic system in the next book. Fingers crossed!
Thank you so much for taking the time to check out this review, I really appreciate your time! If you’d like to support me, the best way to do so right now is to check out my YouTube channel. You can also support me by following me on social media; I’m @TLBainter on most social media platforms and I’ll have links for those at the bottom of this post.
Until next time, bye!