Jade City Review
As much as I enjoy Lord of the Rings, I think it did a number on the fantasy genre for decades. His take on elves, dwarves, and orcs was so iconic that variations of them just seemed to repeat over and over again until there wasn’t much space for different kinds of worlds. Only now, decades later, are we seeing non-western inspired fantasy worlds taking off, and it’s incredibly refreshing to fall into them.
One of my obsessions this summer was The Green Bone Trilogy by Fonda Lee, which begins with Jade City. This is a world similar to our own after World War 2, primarily set in the island nation of Kekon (which is reminiscent of Hong Kong.) The political powers of the world are recognizably similar to the ones you recognize from history class, but there’s one major historical difference: Jade imparts Kekonese citizens with mystic powers like strength, speed, and ESP.
At first glance, that doesn’t feel like enough worldbuilding to support a trilogy, but it turns out to be more than enough. While magic jade is at the heart of the fiction, the genre is really a fantasy-family-gangster saga, like The Godfather if Michael Corleone settled problems with martial arts duels.
If THAT doesn’t have your attention, this may not be the series for you, but I absolutely loved it. The No Peak clan run by the Kaul family faces off against their rivals, the Mountain clan in both battle and business. There’s a wide cast of characters, each connected to the clan rivalry in some way. Watching these characters scheme and compromise and collide makes for a fantastic, surprisingly speedy 600 page novel.
To name a few of those wonderful characters, you have the Kaul siblings: Lan, Hilo, and Shae, the leader, muscle, and prodigal daughter of the clan, respectively. You have Anden, their mixed-race adoptive cousin who never quite feels like he belongs. You have the leader of the Mountain, Ayt Madashi, one of the most effective female antagonists I’ve seen in years. And in between these characters you have the regular people of Kekon clawing for their shot at what the Kauls have: thieves like Bero and smugglers like Mudt.
My only quibble with this book was hearing the phrase “Jade aura” so often it was a little distracting, but that gets pretty easy to forgive when the action takes off. This is a tightly-paced, genre-crossover hit. 5 moonblades out of 5.