Okay, so today i'm going to be reviewing Jade City by Fonda Lee. This is gonna be
a spoiler-free review. I'm gonna give you three pros and three cons about this book
so that you can decide if it's the right book for you. Quick description of it: This is urban
fantasy. It's set in a more modern time. There're airplanes, there're substations, there're cars.
It's fairly modern. Not fantasy i'm used to. It's a drug war between warring gangs,
clans, family groups. I did not know that go... i went into this book knowing almost
nothing about it other than some good friends of mine really really love it
and the setting does not appeal to me, but it did win me over. Okay. So this is a very character
focused story, a very slow build story and the magic system is all about this jade that you wear
that gives you... it enhances your abilities to put it really simply. Kind of "Mistborn-esque" but
very unique to this story. There are people that handle jade better. There are "stone eyes" that
can't use jade at all. There are people that have higher sensitivities to it and may be overwhelmed
by it more easily, but the real focus on this is on the families; the relationships
amongst each other and the decisions that they make to protect their clan. So my first "pro"
for this video is going to be: characters. One thing that Fonda Lee does incredibly is to create
morally gray characters. Go into this knowing that this is going to be... i'll say "light" grim dark.
If you're new to grim dark, if you're new to adult fantasy, if you're new to this genre as a whole,
i really think this is a great starting point. But know that these are morally grey characters. These
are not... we're not following the heroes. And she writes their moral greyness very well. They have
an a code of honor that they're very, that's very important to them...
usually. They have extremely strong familial ties that they would do anything for each other.
They have complex characters that don't fall into character tropes and that makes them,
very you might think you know where a character is going but the more you get to know the character,
the more you realize that you didn't know this character going into it. They're very unique to
themselves and they make decisions based off of who they are. For me that was easily the greatest
strength of this story, especially the dynamics amongst the characters. They're loyal to each
other, their loyalty to each other, their love for each other, the way they interacted with each
other was what ended up getting me interested in this book. The first "con" is going to be:
the beginning. The entire start of this of this novel did not work for me. So, i'm not a
big urban fantasy reader and i was surprised to get a more modern setting. I am not interested
in drug wars. It's not a plot line that appeals to me. I've never seen the Godfather, so uh the
inspiration of this type of story isn't something that i'm familiar with that i come to and say:
"Hey, i know this a little bit. Let's see how you subvert tropes." And it's it it's not a storyline
that appeals to me all that much. And the magic system was really really cool, but it's not
a massive focus of the story which is again, not the kind of thing that i'm used to in my
fantasy books. It just, all the things didn't set me up well. The other thing, too is that this is a
really political book and i actually really enjoy political driven stories, but i more prefer them
for a book two or a book three. The very beginning of book one was a tough sell for me because i am
such a character focused reader and there wasn't a huge amount of world to build. There wasn't,
she didn't put a huge emphasis on building and helping us to understand the magic right off and
so i didn't have characters, i didn't have world, i didn't have magic to latch onto and the general
premise didn't appeal to me. So all the political maneuvering, all the meetings and discussing where
we're gonna go and what we're gonna do... i didn't care. I just didn't care about the beginning of
this book and i really had to push through a good chunk of it. It wasn't until around chapter 20.
Around page 160... yeah around page 160 is when i finally got invested, which is a long
time. I did buddy read this over on my public server and a lot of us, i would say most of us
struggled with the beginning, so i'm not sure how many people feel this way about a slow beginning,
but i had to push myself to get to the good stuff. But that is my only real "con" in this video. So
while it's a big con, it's also the only one. So it was a great book. Basically what that con
boils down to is a whole lot of setup and build up without a lot for me to really get attached to
from the very start. If you're really into urban fantasy and you love political stuff right from
the start and you don't mind things taking a while to build, you will not have this issue. The next
"pro" is going to be: the fight scenes. So i'm not a reader that hones in on fight scenes that much.
They're really fun to read, but i don't really care if there's a lot of them or a few of them and
so i don't tend to talk about great or terrible fight scenes in my reviews. I will for this,
because Fonda Lee herself is a black belt and it shows. The fights in this book are so well written
and so engaging. They don't go on too long, they're not too short, they are exactly
how i want them to be. I'm always on the edge of my seat as i'm reading these fight scenes (which
i'll talk more about in the next pro) and you can tell that Fonda Lee knows what she's talking about
because they are written so engagingly. My next "pro" is: real stakes. I don't want to go into
spoilers here so i can't say too much, but there are very real stakes in this book. When characters
are in danger i believe you that they might die or get terribly wounded or the clan might
lose; i believe you. Fonda Lee proves to me very early on that she is going to be a bit of a brutal
writer and i love that. I love real stakes. I love when things are starting to happen to actually
feel anxiety and not think, "Eh. This author won't do anything drastic to these characters. They're
too precious to them." No. Fonda Lee is okay with hurting her darlings and it made this high-stakes,
brutal setting, brutal feud feel so much more thrilling, exciting, terrifying, gritty; dark. I
just realized that i got a little bit too excited probably because i didn't actually write notes for
this review (which i normally do) got a little bit too excited and i put two "pros" together,
so let's go ahead and end on the two "cons." The last two "cons" which is fine, because both of
them are barely "cons" at all. So one is going to be more for your benefit than mine and that's that
the magic system; there's not a huge emphasis on helping us to understand it in this book.
It is structured with solid rules and it's complex enough that it's really interesting to dig into
and it's really interesting to try to understand, but Fonda Lee, unlike most fantasy authors,
especially fantasy authors that have a hard magic system with rules and boundaries and clear
edges; she doesn't really try to make you understand the ins and outs of it. She gives you
the information you need and then she's done with you. And she doesn't do it in an info-dumpy way,
but the magic isn't... it, honestly, honestly jade is treated as a as a sense-enhancing drug and if
you had swapped jade with drugs, it would be the same story. It's it's barely magic, but it is...
and she treats it that way. It all makes sense and it all has boundaries, but she doesn't try to
make sure that you understand every single element of it. You can you can figure it out if you want
to, or you could not. And i actually think that works really really well for the setting she
established, for the world she created and for this more gritty, hard story that she's telling.
I thought it worked for this, but i'm putting it into the "cons" because i know that a lot of
big fantasy readers may not love that about this story. The last "con" i have
is that i did find some of the thing... i predicted a lot in this book, especially
pretty much all the major things that happen. Really early on i was like, "Oh, well this is
going to happen and then that's going to make this happen and then this is this is what's gonna..."
a lot of smaller details i didn't see coming which is awesome, but the big moments i did. It's in a
"con" because that's typically a con, but i don't actually consider it a con because even though i
saw these things coming i really enjoyed the way they played out. I loved the way Fonda Lee wrote
them and the emotional impact... oh my goodness! I told you that there were high stakes in one of my
"pros" but this belongs in a "pro" too. The emotional impact that Fonda Lee accomplished
when things did go poorly, when things didn't work out the way these characters wanted it to...
it didn't matter that i saw certain things coming because when they happened i felt the gut punch
that i needed to feel because i was so attached to these characters that seeing the fallout affected
me so personally. I'll also say this again. I buddy read this on the public Discord server. It's
linked in the description of this video, and most people didn't see these major plot points coming
so i don't necessarily think it's predictable, i just think that you can. You can predict it.
I'm giving Jade City 4 out of 5 stars. The reason it's a 4 instead of a 5 is specifically because
i thought that the beginning was really really difficult to push through and but once she once
she hooked me she had me so hard and i enjoyed reading this story so much, especially because of
the characters. She did such a phenomenal job of making me so invested in these characters lives
and even though the general setup of the story, the general plot that's driving this story isn't
something that really interests me all that much, because the characters were so real to
me and because the stakes were so high and because the emotions were so real, i fell in love with it.
And i think that's a massive accomplishment. To have so many things working against you for these
subjective things that it's just like, "I don't like this stuff." and still win the reader over...
that's incredible! A side note; if you're kind of becoming a prose snob like i've become,
um she does have very simple prose. Fonda Lee has, she's amazing at writing stakes, emotions,
characters, fight scenes. She's amazing at writing so many things, but as far as just her narrative
prose, it is very very simple, which i wanted a little bit more from that. But most people
will not nitpick prose, so it doesn't even belong in a "con." It's more like a side note. Anyway,
i loved this book. I do recommend this book very very much. If you're looking for a spoiler-filled
discussion, i'm gonna be reading Jade War with Michael Knipp. Hey, go check him out. He'll be
in the description. We buddy read this. We'll be buddy reading the sequel in December and then i'll
probably do a spoiler-filled discussion for the two books at once. This book will be linked in
the description. I highly recommend it. Check out my Patreon if you want to buddy read books with me
or the public server because we buddy read this one over there. Be sure to chat with me more about
this in the comments. I post videos every Tuesday through Friday. I'll see you guys again soon. Bye.