Reviews tagging 'Death'

Jade City by Fonda Lee

247 reviews

athnyx230's review

5.0

challenging tense medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Drug abuse, Drug use, Violence

Minor: Colonisation

carla20's review against another edition

4.5

adventurous dark tense medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

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I’m not the biggest fantasy reader, but this was amazing. The world building was so vivid and easy to digest, it never felt info-dumpy. I’m very much looking forward to the rest of the trilogy. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Addiction, Body horror, Cursing, Death, Drug abuse, Drug use, Gore, Gun violence, Violence, Blood, Grief, Murder, War, Injury/Injury detail

Minor: Self harm, Sexual content, Dementia, Schizophrenia/Psychosis

bergha1998's review against another edition

3.0

adventurous dark emotional tense medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

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I think this was another book I went into knowing too little about. I knew it was a mafia story set in Asia, and that was about it. I erroneously thought there would be more romance or more female characters, unfortunately I was wrong on both counts. Overall, I just found it to be very dry, and the expositions went on for ages. 

Fantasy/Historical, Mafia, 1 🔥

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Addiction, Body horror, Chronic illness, Cursing, Death, Drug use, Gore, Gun violence, Torture, Violence, Blood, Kidnapping, Grief, Death of parent, Murder, Alcohol, Colonisation, Injury/Injury detail

Minor: Sexual content

daydream_e's review against another edition

4.75

adventurous dark tense medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

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Amazing characters who are deeply flawed and yet so easy to care about. Excellent portrayal of civil war and the complexities of post-colonial development, as well as international politics - I’m  considering recommending this to my undergraduate comparative politics students as an enjoyable way to consider how natural resources, colonial history, corruption and crime, and international politics interact. Particularly given the author has no academic history/polisci background, it’s incredibly impressive that she was able to create a fictional world with such realistic politics, and it speaks to what must be an incredible grasp of colonial and post-colonial Asian history. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Addiction, Death, Drug use, Gun violence, Torture, Violence, Grief, Murder, Injury/Injury detail

Moderate: Chronic illness, Gore, Mental illness, Misogyny, Racism, Sexism, Suicide, Xenophobia, Dementia, Suicide attempt, Death of parent, Colonisation, War

Minor: Homophobia

Racism, xenophobia, war, and colonization are within the context of a fictional country with obvious real world analogues, but not one-to-one with real life events. Mental illness and drug use/addiction are also within the context of a fictional drug. Violence and injury is often very explicit - think hard R rated action movie - but not dwelled on excessively. Grief is a major theme throughout the book for many characters BIG SPOILER:

including the death of a POV character

tacoshark's review against another edition

3.5

dark tense medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: No

Diverse cast of characters: Complicated

Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

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I’m still deciding how I feel about this, I think. There were aspects I liked a lot - the world-building is very strong and the plot was well-constructed and relatively well-paced. Mostly I just didn’t really fall in love with any of the characters, so it made it a bit hard for me to really connect to and care much about any of the action. (The character I found the most interesting, uh, didn’t last long.) The ending set up a potentially intriguing next part, but I’m not all that sure I need or want to spend more time in this world. Urban fantasy is not really my thing, and this was sort of urban/gangland fantasy, which I think is maybe even more not my thing. I might return to this eventually but it certainly won’t be right away. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Violence, Death of parent, War

kirstym25's review against another edition

5.0

adventurous emotional medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Violence, Murder

Moderate: Addiction, Drug use

xoconnellevx's review against another edition

4.5

adventurous dark emotional tense medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

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If you're thinking of reading this book: do it!

The characters and the world felt alive right from the very beginning. Fonda is incredible at crafting characters that feel as though they are living and breathing. 

Athough time was taken to get the major plot points moving, it still didn't feel tiresome to read; the vast majority of chapters felt neccessary.

I had so much fun reading and I understood every character motivation fully; even of I didn't agree with it.

Definitely will be finishing the series and I'm excited to see what's to come!

<Spoilers Below>





My only major critique, I would have loved to spend more time fleshing out Lan as a character, seeing as he death didn't seem to impact me as much as it did shock me. I felt pity for the Shae/Hilo/Andy losing Lan but not for losing Lan as a character. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Body horror, Death, Mental illness, Violence, Blood, Murder

Minor: Death of parent

kathyy's review against another edition

4.25

dark tense fast-paced

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Gore, Violence

Minor: Sexual assault, Sexual harassment

dailbrae's review against another edition

3.0

adventurous dark emotional sad tense slow-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: No

Diverse cast of characters: Complicated

Flaws of characters a main focus: No

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Addiction, Death, Drug abuse, Drug use, Violence, Blood, Murder, War

Moderate: Sexual content, Grief, Alcohol, Injury/Injury detail

lisafer's review against another edition

5.0

adventurous dark emotional funny medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Drug use, Gun violence, Suicide, Violence, Xenophobia, Blood, Grief, Murder