Reviews tagging 'Mental illness'

Jade City by Fonda Lee

25 reviews

olympia98's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional reflective sad tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

Ottimo inizio.

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anni_swanilda's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional sad tense slow-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

5.0


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lonelylooper's review against another edition

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dark tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.0


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lunep's review against another edition

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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

5.0


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rnbhargava's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional funny hopeful inspiring mysterious reflective relaxing sad tense fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0


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daydream_e's review against another edition

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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

4.75

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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xoconnellevx's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes

4.5

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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luciguara's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional inspiring 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

4.5

no le doy 5 porque se me hizo un poquitin lento en algunas partes pero fue god y ademas siendo una trilogia siento q este primer libro puede ser muy buena base

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bibliomania_express's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional mysterious tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0


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sofiadanielle's review against another edition

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challenging tense slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes

3.75

I feel conflicted about my thoughts on the book now that I’m done.. The pacing was both slow and fast at the same time (as in, exceptionally slow with the politics, but equally fast when there was actual action happening.) I have to confess that politics like this, pertaining to the clans, was not at all interesting to me. 

As other reviews have stated, the strong point of the book is character interaction; I just feel that it was unfortunately drowned out by political plot that felt like trudging through mud for me.

Last 100 pages were the best part of the book for me, but that also means the previous ~400 pages seemed like a blur, not too memorable and feeling like the plot there could’ve been condensed. 

I do think I’m interested in finding out what happened to the characters in the next two novels, but since this book took me so long to get through, I don’t think I’ll be continuing the series. 

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