A review by hoytreads
Jade City by Fonda Lee

adventurous tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

Complex, sometimes brutal mafia story with magic. And a random spicy scene at the beginning. This was a super-hyped book, beloved by the SFF booktube community, which always makes me worry that I won't give it a proper chance, but I did enjoy this one. Certainly enough to keep going with the series. The world created here is very interesting: an insular island nation, 25 years after a war that liberated them from an imperial power, now being ruled in essence by a couple of mafia-style clans. Everyone has modern technology (cars, phones, guns, but no computers), but also there is the complication of magic jade stones that can give the right people powers. There are a lot of characters to keep track of, which unfortunately means that we don't really go super in depth with many of them. In particular, we don't get to learn too much about the villains of the story, which would have helped me get a bit more into it. The overall pacing is a tad slow, but kind of necessary due to the scope of the story and all of the characters. But then when the action scenes happen, they are crazy fast, and very well written (would be amazing to see as a movie or TV show). Definitely looking forward to seeing how the story progresses in part two...