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A review by laelyn
Jade Fire Gold by June CL Tan
4.0
This was such an amazing read! "Jade Fire Gold" is an epic, exciting novel, filled to the brim with interesting lore and complex characters.
The prose is beautiful, the world building detailed and lush. It paints a vivid world that you can really see in your mind, that comes to life so easily and naturally. It's a light read, easy to follow yet at times beautifully lyrical. The story is fast-paced, sometimes even a little too much so. It definitely makes for a quick and absorbing read that I had a hard time putting down. There's a lot of action and intrigue that never gets boring. Yet despite of all that action, Tan takes her time to develop her protagonists and allows us to really get to know them intimately. And oh, Ahn and Altan are amazing main characters that I immediately fell in love with and their romance is beautifully slow-burn. While both, especially Ahn, suffer from the typical ya-style Chosen One trope, I actually think it was very well done in this particular book. They are complex, both with their own issues and flaws and strengths, and they exist as fully-formed characters outside of their romance, too. To be honest, while I loved the romance aspect of it, it was never at the forefront of either of their stories and it made me like them even more.
The side characters were intriguing and loveable too, though I felt like they were never entirely fleshed out. Which is part of my main (and really, only) issue with this awesome debut.
While "Jade Fire Gold" has all the ingredients of an absolutely epic masterpiece, it never really manages to flesh out all these concepts and ideas. The aforementioned side characters are only one example of this. While Tang Wei at least seems to be a fully formed character, I couldn't really tell you anything about her girlfriend, Linxi, beyond her role in the story and the fact that she is, well, Tang Wei's girlfriend. Leiye is probably the most interesting, most mysterious and as such most intriguing side character and the book keeps building up this mystery surrounding him, but in the end it falls flat. Tai Shun has serious Sunshine Baby Cinnamon Roll vibes but barely gets any screentime. The same lack of details haunts the relationships between these characters. We are told of the epic Altan / Leiye / Tai Shun friendship but there is very little of its impact actually being shown on the page beyond some lines at the end of the book that feel a little sudden because of the missing actual development of this relationship before. Ahn's friendship with Linxi is apparently a very deep one, but the story itself doesn't show any of it. There is a hint at something maybe-romantic-maybe-not between Tai Shun and Leiye that never gets resolved either. This wouldn't be an issue at all if this were part one of a series/duology/trilogy (and the ending definitely suggests there is more to come), but for all I know this is, so far, a standalone novel. The only friendship that actually felt like a real friendship was the one between Altan and Tang Wei, and boy do I love these two a LOT. Would I read an entire novel consisting only of their adventures together? The answer is YES and PLEASE.
But it's not just the characters and relationships, it's also the plot itself. There are multiple time jumps, most of them short-ish, that make sense at some points but feel absolutely rushed at other times. For example, when Ahn arrives at the emperor's palace she's being trained in using her magic for what feels like a long time, considering she can actually use her magic quite well come the next big plot point. All we get on page, though, is basically a "so then she's training every day" and suddenly she's done training and a skilled magic user. Her entire training arc is just glossed over. This kind of thing happens more than once.
The ending, or more like the final big fight, suffers from rather a similar problem. It feels rushed and is over so quickly and so easily that it just never manages to excite, to feel threatening, to emotionally grab the reader.
While this seems a lot of criticism, it basically boils down to one single problem: The details of the story, be it of the plot, the characters or the relationships, aren't fully fleshed out and thus remain superficial and kept me from fully engaging with the novel.
Still, there is so much incredible potential in the writing, the worldbuilding, the story, the characters that it kept me hooked all the way. And that epilogue? That epilogue made me SCREAM so here's hoping that this won't stay a standalone. I need more!
3,5 stars rounded up to 4 for this incredibly entertaining, beautiful read.
Many many thanks to Hodder & Stoughton and Netgalley for the arc!
The prose is beautiful, the world building detailed and lush. It paints a vivid world that you can really see in your mind, that comes to life so easily and naturally. It's a light read, easy to follow yet at times beautifully lyrical. The story is fast-paced, sometimes even a little too much so. It definitely makes for a quick and absorbing read that I had a hard time putting down. There's a lot of action and intrigue that never gets boring. Yet despite of all that action, Tan takes her time to develop her protagonists and allows us to really get to know them intimately. And oh, Ahn and Altan are amazing main characters that I immediately fell in love with and their romance is beautifully slow-burn. While both, especially Ahn, suffer from the typical ya-style Chosen One trope, I actually think it was very well done in this particular book. They are complex, both with their own issues and flaws and strengths, and they exist as fully-formed characters outside of their romance, too. To be honest, while I loved the romance aspect of it, it was never at the forefront of either of their stories and it made me like them even more.
The side characters were intriguing and loveable too, though I felt like they were never entirely fleshed out. Which is part of my main (and really, only) issue with this awesome debut.
While "Jade Fire Gold" has all the ingredients of an absolutely epic masterpiece, it never really manages to flesh out all these concepts and ideas. The aforementioned side characters are only one example of this. While Tang Wei at least seems to be a fully formed character, I couldn't really tell you anything about her girlfriend, Linxi, beyond her role in the story and the fact that she is, well, Tang Wei's girlfriend. Leiye is probably the most interesting, most mysterious and as such most intriguing side character and the book keeps building up this mystery surrounding him, but in the end it falls flat. Tai Shun has serious Sunshine Baby Cinnamon Roll vibes but barely gets any screentime. The same lack of details haunts the relationships between these characters. We are told of the epic Altan / Leiye / Tai Shun friendship but there is very little of its impact actually being shown on the page beyond some lines at the end of the book that feel a little sudden because of the missing actual development of this relationship before. Ahn's friendship with Linxi is apparently a very deep one, but the story itself doesn't show any of it. There is a hint at something maybe-romantic-maybe-not between Tai Shun and Leiye that never gets resolved either. This wouldn't be an issue at all if this were part one of a series/duology/trilogy (and the ending definitely suggests there is more to come), but for all I know this is, so far, a standalone novel. The only friendship that actually felt like a real friendship was the one between Altan and Tang Wei, and boy do I love these two a LOT. Would I read an entire novel consisting only of their adventures together? The answer is YES and PLEASE.
But it's not just the characters and relationships, it's also the plot itself. There are multiple time jumps, most of them short-ish, that make sense at some points but feel absolutely rushed at other times. For example, when Ahn arrives at the emperor's palace she's being trained in using her magic for what feels like a long time, considering she can actually use her magic quite well come the next big plot point. All we get on page, though, is basically a "so then she's training every day" and suddenly she's done training and a skilled magic user. Her entire training arc is just glossed over. This kind of thing happens more than once.
The ending, or more like the final big fight, suffers from rather a similar problem. It feels rushed and is over so quickly and so easily that it just never manages to excite, to feel threatening, to emotionally grab the reader.
While this seems a lot of criticism, it basically boils down to one single problem: The details of the story, be it of the plot, the characters or the relationships, aren't fully fleshed out and thus remain superficial and kept me from fully engaging with the novel.
Still, there is so much incredible potential in the writing, the worldbuilding, the story, the characters that it kept me hooked all the way. And that epilogue? That epilogue made me SCREAM so here's hoping that this won't stay a standalone. I need more!
3,5 stars rounded up to 4 for this incredibly entertaining, beautiful read.
Many many thanks to Hodder & Stoughton and Netgalley for the arc!