A review by crothe77
Of Jade and Dragons by Amber Chen

medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix

5.0

 

I received an ARC from the publisher in exchange for an honest review 

Of Jade and Dragons by Amber Chen is a YA third person-POV fantasy retelling of Mulan. When Ying’s father is murdered, she heads to the Engineers Guild to not only pursue his murderer, but also to become an engineer. Women are not allowed into the Guild, so Ying disguises herself as a young man while she grows closer to the beile, a prince of the High Command, Ye-yang.

The worldbuilding was a blending of steampunk and Ancient China, allowing the story to explore inventions and mechanical parts while those same inventions are informed by the world around them. There's a mysterious country with green-eyed people who brought some of the ideas to Ying’s country, but people like her father have made those inventions their own and found ways to improve upon them.

I really liked that the story was about a young woman pursuing invention and being an engineer. We always need more women in STEAM and engineering still seems quite male-dominated. The guild tests reminded me a bit of the tests engineers need to take in order to get a license to practice.

Ying spends the majority of her time among her cohort of engineering hopefuls, getting to them and learning bits and pieces about her father from their conversations. Ying was aware of her father's brilliance as an engineer, but not that he was almost the guild master before he returned to his rural home. Recontextualizing a parent after they pass is never easy, but I felt that seeing Ying struggle with learning just how involved her father was in certain things and what he was involved in was realistic and added a sense of complexity to her character arc.

I would recommend this to fans of fantasy retellings of Mulan, readers looking for stories about invention in a fantasy world, and those who want a YA Asian fantasy with a slower pacing.