Scan barcode
A review by anneklein
Jade City by Fonda Lee
3.0
I really wanted to love this, but the execution of the plot and overall flow of the book let me down so much. I could barely push through the first half of the book, and the second half didn't really build up as much as it should have, so I found myself
Onto the negatives first: the pace of the book was too slow at first, too confusing from the halfway point onward. The book itself could have done with shedding at least 150 pages. It feels like Lee isn't sure whether to fully go all out with her action scenes and so she holds back, then gives you a lot of plot advance, then holds back again. In addition, there is no clear arc to the story, no climax the plot builds towards. It reads like a series of action scene after politically tense scene after action scene after political scene, etc. There is no clear physical goal for anyone at any point, or at least not that I could figure out, and so the whole experience of reading Jade City was for me like stumbling in the dark, not knowing exactly why this scene follows the previous one. The obstacles don't add up, some concerns for the characters disappear and we seem to leave them behind without further explanation... if there was one, I probably missed it among the huge quantity of information we are given at every page.
Which leads me to the exposition problems: the worldbuilding details were fascinating and coherent, but the way they were integrated with the flow of the story was way too clunky for my liking. Additionally, the writing itself made the reading process slower: everything had to be qualified with at least two adjectives, and the sentences were so long that I couldn't follow. Maybe it was a lack of intellectual comprehension on my part, but I felt the same way I feel every time I read academic articles that are too pretentious for their own good.
All of these negatives knocked the book down to 2 stars, but I decided to add an extra star to it because I think Fonda Lee excels at character development in Jade City. All the characters felt very real, never archetypal or black-and-white. They all had real motivations that justified their reactions to events, and you couldn't help but root for them and simultaneously get mad at them. They were real people, and the way Lee captured the moments of interaction between them, and the family relationships within the Kaul family particularly, was striking. I grew to adore most of the characters, though my favourite from start to end was Hilo.
Furthermore, the other (obvious) strong point of this book is its worldbuilding. You can tell Lee has done piles and piles of research for this book, and the setting is absolutely tangible, the atmosphere palpable. By the end of the book, I felt like I could travel over to Kekon and give myself a tour of the city. Everything was so cohesive, and even the three interludes where we are told mythological tales were welcomed. I think it's fairly difficult to nail the energy of an urban fantasy story, especially when it's not set in our immediate real world. It either feels way too much like traditional fantasy, and you lose any sort of similarity with our 21st century, or it becomes dystopian sci-fi. Fonda Lee's world felt like it could be coexisting with our reality, right now. And I adored that.
I think that Fonda Lee's writing could be really well suited to stories of lower stakes. My problems with Jade City, in a way, boil down to her execution of plot not matching the high stakes of the concept she wants to tell. However, she seems to capture human emotion to this very precise and awesome extent, and her strongest points are the dynamics between people, so I would like to see her write some literary fiction, maybe. Or low-stakes fantasy! I always think there needs to be more of that.
Onto the negatives first: the pace of the book was too slow at first, too confusing from the halfway point onward. The book itself could have done with shedding at least 150 pages. It feels like Lee isn't sure whether to fully go all out with her action scenes and so she holds back, then gives you a lot of plot advance, then holds back again. In addition, there is no clear arc to the story, no climax the plot builds towards. It reads like a series of action scene after politically tense scene after action scene after political scene, etc. There is no clear physical goal for anyone at any point, or at least not that I could figure out, and so the whole experience of reading Jade City was for me like stumbling in the dark, not knowing exactly why this scene follows the previous one. The obstacles don't add up, some concerns for the characters disappear and we seem to leave them behind without further explanation... if there was one, I probably missed it among the huge quantity of information we are given at every page.
Which leads me to the exposition problems: the worldbuilding details were fascinating and coherent, but the way they were integrated with the flow of the story was way too clunky for my liking. Additionally, the writing itself made the reading process slower: everything had to be qualified with at least two adjectives, and the sentences were so long that I couldn't follow. Maybe it was a lack of intellectual comprehension on my part, but I felt the same way I feel every time I read academic articles that are too pretentious for their own good.
All of these negatives knocked the book down to 2 stars, but I decided to add an extra star to it because I think Fonda Lee excels at character development in Jade City. All the characters felt very real, never archetypal or black-and-white. They all had real motivations that justified their reactions to events, and you couldn't help but root for them and simultaneously get mad at them. They were real people, and the way Lee captured the moments of interaction between them, and the family relationships within the Kaul family particularly, was striking. I grew to adore most of the characters, though my favourite from start to end was Hilo.
Furthermore, the other (obvious) strong point of this book is its worldbuilding. You can tell Lee has done piles and piles of research for this book, and the setting is absolutely tangible, the atmosphere palpable. By the end of the book, I felt like I could travel over to Kekon and give myself a tour of the city. Everything was so cohesive, and even the three interludes where we are told mythological tales were welcomed. I think it's fairly difficult to nail the energy of an urban fantasy story, especially when it's not set in our immediate real world. It either feels way too much like traditional fantasy, and you lose any sort of similarity with our 21st century, or it becomes dystopian sci-fi. Fonda Lee's world felt like it could be coexisting with our reality, right now. And I adored that.
I think that Fonda Lee's writing could be really well suited to stories of lower stakes. My problems with Jade City, in a way, boil down to her execution of plot not matching the high stakes of the concept she wants to tell. However, she seems to capture human emotion to this very precise and awesome extent, and her strongest points are the dynamics between people, so I would like to see her write some literary fiction, maybe. Or low-stakes fantasy! I always think there needs to be more of that.