shmadsie 's review for:

Of Jade and Dragons by Amber Chen

4.0

---

3.5. For me, it definitely had zero Mulan vibes - it had one similar plot point: girl dresses up as boy and that was it. Her love interest knew she was a girl the entire time, she dressed up to join an engineering guild not an army, there's no real defined enemy because it's all about whose side everyone is really on, the friend(s) she makes definitely are not well-defined and don't feel like important relationships (one exists because he's an important character to the story itself and the other... I couldn't tell you any more than his name), it's just.... not a retelling in any fashion. There is one plot point that is the same. One. And zero of the same vibes. So calling it a Mulan retelling really does a disservice to this book because it isn't and it can stand on its own without that as a 'hook.'

I probably would've rated this three stars for being entertaining and not much else but I really enjoyed that ending quite a bit. I'm honestly sad to see this is a series because it threatens to undo the thing I liked most about it but it doesn't have to so I'm gonna choose to live in hope.