Jade City by Fonda Lee Book Review

Jade City by Fonda Lee is the first book in an adult fantasy trilogy that is Asian inspired by and is following primarily three adult siblings within a crime mafia-type family 

this book was our household book club pick for march so this video might be going up before or after the live show 

but if you want more in-depth thoughts and that's already up I will leave that on the screen so first off we talk about the world-building this is like I said an Asian inspired fantasy setting 

I would say that this is light on the fantasy though because the only magical element thus far is that jade is the stone that imbues magical abilities to people 

It is very similar to like the metals in Mistborn for example with like the things people can do when they have jade on their person and they're a green bone 

which is a person that can use jade without having many negative side effects although they still have to be a little bit careful about it so they can go faster

they can be more strong they can deflect things like that and the people who are green bones are the ones that are in these clan families which are these like 

crime families that are a part of this island that is taking place on and i would say the feelings of that like crime family setting this city 

that is run by crime families and like the jade and stuff like that was pretty easy and easily fleshed out I would say the main part of this book is actually the characters 

so as far as the characters I liked our characters but I wouldn't say i necessarily fell in love with them in the way that I was expecting there are three main ones that we follow 

I guess maybe four and they each are coming at sort of jade and their responsibilities and things within the family from a different place and this book is primarily setting up all the character stuff, to be honest, there is some world-building stuff 

yes but this is mostly setting up the characters the character interactions the history of all the characters the different relationships and things that are all being set up 

So that we understand all the dynamics and political machinations for the rest of the series so because this is much slower than I was expecting it to be and like 

I said because I wasn't completely enamored with the characters right off the bat I like them but I don't love them 

this didn't grip me in the same way that i was expecting it to and because of that our plot is mostly just setting up all these character interactions the political machinations 

how this system works to understand how the warring families could potentially be a problem i will say as far as like antagonists and stuff

i would say the antagonists are the ones that i find the most interesting and i'm interested to see how that gets developed our main characters that we're following many of them are like quite impulsive in a way that 

i kind of like i love an impulsive main character but i would say that the just conniving of some of the antagonists makes them like very worthy opponents 

i do love a series that does that well there are also parts about the end that set up some interesting conflicts even like within the family and things that i think will play out in an intriguing way 

if you're looking for something that is um higher fantasy or more complex fantasy this isn't that if you are looking for like a maybe a good introduction to something that has slight fantasy elements 

but not a ton if you like more of the like political machinations and a slower book i think you would like this i am interested to hear if you've read this series and what you think of it 

if you think that the other books get better because i have heard that i do feel a little bit not tricked but like no one has said a bad thing about this series to me and not that 

this book was bad it wasn't it was just way more set up than i was expecting without having any warning from other reviews i have like never heard anything about the entire series is amazing not like oh the first book's 

a little slow but the next two are really worth it so i went into this with different expectations than what i got still decent i still plan on continuing with the series 

but i'm not in as much of a rush as i thought it was going to be gave this solid three stars it's well written it's not a bad book.

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