Jade City

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Jade City has been recommended to me a million times over by a bunch of different people. Friends, people who follow my reviews, and my husband all have suggested I give Jade City a read. Most people (husband not included) have raved and raved about this book, saying it's one of the best books they've ever read, that it's one of their favorites, that its extremely unique and well written, etc, etc. You get the picture.

Jade City did not live up to the hype for me. Don't get me wrong – I enjoyed it! It was still fun to read, and at no point did I consider DNFing it. It just wasn't as good as everyone says it is. The writing was just okay for me, especially in the first half of the book. Until one HUGE PLOT POINT happens, it's kind of almost boring. But after that middle point, things take off rather rapidly.

Jade City is a mob book – there's two gangster Clans on the island of Kekon who basically control the island. The No Peak clan (the ‘good' guys) and the Mountain clan. These two clans have heightened abilities because they wear Jade – think extra strength, can make their skin super tough, can jump further, etc. The entire book reminded me so so much of the HBO show, Warrior. Anyway the main plot of the novel is that the two clans are fighting for control over the island, and over the supply of jade. This book is VIOLENT. Extremely so – people die very, very frequently, some on page and some off.

The characters don't have a huge amount of development throughout the novel. At no point do you really get a feel for any of them – no deep dives, no ‘seeing inside their mind' sort of thing. There's at least two explicit sex scenes, but they're so clinically written that the scenes had no romance at all in them. I wish Fonda Lee had taken the time to dive into the characters a little more.

I'll keep reading this series, because I'm interested to see where it ends up, but so far The Green Bone Saga is just okay in my eyes.