Jade Legacy
Ratings193
Average rating4.6
hey fonda lee i got insurance but can you cover the copay on my next therapy meetings thanks
"We don't handle this world. We make it handle us."
This is a perfect story to me. There was a point during the previous book where the scope of this story started to worry me with how big things were getting. However, Fonda Lee not only squashed those worries but she knocked this out of the park. I don't think I could've asked for an ending better than this.
The clan is my blood, and the Pillar is its master. On my honor, my life, and my jade.
3.5/5 stars
I enjoyed the series immensely, but for me this was the weakest of the three books. The book ties up a lot of loose ends (all?), which it does well, but this made it feel unfocused to me. Many (all?) things do come together in the end for a satisfying ending, albeit a bit abrupt.
It felt like a long intense rollercoaster, but with many intermittent chain lifts that slowed the story down quite a bit.
Perfect. Loved it. Did everything I wanted to. The weight this series carries and how well Fonda Lee weaves her story arcs and characters is fantastic and top tier.
TITLE Jade Legacy
AUTHOR Fonda Lee
Genre Fantasy
—
Emotional Impact 8.25
Characters 9.5
Plot 8.75
Worldbuilding / Magic System 8.75
Dialogue / Prose 8.25
Official Rating 8.70
Goodreads Rating 5
Date Started 1/26/2024
Date Finished 2/2/2024
NOTES Pretty great ending to a great series, the scope is expanded even more than last book, and this time the timeframe of the series stretches across an entire lifespan which I loved, I thought it was so unique. The story is less about a single Kaul and more focused on the family and it's legacy
TITLE Jade Legacy
AUTHOR Fonda Lee
Genre Fantasy
—
Emotional Impact 8.25
Characters 9.5
Plot 8.75
Worldbuilding / Magic System 8.75
Dialogue / Prose 8.25
Official Rating 8.70
Goodreads Rating 5
Date Started 1/26/2024
Date Finished 2/2/2024
NOTES Pretty great ending to a great series, the scope is expanded even more than last book, and this time the timeframe of the series stretches across an entire lifespan which I loved, I thought it was so unique. The story is less about a single Kaul and more focused on the family and it's legacy
I thoroughly enjoyed this book, and the ending was truly terrific, making it one of the best series I've ever read. And to think that I came close to giving up on the series at the beginning of the second book... It's hard to fathom that I almost missed out on all of this. The emotional impact of the book hit me hard, and it felt like I experienced every conceivable emotion multiple times throughout the story. Interestingly, across the seven hundred pages of Jade Legacy and its numerous time jumps, I never once felt bored.
I'm way too overwhelmed by the scope of the series at the moment to write a coherent review. I must emphasize that the ending is incredibly satisfying and, dare I say, poetic. It ranks among the most gratifying conclusions I've ever read. I plan to revisit this series soon, appreciating it right from the start this time.
This series has an amazing concept. A crime family and their survival in a world where certain people get superpower if they have jade on them. Cool, hm? And it was!
Though some of the choices made my the author weren't my favourite. First, about the good things.
The lore of this is insane. All the things that happen will somehow make perfect sense. There is a lot and none of it is just added for extra padding, it all connects incredibly neatly. If anything, this could have been expanded into infinity. Which is exactly why I'm surprised it's just a trilogy. Granted, especially this last one is very very long, but at the same time, urban fantasy seems to have mostly long series with many books in them.
Like the world, the characters are great. This is a story where having multiple points of view is not only well done (they all sound separate, they all have their proper motivations and world views), but it's necessary. The politics of the world are so complicated, you can't cover all of it with just one person. Especially with such strong characterisation. The people never felt like they were acting out of character, which, to me, was especially great with Hilo. To me he started out as a charismatic popular dude who was just incredibly cool. Yet he is petty, moody, not always the nicest person and often short-sighted, but so easy to like. One of the best things about this was the way he was written, honestly.
The city of Janloon is a character in itself as well, it's development through the decades of the story.
Which also brings up my biggest issue with it. So many time skips. For the politics, it was necessarily to see through many decades; it's perfectly logical that these things happen slowly. No Peak makes a decision to do something thing, like invest in business in a different country. The results aren't seen in months; they will obviously need years to play out.
But also, the actual humans doing these things don't live in a world where time doesn't pass for them. Many of the important character developments happen off screen and they are glossed over. Maybe we see a tiny sliver of them, but then we get told real quick what happened in a marriage in 5 years. Hell, he get a brief introduction of one character with one of the old timers, then skip, we get told this person is in a years long relationship with another. Excuse me?? Am I supposed to CARE?
This is why a lot of stressful scenes are only meaningful when the few main characters are involved; I got told this new character is important, but the things that make them so were skipped.
Which is sad, because some of the big scenes we saw were absolutely great, like when Niko returns to go to Ru's funeral.
All in all, I did like the series. I enjoyed the story, I enjoyed most of the characters. The action was really nicely done, just like the politics. But I wish it would have been given more space. Selling a long series is probably hard, not sure if a publisher is willing to buy it, so it was possibly a sacrifice made for marketability, to be possibly for this story to be told at all. I don't know. But there was enough substance here to let it properly breathe and run its course.
It's a great series and an imperfect one and that's fine. I just wonder if, after this, the author will write something that is given enough room for her grand concepts and complicated storytelling.
Epic ending to an epic tale. Fantastic plot, breakneck speed...yet pauses long enough for you to catch your breath and look at the pieces on the chessboard. A masterpiece of organized crime drama, fantasy, and family.
Wow.
One of the best series I've ever read. Every character is amazing, cannot pick one. What a journey, very emotional and congrats to Fonda Lee on creating this epic.
An excellent finale to an incredible trilogy. Lee's worldbuilding, characters and plot are all top tier. Honestly the only complaint I have about this book is that it's the last Green Bone Saga book.
As you may know the events in this book cover a very long period of time, which I do feel I would also have enjoyed if they were spread out across multiple books instead of all in this one with so many time jumps.
But still, there's nothing wrong with this book at all. It's like finishing a lovely meal and then finding out that the restaurant is closing for good and mourning the future meals you wanted to eat.
Read the Green Bone Saga, I'm sure you won't regret it.
It has been a while since a book has been able to make me feel a range of emotions.
Jade Legacy is the final book in the Greenbone Saga by Fonda Lee. The previous two books have been absolutely stellar, with Jade War blowing the original out of the water, shocking everybody by not only dodging middle book syndrome, but surpassing the original book. So Jade Legacy had a lot to live up to, the pressure mounting with every day that passed. And I'm pleased to say that, not only did Fonda stick the landing, she once again surpassed the previous book.
Jade Legacy delivers on the promises of the series in ways that are both expected, and come out of left field. No character's conclusion feels wrong for them, each of them making it to a point that makes perfect sense, even when if it wasn't necessarily what I expected for them.
A big part of that in my opinion is the books really interesting structure. The previous books took place over the course of a year or two, whereas this one takes place over 20, with 4 major timeskips in it. I knew about this going, and was really dubious, since I haven't seen a lot of stories pull that off particularly well, but I can't see any other way for the story to have been told.
Due to this structure, this book is DENSE. Almost every chapter has some hard hitting moment, where a major event unfolds, or a character has everything come tumbling down around them. This should, by all rights, feel like there's just too much going on, but for some reason, I never felt like it was.
I think it has something to do with how the book is structured, since the time jumps, both big and small allow you to have a degree of separation from these events, whereas when you don't get the time jumps, such as with the bombs early on, the scenes feel much more intense, forcing you to deal with the event as it happens, instead of getting a play by play of the events after the fact.
Lee also continues to show her ability to deal with difficult issues with tact and grace in this book, and it's so good. She deals with disability, being a failure, turning into your parents, being scared of not living up to what came before and having your idyllic view of your parents shattered.
I was particularly impressed by how she handled Wen's recovery from her disability that she received at the end of Jade War. Wen was a character who I definitely enjoyed in previous entries, but Legacy elevated her to a whole new level for me, placing her firmly in my top 5 characters.
The world of the book has expanded massively, to the point where we now see every major country that's been mentioned in the past, and the effects of Jade on them all. Shotar in particular was one that I wasn't expecting to show up in the book, but I'm glad it did, since it definitely had the most interesting vibe out of all of them, especially considering the history that it shares with the main characters.
Lee still handles death in an expert way, rarely having it be this Hollywood-esque thing, where last words get exchanged, and one liners are shot out at the speed of light. Instead, death is a generally very quick and dirty affair, that has to be brushed past in the moment because of the dire stakes of the moment. None of them really hit the same as Lan's in the first book, but that's likely because of just how different his death was to traditional fantasy death.
Seeing how the culture of Janloon evolves was another highlight of the book. The Green Bone culture has just gotten more and more enticing as the series goes, being this neat amalgamation of Samurai honour codes, and Yakuza street rules. Watching that chafe against an ever expanding world is such a fascinating time, especially when you see how foreign Green Bones treat their culture, and doubly so when you see how foreigners use Jade as a tool, instead of a status symbol
Fonda's prose is as usual, pretty good, but nothing all that special. She doesn't really have any stylistic hallmarks, she just writes an engaging world that's rich with descriptions, and has tight dialogue. It's not quite as basic as early Sanderson, but it's certainly no Rothfuss either. It fits in a nice little spot where it just does the job really well.
Where her writing shines is in the distinctiveness of each PoVs voice. If Lee didn't tell you who's head you were in, you would likely still be able to work out, since each character has subtle differences to them that allow you to get a real feel for them, and even allows you to see inside their head when they aren't the PoV character, because you just know how they're going to react to the things that are going on around them.
All in all, I cannot recommend this book enough if you have any positive feelings towards the rest of the series. It sticks the landing in spectacular fashion, in a manner few veteran writers can manage, let alone a debut author. This was an absolute tome of a novel, that was such a page turner, I read it faster than most novellas. I'll be purchasing every Fonda Lee novel day one in the future.
3.5 stars
such a great ending. It was so fulfilling emotional and rewarding. The themes of family defining our identities and growing with us will stick with me for a while.
I think overall the series had such strong characters and strong arcs. But i think the politics and the worldbuilding kind of held the series back. All the locations that we visited in the series were so wonderfully built but there were so many more we barely touched and only heard about through politicking that it made me so much less invested in those sections.
Also while the character arcs were so rewarding, it felt like there was so much telling of the characters rather than showing. The transition from the first book's action packed gangster/clan warfare to a more strategic story that carried the same values and characters was really elegant but it led to some weaker development especially when we skipped around in time so much.
Jade Legacy is a great end to the Green Bone Saga.
One of my favorite aspects of the series and most of all this book, is how it maps on to world history, how Lee has crafted a story about national independence, shattering the yoke of neo-colonialism, and outmaneuvering one's enemies through every avenue (street warfare, government/politics, business ventures, public sentiments).
Any similarities to modern history are merely intriguing backdrops to the real story, they sit behind the saga of the Kaul family's long struggle to wrestle control of the destiny of Kekon away from a fated rival clan. As each individual fights their own unique battles, some dancing along a tight-rope of independence and duty, others fully committed to the clan above all, times passes and the world changes demanding much from all who would keep control of their nations precious resources, or protect their clans interests abroad in hostile countries.
This book balances its addicting characters, the overarching plot, its historical analogues, and political themes so well. And the long span of time covered allows you to see characters pass through different stages of life, it is both superbly fulfilling and melancholy. Jade Legacy was a joy, and at times a very sad read, it is a credit to Fonda Lee's mastery of her craft that those moments struck so hard, I will miss reading the Green Bone Saga, the Kauls, and the winding rivalry between the No-Peak Clan and the Mountain Clan.
5 Stars.
where do i start? where the fuck do i begin?
i'm so so happy that i found this series, because what would i have done without it. i feel like my mind, my life, my heart was empty before i read this and now i feel full, i feel complete, i feel whole again.
this saga broke me, patched me up and tore me apart all over again. i dont think i am ever going to find any other series similar to this, any other characters that will come close to the ones i've come to love and adore in this, or have similar story to what this saga had. to that one person who brought the name of the first book on my feed on twt thank you
5/5. in fact 10/5.
if there is one fantasy series i would get physical copies of and reread again and again, it would be this.
Fantastic end to the trilogy! This has become one of my favorite fantasy trilogies. I loved how the characters grew throughout the books. Anden and Wen are still my favorites.
This was the perfect ending to an incredible series. There were certain twists I saw coming but the execution still packed an emotional punch. I suspect I will love this series more upon reread.