Of Jade and Dragons

Of Jade and Dragons by Amber Chen★☆☆☆☆   1.5/5—ARC received on NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.I convinced myself to finish this book by repeating to myself that this is an YA novel, and somehow that sort of managed to make the journey a bit more bearable. But upon speaking to a friend, there's no reason why I should set my expectations so low. I've read many beautifully written YA novels with incredible depth. Unfortunately, Of Jade and Dragons is not one of them. Apart from the incredibly juvenile prose, the pacing was inconsistent and the world-building lacking. For a plot that incorporated warring political landscape and a war between two nations, I knew next to nothing about the world. Or even the setting, for that matter - for me, the story suffered from severe white room syndrome.I am conflicted about Ying as a character. She had a lot of potential marred by questionable character depth. There was no depth to her grief after she witnesses her father's murder. She dives straight into revenge, traversing to a city as a simple country girl that's never known more - yet has no issues navigating away around the fast-paced world. Her father's death was only ever used to move proceeding plot points when convenient, and then abruptly forgotten when not. The book needed to take a firmer direction between Ying's dream to become the first female guild master or uncovering the secrets of her father's death.Something that really irked be was her jumping straight into suspecting Gerel as her father's murderer. I appreciate Ying trying to figure out her father's murderer, but to jump at Gerel being the culprit due to former animosity with her father just didn't make sense when in consideration of the motives. This is consistent with her actions throughout the book - she never thought twice about anything, and instead just enacts the very first idea that comes into her mind. I don't even really have anything to say regarding the side characters, because they were barely developed. If anything, I would say Ye-Kan was my favourite character in the story.The only saving grace was the last 20% of the book, where I felt the plot finally picked up and unveiled something interesting. I will give kudos to a rather good foreshadowing. However, it would have been more impactful had the pacing not been so horrendous. What could have been a bittersweet ending was marred by the lack of development of plot points and a lack of commitment between Ying's revenge or her goal as guild master.

Rating Description:

1.0 - DNF/Despise

1.5 - Almost DNFed and wish I had

2.0 - Almost DNFed but had redeeming qualities/just boring

2.5 - Alright with lots of notes

3.0 - Alright with notes but I'm not raving about it

3.5 - Technically good but I'm not raving about it

4.0 - Technically good, and/or I enjoyed it a lot

4.5 - Loved it, I wanted to highlight lines in the book but still with notes

5.0 - Loved it, I wanted to highlight lines in the book, and notes are very positive

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This was another book I almost DNFed. Why? Because I was well into the middle of the book and I still could not get myself to care about the protagonist or any of the characters.

The summary of the book basically said that Ying went off to the capital to find out why her father was murdered. Uh, we all kind of find out why at chapter 1. The author may not think so but I do. The real question was who was behind the whole thing.

Given how Ying was supposed to be finding out who was behind her father’s murder, there was very little investigating. Sure, she found stuff but it wasn’t because she was intentionally looking for it. For goodness sake, the three 12 yr. old kids in Harry Potter did more investigating than this 18 yr. old. And she didn’t even have to contend with professors or a custodian roaming about the halls looking to give demerits to students. She could have done a lot more which makes me think that she wasn’t all that invested in solving her father’s murder. It came off as if she was more invested in getting into the Guild than finding the real culprit.

But even if she was, I still couldn’t get behind her actions. She wasn’t like Bruce Wayne who was left with no family to care for them, except Alfred. She had a family who probably needed her. You know, since their dad died. The whole thing came off as self serving. Which I could have gotten behind if they were more afront with it. Blind revenge-seeking rage is understandable. What Ying had was…not that.

And Ying had weird reactions to things in certain instances.

1. A person is missing from the assembly, Ying was immediately suspicious. It’s the 1st assembly and she doesn’t even know how things work in the Guild. There was no basis for it.

2. A person said something off putting to her benefactor and she was “seething” even when she basically had the same thought as that person.

3. Then she goes on blaming another person for being complicit in her father’s death. In reality that person was as guilty in her father’s death as Martha Wayne was in her and her husband’s death. How dare Martha wear a necklace that caused the mugger to rob and kill them. Yes, I am still going with the Batman references.

Other issues I had with this book were some word/phrase choices that just took me out of the setting because they were so out of place. Below is the list.

- parked (should have used the word “dock”)

- baby’s got an engine issue (sounds modern)

- scrap piece (scrap and piece are the same)

- cute (sounds modern)

- Bullshit! (sounds modern)

- Kid (sounds modern)

- rosary (sounds Western in an East Asian setting)

- restaurants (sounds modern)

- gang (sounds modern)

- tick off (sounds modern given its usage)

- bored (sounds modern)

What saved this book from becoming a 1 star were the flashbacks of her father. Those actually softened my perception of Ying. Whenever those come in, I could understand why she started this whole thing. Another thing that saved it was the ending. Possibly an unpopular opinion but I appreciated the ending given what happened in the plot.

So, was this downright awful? No. Would I recommend it? If the person was young and getting into fantasy, sure.