Jade City
Jade City by Fonda Lee
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Jade City was hard to rate so I rated it up because I thought it was very well written. However, it was not a story for me if that makes sense. It is a fantasy piece true, but at its heart it is both a family drama and its basically a Mafia story. I told this to a good friend who laughed and laughed. She knows I dislike both tropes. If I hadn’t been reading this for a challenge I might have donated the book without finishing. I did finish it but I’m not likely to continue the series because its just not a me sort of story (but it’s very well written as I said so I would recommend it to others who like those tropes).
In Kekon, Jade gives native Kekonese magical powers (deflection including that of bullets for example) unless they’re born as ‘stone-eyes’ who have a genetic mutation that bars them from using Jade. For non-Kekonese Jade causes addiction and the Itches (a very painful, usually fatal condition) and it can cause that in Kekonese if they are sensitive. Other countries want to use the Jade and to that end someone has come up with Shine, a drug that might allow it. (tech level in this is hard to nail down. The 60s or 70s I guess)
Our main players are Lan the Pillar (the leader) his younger brother, Hilo the Horn (the protector), Shae their sister who gave up her jade and went to be educated against the family’s wishes in another country, Anden, their mix-race cousin whose still in school learning to use jade, their grandfather, the former Pillar who is now suffering dementia and his Weatherman, Doru (a position of running the businesses). So, like the mob they collect tribute in order to protect the normal folk from other clans.
But someone is trying to take out all the clans and be sole leader of the Jade trade. Jadeless street thugs further complicate things. Shae finds herself drawn back into the family business. Lan, Hilo and Anden find themselves in places they don’t want to be.
And that’s about all I can say without spoiling any of the rich complexities of the story (some 500 pages of it) there are many more characters than mentioned and some of the story has its roots in the past when their grandfather was young, at war and the clans were built to save the country. It is a good story but just not one for me.
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