Jade City

“Expectations are a funny thing. When you’re born with them, you resent them, fight against them. When you’ve never been given any, you feel the lack of them your whole life.”

4/5⭐

Exactly what you want when reaching for a fantasy book.

Jade City tells the story of two warring family clans on an island centered on jade—a powerful and dangerous resource. It takes inspiration from gangster movies, epic fantasy, and martial arts.

Urban, modern fantasy is not something I have read much of, and it took a little getting used to. At first, I was worried I wouldn’t feel the same immersive escapism that classic epic fantasy provides, where the magical world comes to life and seems to jump from the page.

Luckily, the skillful worldbuilding put my worries to rest. The world is as rich, interesting, and immersive as any classic fantasy book.

In terms of story, a few of the plotlines were predictable (I won’t spoil which character specifically, but if you’ve read it you know), but others genuinely surprised me.

Overall, it strikes a good balance between meeting expectations and subverting them.

I love fantasy stories for their worldbuilding—which I’ve already touched on. Their interesting magic systems—which this book knocks out of the park. And for their epic final battles—which this book let me down on slightly.

It was an exciting finale, undoubtedly, but it didn’t have the grand scale I was hoping for. Maybe I’m asking too much for book 1 of a trilogy; I am sure the following books (which only grow in Goodreads ratings) will provide the epic scale this book was lacking.

All in all, Jade City is an entertaining fantasy book with unique style that remains comfortably within genre expectations.

Underline-worthy quotes:

“All he knew now was that remorse had a natural limit. After a certain amount of time, it finished eating a person hollow and had to alchemize into anger that could be turned outward lest it consume its host entirely”