Jade City
by Fonda Lee.
2017.

I regret that I’m late to this party; by the time I get around to writing a review of this book, it’s already snagged a Nebula nomination for Best Novel and a Locus Award nomination for Best Fantasy Novel, so it’s well past the time I can claim to have “discovered” it. I was sold on Fonda Lee’s writing by Exo, so when Jade City came out, I read it right away, but I had to think about it for a while before I felt ready to write about it. This is a book that invites thought.

Jade City brings to mind classic Bruce Lee martial arts films, but with jade magic substituted for conventional martial arts. It’s set in an imagined world drawn from our East Asia. The island of Kekon won its independence a generation earlier with the help of Green Bones, Kekonese warriors who have mastered the art of magical combat using power drawn from the jade they wear. Today, the same clans that secured Kekon’s freedom act as underworld crime families. They battle for control of the districts of Janloon, the capital (and titular “Jade City”), policing the streets, expanding their own interests, claiming stakes in local businesses, and helping friends of the clan while fighting off attempts by other clans to expand their own influence in the same way. Kekon might be Taiwan. Or Japan. Or the Philippines. Janloon might be Tokyo. Or Hong Kong. Or Singapore. The technology of this world seems to be 1970-ish. There are cars and air conditioning and television, but no sign of computers or mobile phones. Maybe that’s why my mind keeps going to Bruce Lee films.

I have to say that I’m probably not the ideal person to comment on this book. I was never able to get into martial arts films. (Even though my family is part Asian, and it’s not like no one’s ever tried!) So I approached Jade City with some doubts about whether someone like me could enjoy this book. I’m happy to report that those doubts were groundless. Fonda Lee has built a living, breathing world populated with a cast of varied characters struggling to maintain their positions as the ultimate conflict—between Janloon’s two most powerful clans—threatens to tear their world apart. There are young people learning to become adults, adults learning how to lead, and elders struggling to let go. Here you will find warriors wielding jade magic to defend their way of life, lovers finding, or rediscovering, their passions, and secrets everywhere, waiting to be unraveled. There is Lan, the leader of the clan, an able administrator, but perhaps not the right person to lead his clan into war. There is his brother Hilo, skilled in jade combat but hot-headed and too easily provoked. And their sister Shae, who walked away from the clan but now finds herself returning in her family’s time of need.

I particularly liked Lee’s use of linked points of view to introduce the large cast of characters she’s created. We meet a teenage criminal in the first chapter, he meets the character who becomes the POV character in the second chapter, who meets another POV character, and so on. It’s an effective way to ease the reader into this world without overwhelming. Jade City tells a sprawling story with many engaging characters, each trying to make her or his way through a world suddenly off balance and changing in unpredictable and dangerous ways. That’s a circumstance we call all identify with.

Jade City isn’t like anything you’ve read before, and even if you’re like me, and martial arts films aren’t your thing, its characters and world will keep you reading and will stay with you a long time after you’ve finished.