Jade City

Some months ago I read the first few pages of [b:Foul Lady Fortune 57190453 Foul Lady Fortune (Foul Lady Fortune, #1) Chloe Gong https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1642713157l/57190453.SY75.jpg 89504589] and I realised that I didn't like it. THIS was what I expected it to be. Jade City has such atmosphere. Mafia stories are extremely easy to mess up. You can go way too romanticised or you can go too bleak and needlessly violent. Both makes the characters unrealistic; no perfect little cinnamon bun will also make people sleep with fishes, but also a mindless killing machine will never be the biggest force and base of a working criminal enterprise. Here we have the Kaul family, war hero granddad and his three grown grandchildren who form the leadership of the No Peak gang of superpowered people, who can use jade to give themselves abilities. (Then there is their young adopted cousin, not quite ready for a life like this. He is a cinnamon bun, but that's his point, so there is that.) Don't get me wrong, they are likeable characters; they have nice moments, they bond, they can be incredibly brave and noble. But when the middle one, Hilo, snaps... HE SNAPS. They are all capable of being cruel and calculating. You can buy them having dimension, their dilemmas feel hard. The grandfather is hardly ever around, but he is very interesting. The nation's hero from a time of foreign occupation. Now here he is, unable to connect with his grandkids. Nobody measures up, but he himself is slowly dying and losing what made him special. Is he angry with his own mortality? Is he truly dissatisfied with his family? He was made for and in a completely different world, the one he can't let go. He is insanely cruel. Is that his mind just going? Or was he always like that, because it was needed during wartime? So much of this book is about that. The perception and the reality, the characters using that distinction to work politics. The difference between the measured Lan, who is liked, but provokes no passion, as opposed to Hilo, who is passionate and dangerously hot-headed, yet incredibly charismatic. What will work in the end? Does it matter? Then there is Shae, who is trying to do something completely different, yet having to realise that maybe she doesn't even have an option, parallelled by Anden, who is coming from the outside, trying to get in. And this powerful family's story is framed by something very little. Someone little, doing something petty. In the story it's often mentioned that lanternmen (civilian supporters of the gangs) were the most important during the war and even for the working of the gangs, which makes it extra ironic that the events were started by one of those civilians. A lot of the story is based on those clever little twists. The lore is a lot. A lot of language, the way they use suffixes and the different forms of people's names. The different words they use for the internal structures of the gangs. The history, religion, culture. Now that was one of my worries. Will it make sense? And it did. I never felt like Lee added any of that just to pad things and make things feel more. It's all enough. It's all needed, it all adds up. The way the island of Kekon is described is so atmospheric. I have never even been to Asia (just you wait!), but everything felt so cinematic. The little shops and restaurants, the way they have temples next to gambling dens. So amazing, it truly feels like a city in transition. I think Shae's chapters bring out a lot of it, because she spends a good part of the book walking around like a normal person. (I don't even think Lee intentionally made it “food porn”, but mentions of food made me hungry. Weird.) A lot of the book is progress. We have a culture that is between modern and traditional. They are over a war, but not yet at peace. They have something specific to them, jade, which they have kept for themselves, but now they are staring to open up to the world. All the characters' individual stories are about transformation as well, though I wouldn't want to spoil them. That said, I don't feel there are such big plot twists. The events are on a trajectory towards... well, absolute chaos and it's exceptionally done, but I don't think this book hinges on surprising you with the absolutely unexpected. I personally don't need those, though. In my opinion just riding things out is much better than some so-so twist. I will go there and say it, I didn't need the sex scenes. I don't care about romance much and I usually just skim sex scenes, so there is that. They weren't overwhelming, I just didn't expect them. At this point, I have to read the rest. I have my doubts about a happy ending being possible, but I want to keep my hopes high. DEFINITELY recommending this to others.