Jade War

I needed a bit of time to think about my reason why I liked this book less than I did the first one.

The setting is still full of colour and atmosphere. The action is still fun and well-choreographed. There is still politics.

But the relationships are not fleshed out enough. Sure, the characters are great (mostly, I am looking at you, Anden), their voices are different and unique enough so their individual chapters feel different. Yet somehow we are being told about their connections more than we see them. This story, the history of Kekon is FULL of epic friendships, there are betrayals, there are romances and we see nothing.
Don't get me wrong, we see impactful moments between people, that are either pivotal or the climax of a long-standing thing. But they never have a proper buildup. We are told about Hilo and Wen's love. We are told about Papi having a crush on Shae. We are told about Shae and Wen being allies. And yet, it is always just certain moments. Nothing subtle in scenes where that isn't the main focus. Anden is especially guilty of that; can the boy actually have meaningful scene with someone who isn't either family or his crush?

What we don't get with the relationships, we do with the politics and world-building. I remember being like 11 and first reading Harry Potter 4 and realising the magical world is much bigger than I thought. This had the same moment, to a lesser extent.
We see people dealing with jade and the culture around jade in different countries, both Kekonese and foreign. It's well-defined from the start what we have on Kekon, how gangs work, the moral attitudes around owning jade, using it, how jade warriors handle conflicts both with each other and the jadeless. But what happens with this powerful tool in cultures where it doesn't have a cultural and religious significance?
I think Fonda Lee does this well; she handles times of change excellently.

The pacing can be just a bit jarring, there are timeskips that feel a bit too much like “yeah, I didn't feel like dealing with this”.
It brings up an interesting thought. Somehow I think I am more comfortable with longer urban fantasy series. It should on paper be easier to do build lore when it's based on more familiar things, but this is set in a fictional place. Plus, it has so many complex elements. So I am kind of assuming it would have profited from more books.
Not like I am trying to tell anyone to give themselves the responsibility of writing a gazillion books over the decades, but the pacing would have profited from a different format, maybe more, shorter books.

I still appreciate a lot of this, but this book was weaker, compared to the (surprise) excellence of the first one.