Of Jade and Dragons

Of Jade and Dragons by Amber Chen★☆☆☆☆   1.5/5—ARC received on NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.I convinced myself to finish this book by repeating to myself that this is an YA novel, and somehow that sort of managed to make the journey a bit more bearable. But upon speaking to a friend, there's no reason why I should set my expectations so low. I've read many beautifully written YA novels with incredible depth. Unfortunately, Of Jade and Dragons is not one of them. Apart from the incredibly juvenile prose, the pacing was inconsistent and the world-building lacking. For a plot that incorporated warring political landscape and a war between two nations, I knew next to nothing about the world. Or even the setting, for that matter - for me, the story suffered from severe white room syndrome.I am conflicted about Ying as a character. She had a lot of potential marred by questionable character depth. There was no depth to her grief after she witnesses her father's murder. She dives straight into revenge, traversing to a city as a simple country girl that's never known more - yet has no issues navigating away around the fast-paced world. Her father's death was only ever used to move proceeding plot points when convenient, and then abruptly forgotten when not. The book needed to take a firmer direction between Ying's dream to become the first female guild master or uncovering the secrets of her father's death.Something that really irked be was her jumping straight into suspecting Gerel as her father's murderer. I appreciate Ying trying to figure out her father's murderer, but to jump at Gerel being the culprit due to former animosity with her father just didn't make sense when in consideration of the motives. This is consistent with her actions throughout the book - she never thought twice about anything, and instead just enacts the very first idea that comes into her mind. I don't even really have anything to say regarding the side characters, because they were barely developed. If anything, I would say Ye-Kan was my favourite character in the story.The only saving grace was the last 20% of the book, where I felt the plot finally picked up and unveiled something interesting. I will give kudos to a rather good foreshadowing. However, it would have been more impactful had the pacing not been so horrendous. What could have been a bittersweet ending was marred by the lack of development of plot points and a lack of commitment between Ying's revenge or her goal as guild master.