I just finished reading Jade War, by Fonda Lee, sequel to Jade City. If I’d realized that Jade City had a sequel already out when I read it, I’d have definitely read it then, because this series is fantastic.
Once again we’re brought back to the island of Kekon, where clans of warriors with superpowers granted by magic rocks are feuding over the future of their nation in the midst of a cold-war-ish conflict between two superpowers who are both desperate to get their hands on the aforementioned magic rocks. This book covers about four years of time, during which we see assassinations, economic maneuvering, friends made and lovers betrayed, and a whole lot of tragedy.
I love these books, I really do. I love the setting, I love the culture clashes, I love the magic, I love the opposing forces of modern technology and magic honor-based martial arts societies.
I do have a bit of a problem with some of the characters, though. Especially Hilo, the hot-tempered clan leader now aging and maturing into someone more sensible. Over the course of the novel he does a few things, driven by the honor culture of the Green Bone clans, that I consider to be unforgivable. One scene especially, in which he murders a woman who has left the clan and doesn’t want her son to be pulled back in, hits especially hard. This is a person who fled the country, and was living a typically middle-class existence somewhere else, and her violent homeland reached out and killed her, exactly as she’d feared. It’s like something out of a horror movie.
The rest of the book puts Hilo and the other characters around him through some absolutely brutal trauma. This is not one for the faint of heart, or for people who like unequivocally happy endings. This is a story about vengeance, violent justice, and ironclad rules of honor. It’s got blood on its sleeve and green in its bones, and you will not escape unscathed.