Review of Jade City by Fonda Lee

Fantasy (or perhaps just me?) is always looking for the next fresh thing—story which combines the familiar and the innovative in engaging fashion. Tell us the story we've heard a thousands times but do it in a way that we don't realize it. Perhaps Fonda Lee's 2017 Jade City has done it?

Jade City is, at its heart, a conception of an urban world where Asian mafiosos rule and jade is their Dune-esque drug of power—both in terms of money and granting super powers. Like The Godfather, it makes organized crime cool but does so from a distinctly Oriental perspective—more yakuza than any Italian mafia one can name. It's Hong Kong and Tokyo, not Sicily or NYC.

Jade City is not centered on one gang. Lee spreads the love across several rivals, all vying for power. And the characters Lee chooses from each to represent are archetypal in nature. The hot-blooded thug who thinks he's the best. The woman with martial prowess who wants to keep out of family business but gets drawn in. The young man forced to choose sides. The ruthless gang leader. The good guy among the bad guys. And on and on. Most of the time, the characters feel more like action figures bouncing around on the screen than human.

So what makes this book potentially worth reading? For most readers it's likely the colorful world and the action figures. Where Dune has spice, Jade City has jade, a substance that the weak want to get power and the powerful want to control to maintain power. Consumed, it gives people incredible martial skills—something quite useful in a street fight with rival gangs. But stand too close to the fire and you get burned; people who consume too much jade become sick, even going mad. This fantasy world, combined with the nice pace and patina of neon colors certainly attract the eye.

Perhaps the other thing bringing readers in is cadence. Jade City has verve. It plows ahead like a sports car, a speed so good in fact it keeps the sequence of cheap/classic scenes (depending your view) from becoming too cheap/classic. The novel simply cannot be said to drag.

All this being said, Jade City is one of those novels which motivates me to finally write that blog post I've been meaning to write for years about how “adult fiction” doesn't by default mean “mature fiction”. Throbbing penises and f-bombs don't necessarily equal 18+. Jade City is one such novel. There are gratuitous sex scenes, childish romance, bullies, melodrama, innumerable Jackie Chan action sequences, revenge, and the like, all presented in prose which doesn't interest itself much in subtleties. The book is not smutty, but a cheap R-rated Hollywood movie or a Hong Kong action flick would be a good analog.

In the end, Jade City is an 80s movie in book form. Everything overt, from dialogue to relationships, action to plotting, the reader can feel the mullets and lycra. Yakuza with magic, the mafia story of rival gangs and romance will be of interest to readers looking for an entertaining beach read, but lack maturity for readers looking for something with substance between the lines.