Friends of Immersive Fantasy - Readers Club for the World of Ylécium discussion

We gave ourselves a critical reading challenge and picked Jade City by Fonda Lee.

In a few weeks, Autumn and I will release a podcast episode (search for 'Am Writing Fantasy' in your podcast app) where we analyze this book.

As stated in the topic line, I'm currently halfway through and I must say that I like it so far.

Loads of interesting worldbuilding in this story, but if you're reading along, or already read Jade City, I'm curious to hear what your thoughts are? What is good? What is bad?

We might take your input onboard and discuss during the podcast episode.

I'm about half-way through too. My thoughts so far is that Fonda Lee's prose is wonderful. She definitely has a gift for crafting sentences that evoke feeling, emotion, and paint a picture. The story itself, however is not really doing it for me. Maybe its that I'm not into "organized crime/mafia" type stories. I'm also having trouble with the world building. I feel like she could have done so much more. Here we have a very-earth like world with technology straight out of the late seventies, early 80s. They have cars, they have guns, they have landline phones. Their vocabulary is completely from modern times. Lee basically took the idea of the jade-based magic system and shoved into a culture of oriental gangs from the 70s. But I think if a culture had such a magic system for many centuries it would have drastically filtered all areas of history and industry in such away that the world would be a very different place. How would jade have affected the countless wars over the centuries. How would it have affected the world governments? How would it have affected technology? She doesn't really answer those questions.
That's where I'm at now.

Steven wrote: "I'm about half-way through too. My thoughts so far is that Fonda Lee's prose is wonderful. She definitely has a gift for crafting sentences that evoke feeling, emotion, and paint a picture. The sto..."

Yes. You're making some very good points there, Steven.

I quite like the worldbuilding and can definitely tell that she has spend time on developing it.

On a nation level though, I could also see a country with Jade would be in a position to take over others, however, one could also argue it no different than a nation with nuclear weapons and one without. In our world, having nuclear weapons doesn't mean you conquer everyone else, although, it would definitely - as you say - affect the wars.

Interesting. On to reading (our in my case, listening to the audio book).

I guess its a preference thing. I like my world building immersive and expansive. Maybe not quite on a "butterfly affect" scale, but just as you said, "I could also see a country with Jade would be in a position to take over others." What is to prevent these jade-enhanced super powered beings from taking over the world. We know many are unscrupulous and ruthless. What holds them in check? I can't see equating their power to that of nukes. Most countries have a system of checks and balances in place to launch those nukes. And if they do, they are very much aware of the destruction and loss of life that would cause. To push that button would be a very difficult decision. An Army of Greenbones could cause a lot of death, but it could easily be controlled, calculated and minimized to the point in which a government could easily be taking over. Send a Commando Team of Greenbones on a stealth mission to cease control of a nations government. What would the world have been like if Greenbones existed during WWI and WWI? Lets look at it from a corporate or industrial perspective. How would jade change that? What would prevent Greenbones from taking over corporations? I know... its very nit-picky. I do have a tendency to be too critical.
The other issue I have with the book is that the story seems slow... I'd probably have put this book down by now, but I'm pressing on because I love the idea of writers taking a critical eyes to analyze successful books. I'm thankful to you and Autumn for putting this together.