Jade City by Fonda Lee

Published 2017 · 560 pages · 166,583 words · about 12 hours at an average pace · Fantasy

How hard is Jade City to read?

Jade City scores 55 out of 100 for difficulty on ReadingRate, making it quite demanding. The score is a weighted composite of nine measures: four of how hard the prose is to parse, five of how hard the meaning is to extract.

Vocabulary: 68 out of 100
The text introduces a rich lexicon of specialized terms unique to its fantasy world, such as 'Green Bone,' 'Pillar,' 'Horn,' 'Fist,' 'Lantern Man,' 'aisho,' and various jade abilities like 'Steel' and 'Lightness.' While the general prose is accessible, readers must actively learn this extensive new vocabulary to navigate the narrative.
Sentence structure: 58 out of 100
Sentences are generally well-structured and clear, avoiding excessive nesting or convoluted phrasing. However, the text frequently employs compound and complex sentences to convey detailed descriptions and intricate character thoughts, maintaining a moderate level of grammatical demand.
Abstraction: 72 out of 100
Beyond its concrete narrative of clan politics and action, the book delves into significant philosophical and ethical themes, particularly concerning power, tradition, identity, and the controversial drug SN1. The Deitist interlude and characters' internal debates on 'gold and jade' or the nature of Green Bone strength elevate the content beyond simple adventure.
Information density: 78 out of 100
The narrative is packed with intricate world-building, introducing a complex clan hierarchy, political organizations, a unique magic system, and a detailed history. Multiple character perspectives and concurrent plotlines, from street-level crime to high-stakes political maneuvering, demand sustained attention to track the numerous concepts and relationships.
Narrative indirection: 40 out of 100
The narrative is generally direct, explicitly stating character thoughts, motivations, and emotional states, such as Bero's desire for jade or Shae's poignant mix of emotions upon returning home. While the concept of 'jade aura' requires some inference, its effects are clearly described, making the core narrative easy to follow. This directness positions it closer to books like '1984' than highly indirect works like 'Finnegans Wake'.
Symbolic density: 60 out of 100
Symbolism is central to the world of Jade City, with jade itself representing power, inheritance, and danger, often explicitly discussed by characters like Hilo. The city of Janloon and its historical context also carry symbolic weight, but these meanings are generally clear and integrated into the narrative rather than being deeply obscure. The 'Gold and jade, never together' idiom is explained, similar to how symbols are presented in 'To Kill a Mockingbird', though more pervasive.
Ironic distance: 30 out of 100
The narrative maintains a largely earnest tone, presenting character perspectives and flaws directly rather than through a significant ironic gap between what is said and what is meant. While characters have biases and the text offers insights into their self-deception, there is no pervasive satire or unreliable narration that would require constant recalibration from the reader. This direct engagement is akin to books like 'It Ends with Us'.
Resolution withholding: 70 out of 100
As the beginning of a series, the excerpt deliberately withholds resolution for its major conflicts, such as the escalating tensions between the No Peak and Mountain clans, and Lan's internal struggles with his family. The final chapter ends on a significant cliffhanger with Hilo's attack, leaving crucial plot points and character arcs wide open. This resistance to closure is more pronounced than 'The Great Gatsby' but less existentially ambiguous than 'The Crying of Lot 49'.
Structural complexity: 45 out of 100
The novel employs multiple third-person limited perspectives, shifting between characters like Bero, Hilo, Lan, Anden, and Shae, with each chapter clearly marking these changes. While there are occasional, brief flashbacks that provide context, they are well-integrated and do not disrupt the overall linear chronology. The 'First Interlude' is a distinct mythic break, but it's a contained element rather than a formal experiment, making the structure more complex than a linear romance but less fragmented than 'Flights'.

How Jade City is regarded

Jade City holds a literary regard score of 38 out of 100, weighing its place in the canon, its critical reception, its influence on other writers, and the standing of its author. Regard is measured separately from difficulty: a demanding book is not necessarily an admired one.

Prizes

Where Jade City sits in Northrop Frye's Anatomy of Criticism

Placed by a full reading of the text (318 passages), not from reputation. Each verdict quotes the passage that earned it. On the axis from myth to irony, Jade City scores 42 out of 100. A second mythos, romance, pulls at it with a weight of 0.3. About the map of stories.

Mode: High Mimetic
His Steel splintered, but it did not break.
Symbol: Formal
The air was warm and heavy with fumes, the sweetness of overripe fruit, and the stink of nine hundred thousand perspiring inhabitants.
Mythos: Tragedy iv (tragedy iv)
Then the more obvious explanation struck him: the injection of SN1 he’d taken a few minutes ago.
Genre: Novel + Romance
Lantern Men were jadeless civilians after all; they were part of the clan and crucial to its workings, but they would not die for it.

Where the story of Jade City takes place

  • Janloon, Kekon: a mid-20th-century Asian port metropolis, summer to the following spring, the main setting
  • Kekon's wartime jungle resistance against Shotarian occupation (remembered)

6 things that are true of Jade City, with the passage for each

  1. Bero and Sampa, the first-chapter jade thieves, are both sixteen years old.

    Bero and Sampa were sixteen years old, and after three weeks of planning, they had decided that tonight would change their lives.

  2. Hilo is twenty-seven at the opening and recalls when cars and televisions were new.

    Hilo was twenty-seven years old, but even he remembered a time when cars and televisions were a new thing in Janloon.

  3. The Kekonese idiom "gold and jade" refers to greed and overreach.

    “Gold and jade” was a Kekonese idiom that referred to greed and excess.

  4. Lan kills the Mountain's Second Fist Gam Oben in a duel before the Factory.

    Lan sunk his blade into the man’s side like it was a block of soft bean curd.

  5. Lan realizes on the boardwalk that his full SN1 dose is what is wrecking him.

    Then the more obvious explanation struck him: the injection of SN1 he’d taken a few minutes ago.

  6. At graduation Anden refuses his jade.

    I don’t want to wear jade.

Scenes in Jade City that Frye would name

58 sightings of Frye's terms in the text. The strongest:

Pathos, untitled
He pitched over, and when he hit the water, it was such an instant cold and silent relief that he didn’t struggle when the silence closed over his head. Lan's drowning is the central death scene.
Agon, untitled
Then he turned and faced Gam and touched the flat of his blade to his forehead in salute. The formal clean-blade duel between Lan and Gam is a ritual agon.
Hamartia, untitled
Lan slid the needle into his vein and emptied the contents of the syringe into his arm. Lan's fatal misstep: using shine to carry won jade and mis-dosing.
Sparagmos, untitled
Both of his arms were missing, chopped off, the stumps at the shoulders cauterized. Gont dismembers Eiten and sends him back alive as a message.
Anagnorisis, untitled
So Ayt had been telling the truth. No Green Bone would’ve left jade on the body of a slain foe. Shae recognizes that Lan's death was no enemy kill, and the plot pivots.
Agon, untitled
Hilo fought as if he didn’t even have a knife. Hilo's sacrificial combat against the Mountain's chosen fighters.

Books that share these scenes with Jade City

About the author

Fonda Lee