Review: Ciudad de jade

Ciudad de jade by Fonda Lee
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

2.75/3★
This is gonna be messy. I even have notes, so buckle up. Also, I've heard that the second book gets better, so I'm holding up to that.

I was so excited, the hype had been built up, and my friends (TY SO MUCH ILY GUYS) got me a copy, so I binged it during the spring holidays. I also want to talk about the things I enjoyed first, so here we go:

The setting was a big 10/10, a retro asian city, the ambience was well built, and the world-building, dare I say, was the main focus of the whole book. I really got to like Wen and Shae, and I'm waiting to see where Anden is headed. I'm very into Wen's role in the clan and Shae's journey. I also liked Lan a lot, until yk. The jade system is pretty interesting, too.

Unfortunately, I had an issue with the emotional rollercoaster. Usually, for a twist to hit me, it needs a build, a moment of processing, and then a swift downfall, with the repercussions to follow. In this book, it felt like the twists were so fast it just left me rereading what happen, for then to have 4 pages of someone's internal dialogue breaking down the events (I feel is a recurring thing on this book, telling us the stuff that characters are going through, rather than making them do something to show us, with its exceptions), wich made me be uninterest by the time the twist is over. I feel that if the book were to be a bit shorter and more visual, I would have connected more to the characters. Also i wanted to see more thought on why these people are so loyal to the clan. Sometimes it felt too... impersonal, and plot-dragged. Maybe just me.

A separate issue I had was the tone. Mind you, I read it in Spanish, so some of these complaints are for the author and others to the translator, but I feel I need to address them. I'm not sure who to blame, but I can count on one hand how many moments had the tone appropriate for the situation (overly colloquial and gangster-y in some situations, too serious and literary in others). The author takes her sweet time, pages and pages, explaining things that happened off-camera (and politics, felt like watching a political debate on TV, but that was actually necessary for context). To the translator, at least to the one of this edition, apparently in Spain two publishing houses bought the book, and I'm not sure if they have different translations. Has he ever heard how people use curse words and how colloquial speech works? ¿Quién en su sano juicio traduce cualquier insulto a "follaperros/follacerdos"? Dialogue felt forced at times, and my head kept trying to figure out what the original wording was. Cursing bothered me so much, I wanted to translate it myself lol. Unrelated and no one's fault, but Hilo's and Anden's names are actual words in Spanish (meaning thread and "so they walk") and when I was very sleepy reading, my head didn't register them as characters hehe.

I'm a bit conflicted on when to continue this saga. If the second one picks up and gets as good as people say, then sign me up, I'm actually excited to see the legacy and family grow. If it's another chunk of 600 pages when it could have been cut to 400, then I'm hesitant.

Tracks I played while reading: lots of movies, lots of sci-fi soundtracks and drank a lot of tea at night to get me through it.

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