Absolutely fantastic conclusion to a great series. Fonda Lee has made this world and these characters come alive.

It’s been a while since I posted anything on the blog, I’ve been working insane hours and not feeling well for the past few weeks but I’m back in business. Even though I was really busy, I was reading pretty consistently (if slowly), and it took me nearly two weeks to finish Jade Legacy but it was an incredible journey and I’m glad I got to savor it.

It’s no secret that I love the Green Bone Saga, I’ve been recommending the series to all my fantasy-loving friends and it’s made a few appearances on the blog as well. The thing that I love about this series (besides the impeccable world building and the characters) is that every book raises the stakes and the scope of the story to a point that seems both natural and unimaginable given the scope of the previous book. Jade City takes place over a couple of months, Jade War takes place over a couple of years, and Jade Legacy takes place over a couple of decades. We go from focusing on the Kaul siblings and their mafia-esque lives in the city of Janloon, all the way to a multi-generational story that encompasses international politics, trade agreements, rebellion, kidnappings, murder plots, and more.

If you’ve read the first two books, you already know that Fonda Lee pulls no punches when it comes to our favorite characters. Bad things happen to good people, and sometimes you have to deal heartbreaking collateral damage even when you know you made the right choice for your family or those under your care. I really liked how Fonda Lee gave every single challenge enough time to linger and change the way characters think or interact with each other. Even though this book is action-packed, we really get to see the consequences and long-lasting emotional impact of all of it.

Another thing I really liked about this series is how strong the bond is between the Kaul siblings, their families, and their clan. They really will do anything to protect one another, and I admired the fierceness of their love for one another even when they didn’t always agree on things. It’s really interesting to see the difference in philosophy between Ayt Mada of the Mountain and the Kauls of No Peak Clan. Ayt Mada rules with an iron fist and a reputation for ruthlessness, and while Kaul Hilo also has a bloodthirsty reputation, he has something more that Ayt Mada will never truly have: the guidance and support of his family. Even though you really want to hate Ayt Mada, you can’t help but respect her, and even at times empathize with her and the tough choices she makes.

I cannot recommend this series enough! It’s a fantastic story, masterfully crafted with an incredibly satisfying conclusion.

A free ARC was provided by the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

Such a wonderful book!! I definitely cried at the end. I have adored these characters since the first book and it was such a delight to see their journey. I can’t wait to see what this author does next!

Jade Legacy is the fantastic conclusion to one of the best series I have ever read. The character development was absolutely incredible. The plot was the perfect amount of action, politics, and family relations. Fonda Lee has the ability to make you feel strong emotions for each of the characters, whether strong love or hate. This shows how strong of a writer she is. Fonda Lee will now be listed as an instant buy for any future books for me personally. Thank you Fonda for letting me escape into this masterly crafted world. I can't wait to reread it soon.

Thank you NetGalley and the publishers for this ARC in exchange for my honest review.

A satisfying ending to a action packed story. So happy that I read this series.

A fantastic ending to a fantastic trilogy. The complexity & grayness of the characters continued throughout, and I was continuously surprised by the choices made by everyone, in the best ways possible.

What an epic end of the Green Bone Saga. I was happily surprised when I got an ACR for Jade Legacy. I only learned about the Green Bone Saga about a year ago (shout out to Subtle Asian Book Club) and could not stop talking about the series to anyone and everyone. The mixture of fantasy and Asian culture in this series was a such perfection, and I wanted to share this beautiful series to everyone around me!

In Jade Legacy and the previous two books, there were lots of violence, love, loyalty, and honor. Throughout the book, I didn’t know where I was going to be at the end of it. I was anxious to find out what would happen to the Kaul family and Kekon. The rivalry between the No Peak clan and the Mountain clan and the political conflicts between Kekon and the neighboring countries… It was such a rollercoaster ride that made me keep picking up the book so I could read what will happen next.

I’m not sure what I was expecting at the end of the book, but it was exactly what I needed. There were many times I was thinking A will happen and ended up finding Z happened. I smiled and teared up throughout the book, and I cherished every words in the book. I love how Fonda Lee keeps you on your toes the entire ride of Jade Legacy. This was such an epic series that I’m going to keep close to my heart. I am thrilled for it to be made into a TV series!

Thank you to Netgalley and Orbit Books for giving me an ARC in exchange for my honest review.

A broad sweeping spectacular conclusion to the
gangster fantasy "The Green Bone Saga". Among the
most entertaining trilogies I have ever read, I will miss
the clans. Bravo! Thanks to the author, publisher and NetGalley

Thank you so much to NetGalley and Orbit Books for this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

What a stunning conclusion to The Green Bone Saga. Every character & generation was simply incredible. The overall plot is intricate and spans such a long time frame, and between books. I thought for sure I would either get lost or not be able to keep up. I'm so glad that was never the case. I loved every second of this.

Fonda Lee is a force to be reckoned with, and I know people will be talking about this series for a long time to come.

Last year, when I revisited and reviewed Jade War for this publication, I pointed out how impressive that novel is not just for its own strengths, but for being the kind of sequel that expands its own fictional world in some of the best possible ways. Well, dear reader, Fonda Lee has done it again, building up the scope of this already wide-ranging series to encompass decades of political and emotional challenges for the Kaul family of Kekon's No Peak Clan.

Where series opener Jade City established the island nation of Kekon, its political system, its powerful crime families, and the rivalry between the No Peak clan and their competitors, the Mountain, and Jade War established the international context around that struggle, Jade Legacy puts that clan conflict back at the heart of the plot. This is the book where the Kaul family might finally get to land some hits on their powerful, seemingly invincible rival Ayt Mada, and that's going to take every single resource at their disposal.

First, let's establish that, if you have not read the previous books in this series, this review is not going to make a whole lot of sense. Readers who want a refresher on Kekon, the Kaul family, the concept of bioenergetic jade, or any of the series' other central premises would be better off checking my Jade War review, although there's a significant Jade City spoiler in there too. For those who need a short reminder: Kekon is an island nation in a secondary world with politics reminiscent of mid- to late-twentieth-century Earth. Until recently, Kekonese people have been uniquely able to harness the bioenergetic jade that can only be found in their country, giving them access to various superpowered feats. Now, there's a drug that makes jade usable by anyone, and that means huge shifts in trade and military power, which in turn requires new strategies of Kekon's most powerful political forces, the jade-using clans.

Most of the external events of Jade Legacy relate to the "Long War" (i.e. cold war) between kinda-USA-like Espenia and their political rivals Ygutan. We learn a bit about the ideological difference used by the two powers to justify their war, and that it is a religious more than a political disagreement; but it doesn't play a big role in the plot and it's not very important to the calculations of anyone in Kekon. Instead, the interactions between the clans and their international counterparts are grounded in realpolitik (that is, based on self-interest rather than ideology or ethical theory): the superpowers want jade, and they want to prevent their rivals from obtaining jade, and they want to give Kekon as little as possible in return for jade. The Kekonese clans, meanwhile, want to further their economic interests and strengthen their positions relative to each other and they want to protect their power from the cultural threat that foreign influences might present. While we only see glimpses of the internal politics driving Espenia, Ygutan and other nations, Jade Legacy spends plenty of time showing these different political factions within Kekon—and the rising force that is anti-clan sentiment, which in turn is weaponised by foreign interference to become a dangerous force of its own.

Of course, Jade Legacy doesn't build its gut-wrenching tension and page-turning readability out of faceless political forces alone. The Kaul siblings Shae, Hilo, and Anden, and Hilo's wife Wen, remain at the heart of the series. There are other returning faces as well—like Shae's second-in-command Woon Papi and Wen's surviving brother Maik Tar, as well as drifting grifter and smalltime antagonist Bero, and plenty of others. By this point, all of the "core" generation of Kauls have been through trauma after trauma: the death of their eldest brother Lan, Shae's dangerous duel against rival Ayt Mada and loss of much of her jade, Wen's run-in with an Espenian gang which has left her permanently disabled, and Anden ... well, everything that happens to poor Anden. Those traumas are constantly present in how the members of the family interact with each other and the rest of the world, and while there is plenty of room for change (Hilo and Wen's relationship starts off deeply strained by her actions in Jade War, but it doesn't remain that way), there's also a real weightiness to the immediate past that the family are carrying around. This makes Jade Legacy, for all its huge political scope, feel like a very intimate story, one about young folks who have somehow grown old over the course of a single story.

Take Ayt Mada, the Kauls' main rival: older than the Kaul siblings, and where they are beginning to show their age and weariness in the face of constant political crisis, Ayt is in an even more desperate and precarious situation, without a clear heir and balancing increasingly fractious factions within the Mountain clan. Ayt is an extraordinary character in her own right, and more so because she comes across as a three dimensional, intriguing person without us ever seeing her inner thoughts in the same way we do in the case of the Kaul family members, and many other supporting characters. Ayt is. As she begins to look weaker, her relationship with the Kauls, particularly Shae, changes in a way that turns the conflict from one where the destruction of one family seems inevitable, to something more complex.

The aging of the old generation, meanwhile, is matched with the coming-of-age of the new, and as the book progresses we spend increasing amounts of time with Hilo and Wen's children—Nico (biologically Kaul Lan's child, adopted after Hilo murders his mother and stepfather), Ru, and Jaya. While Jaya provides some entertaining moments, and an interesting commentary on the status of women within the clan, it's the respective outlooks of Nico and Ru which drive this aspect of the story forward. Nico, as the Kaul's heir apparent, has to grapple with the expectations the clan have of him—even as he first discovers the truth of what happened to his mother, and then faces temptation from the newer, less honourable mercenary careers now open to a Green Bone warrior.

Ru, in contrast, has to build a future of his own: like his mother Wen, he's a stone-eye, unable to use jade and therefore shut out of much of the clan's formal structure. Unlike his mother, Ru is growing up in a generation where his condition is less stigmatised. His complex but fundamentally good-natured relationship with his family's legacy—and the way he balances that with his own ambitions and life-path—make him one of the most compelling characters in the series, and certainly the most interesting of the young Kauls.

Perhaps inevitably, it's Ru's destiny that ends up being most shaped by forces outside the family's control, and the climax of his story also ends up also being the climax of Bero's. Bero, the wildcard of the Green Bone Saga, has always been a small-time player in events that bring him into conflict with the family, despite having no structural power and little in the way of talent. That it is a petty grievance of his—a manifestation of chaotic, stupid luck—that ends up limiting Ru's ambition to create his own path with the hand dealt to him, is at once deeply fitting and one of the most devastating moments in Jade Legacy.

I say "one of the most devastating", because there sure are a lot of devastating moments in this book. After two volumes of becoming invested in the fortunes of the Kaul family, I found Jade Legacy a tense reading experience, to the point of feeling physically ill during certain scenes. Because Jade Legacy compresses decades of world-changing events and character growth into its 700 pages, it creates the feeling of being caught up in a fast-moving political situation where the ground is constantly shifting. This fire-hose of events is an effective way to create tension, but it might hit too close to home for readers living through their own Interesting Times, and it's a bold choice to artificially accelerate this part of the narrative rather than maintaining a more measured pace through a larger number of books (if that was an option). That's not to say that Jade Legacy is an unpleasant book, but the feelings it created in me were like watching a sports team I support as they play through a nail-biting, extended final with no clear winner in sight: you're invested, you can't not watch, and the payoff might be amazing, but it doesn't feel great when you're in the middle of it. Even positive moments feel tinged with precariousness or guilt: both Shae and Anden settle down with steady partners after their respective romantic dramas in Jade War, but there's a tension in both of their partnerships—especially Anden's—between their personal affections and the good of the clan.

The sheer number of events also means that there are elements which get overtaken by new things and fall away. As in previous books of the series, relatively minor characters and events often end up being important in unexpected ways later, and there are a lot of satisfying delayed payoffs. But often major plotlines stumble: the plot around the anti-clan movement that drives the novel’s first half, for example, and even the fallout from the major event the movement precipitates. In this case, what feels like a huge political turning-point midway through the book is followed by a timeskip that softens a lot of the impact of what happens next, and then it's on to the next thing.

Nevertheless, the payoff of Jade Legacy is ultimately worthwhile, and enormously so. Of course I'm not going to spoil how the denouement eventually plays out, but it brings together the threads of the family's fortunes in a very satisfying way: everything the Kauls have done to modernise, build alliances, maintain their leverage over enemies, and offer opportunities and growth to their successor generation, comes to a head in a way which just makes sense. And, of course, it's about legacy: just as Hilo, Shae, Lan, and Emery had to deal with the legacy of their revolutionary grandfather and the clan he built, so too do the Kaul children inherit what their parents' generation has built for them—in all its morally grey, culturally intricate, constantly changing complexity.

Jade Legacy wasn't always a happy experience to read. But it's an outstanding book capping off a trilogy that has improved with every volume. This series deserves to be on every epic fantasy reader's radar.

Jade Legacy was such an epic conclusion to the trilogy. Simply outstanding! It best 5 star read I read all year. There were no loose ends for the characters and their legacy really will live on.

5 stars

All the powers in the world are vying for jade, the coveted and powerful substance known strictly to the Green Bone warriors on the island of Kekon. For hundreds of years, jade has been the source of power for the supernatural abilities possessed by the Green Bone warriors. Now, foreign governments and outsiders have their sights fixed on possessing it. Faced with threats old and new, The Kaul family struggles more than ever to contain this age-old power within Kekon’s borders. Factions within the city are just the tip of the iceberg, and as new adversaries emerge amid the rise of a new generation of Kauls, the family will have to decide what lengths they will go to preserve their empire and its complicated legacy.

Jade Legacy is a conclusion that tore my heart to shreds whilst building up a hope inside me for something greater. Spanning a little over twenty years in the lives of the Kaul family and the clan, old wounds work their way inward, and new enemies stake their claim on Kekon and the powerful substance jade. After the events that concluded the previous book, there was an air of distress present that did not dissipate going into the conclusion of the series. I had been warned to keep my hopes low and my heart close to my chest, but absolutely nothing could have prepared me for the events that followed. Fonda Lee has brilliantly built up the evolution of these characters, ones that are flawed, yet driven by loyalty and the bond to one another. My favorite characters continued to be Wen and Shae, whom I was delighted to see take on new roles than the past two books offered. Wen, in particular, held my attention in her journey as a Stone Eye towards a rise to something I never expected for her. There were so many little moments for each family member interspersed throughout the clan politics and war that made this installment as much of a beginning as it was an ending. One thing that radiates here as with the others is the history of Kekon and the continued fight against outsider control. The central war on jade only intensified under this unceasing need for the clan to maintain control of their own culture from foreigners. With the new generation of Kauls growing up under these conditions, the stakes in the family were that much higher than before. In turn with this, I loved the exploration of legacy and what it means to uphold one and pass it down through the generations. Seeing the Kaul family raise their children alongside the ongoing predicaments was truly touching and I fell in love with the new generation just as easily as the others. The Green Bone Saga is exactly the kind of series I could talk about for ages and never feel like I did it any justice. Jade Legacy is a masterful finale that is equally emotional as it is compelling.

This has to be, overall, one of the best series I have ever read. This finale was so beautiful written and crafted, and secured this series as one of my favorites, and I'm sure I'll find myself rereading it in the future. Also, I would like to sue Fonda for emotional damages because I don't think a book has ever made me sob so consistently! It was 700 pages! That's a lot of pages to be crying over!

I loved Jade City when I first listened to it back on an airplane home for the 2020 holidays. I was heading back to my family, after the longest stretch of separation from them since moving away in 2017. I saw myself in Shae, who was also returning home after an even longer time away, to a family who she wasn't sure would accept her anymore, at least not as she currently was. I fell in love with Hilo's passion and ferocity, Lan's desperation to lead a fracturing city and country, with every single one of these characters. And when I started my reread of Jade City in November 2021, in order to continue this series, I fell in love with them all over again.

The Green Bone Saga has to be one of the most meticulously crafted, well-written trilogies I've ever read. I found myself losing minutes, hours, days in the pages of these books, losing thoughts to these characters and their fictional issues. Quite frankly, I found myself wholly obsessed, bewitched even, by the words on these pages. (And I have to commend the narration of the audiobooks here, which brought a whole extra layer to this story. The range of emotion that the narrator was able to articulate when speaking was breathtaking, and I especially love how well he played Hilo, especially at his rawest moments.)

Jade Legacy is the crowning achievement of this saga, spanning decades and continents, bringing together every moment that the last two books contained. Everything mattered, every small spoken word brought to fruition within Legacy's pages. You could almost physically feel every small side story coming full circle once again, imparting its own lesson or final meaning on the reader as the book drew to a close. I still cannot believe how full of meaning the ending truly was, and I'm still left pondering the end that was given to certain characters. I feel this story in my bones, and I honestly never expected to love it quite this much.

I don't think I can ever quite forgive Fonda Lee for what she made me go through during these three books, and especially Jade Legacy, but I am grateful for this reading experience and for the sheer range of emotions it evoked in me. I've read many fantastic books in 2021, but this series is definitely one of the best.

[2 Stars]

Ooof, whatta disappointment. I love Fonda Lee's writing style, her world-building, and her ability to write an action-packed scene. She built tension and intrigue in a way that I'll definitely be keeping a lookout for what she does in the future.

HOWEVER, I don't think this particular trilogy worked for me. Which is a shame because I loved the first book. The biggest issue for me was Hilo. I hated him so much and he definitely ruined my reading experience. The rest of the characters were fine, I quite liked Anden and Lan.

Besides Hilo, I also think these books suffered from how much time passes in them. Over the trilogy more than two decades passes and the various time jumps routinely pulled me out of the story. I felt like I was distanced from the characters and what they went through because so many things happened off the page or were rushed through.

These books are objectively well-written, but subjectively it wasn't a new favorite for me

I recommend this one. It's a good book and everyone should read. Of course I would love to have this book in my bookstore.

Jade Legacy // by Fonda Lee

If you read my reviews for the other two reviews and saw how average I felt about those books, you're probably surprised to see a 4 star rating finally. I'm honestly a little surprised myself because the majority of the time, I love the first books in series the most as that is where I get to experience a new world for the very first time, which is generally my favorite part in fantasy. I'm a sucker for world-building. Fonda Lee though has managed to turn that upside down because phewie (trying to keep it clean here hehe), did she play with my emotions in this book. I'm usually not a crier when reading fiction books. I mostly save that for heart-breaking memoirs, but she got me MULTIPLE times while reading Jade Legacy. I am seriously impressed with her for having managed that so often within one book!

This book had a lot going on. A lot. And I don't mean that in a bad way. Lee managed to pull together so many things from this whole series within one book, even things you would've thought we've moved past and wouldn't come up again. I love how we got to know more characters better in this last book and also how she showed us even more nuances to those we were already familiar with. I honestly have to say that after this book, Hilo is one of my all-time favorite characters in general. He can be so infuriating but I just love how true he stays to himself, how he recognizes his feelings and the triumphs and mistakes that come with them, and how he always tries to do the right thing (even if those things are only right by his own standards and not those we would consider right in general).

While the majority of this last book is full of action and intrigue (there is still plenty of political stuff for those that love that), I once again have to say though that there was a bit of a lull at some point that felt extremely jarring to me, especially since it was towards the end of the book. The series definitely ends with a bang so when you get to that part, don't be discouraged, but with the rest of the book being such a ride throughout, that was a little disappointing to be honest. Overall though, this was an excellent ending to the series and I'm glad I chose to finish it despite my lukewarm feelings before. This book definitely made it all worth it!

Thank you for the free copy in exchange for an honest review.

“If the clans stop defining the meaning of jade, then others will take that power from us. They’ll amplify all the worst parts and preserve none of the good.”

This is it.

The final book in the Green Bone Trilogy.

How do I even begin to sum up, much less review this 752-page behemoth?

And sure, there are lots of books that are longer. Practically every single Brandon Sanderson or Diana Gabaldon.

But the scope of this book. The sheer breathtaking ability to encompass everything that is jade and will be jade and was jade, and arrange the same 26 letters of the alphabet the rest of us use and come up with this?

Fucking brilliant.

“Sister Shae, when is life ever life a story where the characters get exactly what they deserve, good or bad?”

This is the saga of the Kaul family. Jade City crawled so that Jade War could run so that Jade Legacy could win a marathon. I know I can’t stop talking about the scope of this thing, but its incredible. Jade City was pretty centralized to Janloon, the capitol of Kekon. Jade War expands a little, stepping into Estonia past Southrap and touching upon some of the other bits of the world. And Jade Legacy expands to encompass the world itself, just as jade and its imitations take over the world.

When I talk scope here, I’m not just talking world-wide. This book covers twenty mother-fucking years.

And I’m not gonna lie. It was a slog through the first four hundred pages or so. But then I hit that scene (you’ll know the one) and I was hooked and blazing through in two days what had taken me a week to get through earlier.

However, due to the vast nature of the story, sometimes the scenes flipped by, bap bap bap, leaving little time for the right emotional build-up to hit where it should, leaving me in an almost constant state of shock, of wondering what the fuck comes next. There is build-up to the end, however, and some events that hit so hard and sudden I wondered how the Kauls would manage to survive or weather this new storm.

“Young men do stupid things sometimes,” Hilo had sighed in commiseration with Kitu’s father.

But overall, the real delight in this story was watching Hilo mature.

He was one of my favorite characters in the previous two books, for his interesting grey morals and bullheaded courage and the sheer luck and force through which he managed to get through the Ayt’s strategic snarls and tangles. Here, he ages and grows old (old for a Green Bone), and has several moments where he realizes that he’s older than Lan, has ruled No Peak longer than his beloved brother, that he’s older than his father, that he’s walking on untrodden ground in terms of longevity.

Reading how he—a once kinda progressive Green Bone becomes considered incredibly traditional and working on moving into the future—building the future for his new generation, and creating a jade legacy that will resonate through the world (although not in such altruistic terms, this is No Peak, after all), was absolutely fascinating. And, I loved how his mind changed. He was always Hilo, easily bored, hot-tempered, and loving the dramatics of it all, but he slowly learned that winning didn’t always mean killing the enemy and that change and progress doesn’t have to be driven by just one person, which just delightful subtleties.

And I loved reading about the new generation, who were all children of this new and rapidly changing world.

Anden was another favorite from the series, a man who slowly accepted his insecurities, set aside his legacy, and forged a new path forward for himself while also maintaining ties to his family.

The one character who had I wanted to love so much for the previous two books but literally just could not was Shae. I wanted her to be something more than she was, I think. Where Hilo got his conniving old man strategery and Andy his doctoring and diplomacy successes, I felt that Shae was always struggling to keep up with everything, always battling with Ayt-jen in their weird duel, always losing some battle or another or getting captured. I think I wanted her to engage in an epic showdown and win, dammit, but Shae’s strength always lay within the family itself, and I really felt for her struggles as a woman in a position of power in a patriarchal society, balancing being a mother and Weather Man.

Anywho, much of this book feels like an allegory between Asia and the rest of the world, and it was done so fucking well and again, that scope and thinking of all of those logistics and the sheer size of the worldbuilding was just breathtaking. There’s colonialism and the Kekonese diaspora and gentrification and cold wars and internal and external politics and economy and drug smuggling and fucking Bero and portfolio diversification and tradition vs change and it was the entire world but with humans able to manipulate magical stones.

So, to sum up, a slog for sure, but a brilliant slog.

And I so, so wish that this had been made into a longer series to really break down everything that was happening, but I can see why the choice to keep it one book was made.

Long live the Kaul family.

“You give me too much credit,” Shae said. “It was a full family effort.”

I received this ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

This is one of the best trilogies I have ever read, and I was really looking forward to this end book. It did not disappoint at all. It's a wonderful and thrilling book with lots of action, adventure, strong characters, and beautiful writing. I highly recommend it to anyone who likes epic fantasy. A very satisfying ending to a fantastic series.

This book had me shaking, screaming and crying. Which isn’t all that surprising because the first two books were literally the same way. The characters and their relationships were just so well written and the plot was just *chefs kiss* amazing. This is the only series I could without a doubt say was all five stars.

Jade Legacy is the finale that every reader dreams of their favorite series having. It is a masterpiece from start to finish and was the PERFECT way to end such a phenomenal series. There wasn't a single moment where I thought "hey, this doesn't seem right for this character". I spent the last half of Jade Legacy sobbing, like full body ugly sobbing, out of a mix of joy, pride, sadness, and general attachment to this world and the people in it. I cannot wait for the day that I'm ready to reread this phenomenal series. 5 stars doesn't begin to do it justice.