I thought this was a pretty decent story, it has a lot of cool cinematic scenes and a cool magic system as well, it definitely has a more YA vibe than I was expecting, but that didn’t take too much away from the story. The Audiobook was good but I don’t think I liked the story enough to continue with the series. 3.5 ⭐️’s

Thank you to the Author Julia Vee for writing this story and to Natalie Naudus for Narrating it.

I listened yo this in almost one sitting! If you miss Fonda Lee’s Green Bone Saga, stop here! I went back to read the first installment, because I wanted to, but, I dont think i had to.

Emiko is now the Sentinel, and is responsible for solving a murder. Also, her qi has been interrupted and she needs to open the Archives to get her full powers. Along the way we meet more of her father and mother. I thought this story was even better than Ebony Gate as it git right to the action less all the world building and magic explanations. A good time!

"Blood Jade" by Julie Vee and Ken Bebelle is the stunning sequel to "Ebony Gate". With a trip to Tokyo, we get to learn so much more about Emiko as a character and greater insight into her past. We get to meet her family, see how her father works the political environment, and her brother who's training for the tourney. We also get a glimpse into the secrets of what being a Sentinal is, all while getting tied up in this murder mystery where Fiona Tran and her clan are being hunted down by an assassin.

All of this is to say that this book is jam-packed with action and answers to so many questions I had at the end of Ebony Gate, and I loved how it opened up the world of the Jiaren to greater heights. I was invested in every part of this story, with my only criticism being that I'm a tad confused with some of the romantic elements of the story, more specifically how Emiko feels about her ex, but hopefully that gets ironed out in the next book.

I had a great time reading this installment and I can't wait for the third and final book to come out.

[Thank you to the publisher and Netgalley for the arc!]

Please please please normalize having summaries of previous books at the start of sequels!! I love it so much!

This was a great follow up and did a lot to open up the world, the magic, and both the backstory and development of the main character. There's an interesting play of politics in their world and all the ancient families existing in a delicate balance. And there's a huge gulf between where our MC exists at the end of the first book and the end of the second.

Really shaping up to be a series worth recommending!

Blood Jade is the second book in the dark, compelling, utterly marvelous and occasionally downright infuriating Phoenix Hoard trilogy that began with the fantastic Ebony Gate. If you love fantasy, especially contemporary set fantasy that features hidden worlds operating within our own, if you adore flawed heroines filled with angst and doubt who still get the job done no matter what or who might be stacked against them, I can’t recommend this series highly enough.

But I do absolutely recommend that you start with Ebony Gate, as the Phoenix Hoard reads like one story divided into three parts and this one is the damn middle. I promise it’s worth the ride and the read – especially if you’re still jonesing for a book to assuage even a bit of your Green Bone Saga book hangover – as I certainly still am.

The first book, Ebony Gate, was the set up and the introduction. The Jiārén, the descendants of the Eight Sons of the Dragon, hide their true operations behind magic in the world that we Wàirén only think is ours.

Emiko Soong has done her best and her damndest to leave that world; her father’s world and her father’s machinations, behind – even though she knows she’s probably just fooling herself. The question is how much.

The answer, as Emiko learns in Blood Jade is that she’s been fooling herself a LOT and that she hasn’t truly moved outside her father’s influence at all. He’s just been watching from a distance and letting her make her own mistakes for a while.

Which she has certainly done. She’s also made real friends and a life of her own in San Francisco – some of which may have also been a mistake. Or at least it feels like one when her two worlds collide and she goes back home to Tokyo, to the center of her father’s power.

But now she has a power of her own as the magical ‘Sentinel’ of her adopted city, San Francisco. A power that will either make her, or break her, mend her or shatter her. If she can manage to survive leaving the seat of her power, the very real threats against her friends AND her family, and her father’s forever secret, always hidden, and all too often damnably right, plans for her, for the future of their clan, and for their people.

Escape Rating A+: I’ve had this book for almost half a year. I hung onto it for several reasons. One, because I wanted the time to savor it. Two, because this is the middle book in the trilogy and damn I wanted to have the final book in my hot little hands before I started this one (which I do), and three, I wanted the time to listen to the audio read by Natalie Naudus because she embodies Emiko perfectly.

I also kept it as a Hanukkah present to myself because I knew it would be excellent – which it absolutely was. But I knew even before I started that I’d need time and space to deal with all the feels before I even made a stab at writing up what I thought and felt.

And, very much like Emiko herself, I realized that I had to rethink a whole lot of the story when I reached the end. Just as her relationship with her parents wasn’t quite the way she thought it was, neither was my relationship with this book.

Before I start on my own personal thoughts and feelings, one thing needs to be said up front. Blood Jade is the middle book in a trilogy. Middle books, frequently, often and absolutely in this case, are walks through dark places. If you think of Frodo and Sam’s trip through Mordor in the second half of The Two Towers, well, that’s pretty much the archetype of a middle book. Not that the first half of that middle book in the Lord of the Rings is that much less grim, just that it’s hard to imagine anything more grim than walking through Mordor.

In Blood Jade, Emiko is walking through her own dark places, in many cases made all the darker because she’s walked them before. She’s always been the ‘Broken Blade’ of her clan, her powers blocked off or non-existent, and she’s always been a disappointment to her parents and her teachers, the flawed daughter of a powerful house with no power of her own.

Returning to her father’s orbit, doing her best – which is in fact very, very good – to keep both her brother Tacchan and her friend and ally Fiona Tran protected from the very real threat to their lives also forces her to deal with the reality that her own people see her as broken, see her as ‘less than’ at every turn, see her as a failure at everything she tries.

Except being her father’s hatchet-woman, a role she has chosen to reject. A rejection that is seen as yet another failure on her part. Emiko has a LOT of angst to deal with in this story – and because the whole saga is told from her first person perspective, we’re inside her head experiencing it right along with her. It’s a LOT, it’s all justified and it’s HARD.

In Emiko’s dysfunctional family and their interpersonal relationships I found a lot of my own buttons being pressed, which made the first half of the book a difficult read – or in this case listen – for me in spite of the excellence of the narration. (I can’t say enough good things about Natalie Naudus’ voicing of this story as well as Ebony Gate. She’s just awesome even if I’m angsting over some of what happens nearly as much as Emiko is.)

Emiko’s family is utterly dysfunctional in ways that are baked into their society. The amount of abuse the children suffer through is way too much like the Antivan Crows in the Dragon Age videogame series, AND, it’s also a reminder that it’s somewhere between hard and impossible to keep a dynasty going through inheritance because the later generations don’t have the same kind of drive their elders needed to in order to survive their real struggles and manufactured struggles through torture simply don’t instill the same needs and values. (Come to think of it, that was also a part of the mess in Tuesday’s book, Echo, in spite of the vast difference in their settings.)

What made me rethink how I felt about the whole book, what makes Emiko rethink everything she’s ever believed about her relationships with both of her parents, is a huge spoiler but at the same time is something I’ve been expecting since Ebony Gate. It’s a revelation that also beautifully sets up the third book in the trilogy, Pearl City, coming in July. I have an eARC but I’m doing my damndest to resist the temptation to read it RIGHT NOW because I’m holding out for the audio that I hope will be recorded by Natalie Naudus because she HAS to take up Emiko’s mantle one more time.

GOODNESS NATALIE NAUDUS IS AMAZING

An amazing action-packed follow up to Ebony Gate! Congratulations Julia and Ken on writing such a strong sequel. I seriously cannot wait to read the next installment.

Still with the same immersive prose, phenomenal fight scenes, stunning Asian culture, and intricate magic system, we follow Emiko, our take-no-shits FMC as she GOES BACK HOME (AHHHH!!!) and deals with the crap she left behind when moving to San Francisco.

We finally see more of what makes her the way she is. Her family background, her culture, HER BROTHER, the extremely complicated family dynamics and inter-clan fighting made for such a stunning exposition into Emiko's character. Having a novel that really introduces who the main character is and her growth, really captured me.

While the majority of my issues with the first novel stemmed from the EG being far too centered in Emiko as the "self" in a way that almost leant to self indulgence, BJ honestly was what I was hoping to read in the first installment. To be honest, I felt almost like the first book was written with scenes from this book in mind so much so that looking back on EG had many scenes making so much more sense in hindsight.

In any case, I can't wait to read Pearl City this coming July!

Blood Jade is an engaging and action-packed follow-up to Ebony Gate. This sequel adds fascinating depth to both the characters and the world of the Phoenix Hoard trilogy. I loved learning more about Emiko's past and exploring her complicated relationship with her family. The conflicting feelings Emiko had to navigate while returning to her family's home in Japan added really interesting emotional depth to her character. I found these relationships really compelling and realistic.

Blood Jade also expands on the magic and history of this urban fantasy world. The magical competition and murder mystery plots introduce new forms of magic and engaging combat scenes to the story. The twists and turns the story takes at the end hint at fascinating future developments for the magic system.

In my opinion, the series' weakness so far has been its pacing. Though in many ways the pacing improved in this installment, it has been my main critique of both Ebony Gate and Blood Jade. It felt like the plot of Blood Jade struggled to settle on a main direction to focus on leading to an opening that feels scattered. This ties into the fact that the book does not balance its subplots and main plot well. If elements related to certain plot points are not actively on page, it feels like they do not progress at all. If Emiko is not thinking about them then they do not exist. It is very odd how some things are completely dropped and then returned to many, many pages later without any sense of time having passed or things have developed without Emiko. This lack of continuity around the romance and sword subplot in particular makes the story feel a bit clunky at times.

Though I wouldn't say this is a series that I have loved, I am invested enough in Emiko's character arc that I will likely read the final installment when it comes out. The audiobooks, in particular, have been a great way to consume this series.

I thought this was very good and I will have to add this to the shop shelves. Thank you for the chance for us to review.

Thank you NetGalley and Macmillan Audio for an advanced listening copy in exchange for an honest review!

Blood Jade picks up where Ebony Gate leaves off, and it is so good. I appreciated that this went deeper into world building and I found it to be well paced and just as action packed as the first, which is nice because sometimes middle books feel a bit too much like a bridge. I really loved seeing Emiko’s continued growth and it was satisfying that questions from Ebony Gate were answered. Vee and Bebelle did a good job at expanding upon the world and asking new questions for the third in the series to answer, and I’m honestly impressed at how good of a follow up this is.

As always, Natalie Naudus is an excellent narrator and really helps bring the story to life. The action is so engaging and it really scratches some itches that I have previously only had scratched in action movies and shonen manga, so I’m absolutely thrilled that this is a series I can continue to enjoy.

I am absolutely obsessed with this series I absolutely loved this book and the narration was perfect. Looking forward to the next one in the series.

This was fantastic! I was a fan of the first book in this series but I have to say that I liked this book even more. I was thrilled that the book opened with a summary of the first book which really helped me get my mind back into this world that Emiko lives in. Once I started reading this one, I didn’t want to stop because I just had to know how things would work out in the end.

Emiko Soong now serves as the Sentinel of San Francisco, which is a huge responsibility. A murder investigation takes her to Tokyo where her family resides. I feel like we really get to know Emiko in this installment and I grew to like her more and more as the story unfolded. Emiko’s brother, Tatsuya, is about to enter his tourney which is very important to the clan. The story was very exciting with plenty of action woven throughout.

Natalie Naudus does an excellent job with the narration of this book. She is quickly becoming one of my favorite narrators because she does such a good job of bringing stories to life. I found her voice to be very pleasant and appreciate the various voices that she used to represent the characters in this story. I do believe that her performance heightened my enjoyment of this book.

I would recommend this series to others. This is the second book in the Phoenix Hoard series which I do recommend reading in order. This installment was an excellent read that kept me hooked from beginning to end. I can’t wait to read more of this incredible series.

I received a review copy of this book from Tor Books and Macmillan Audio.

Thank you to Macmillan Audio and Netgalley for sending me an early copy of this audiobook! All opinions are my own!

If you're looking for a unique world steeped in Asian mythology and folklore, then look no further! This series is setting up such a novel world full of magic and intrigue. I can't get enough of how different it is from everything I've read, even other fantasies that are based in Asian folklore. It feels like it has an extra dimension to it because of it being a contemporary setting, and I love that part of it!

This book feels like it was setting up a lot more adventure and plot twists, and I can't wait to see where the series is going to go from here! I love the way it tackles family, honor and mixes it all with self worth and self discovery in the midst of such a tense political environment.

I feel like I can't say too much without giving a lot away, but this is a fresh new series that will feel unlike anything you've read before! You won't want to miss out on the action!

Great narration. Fantastic story telling. Fast-paced story line. Interesting characters. This book was a shockingly good book. but honestly the narration saved it.

It's been a little over a year since I read Ebony Gate, the first book in this series. I appreciated the recap of book one at the beginning of the story – it was a nice refresher. Book #2 has less action than the first book, and we step outside of San Francisco into Emiko's family home in Tokyo. Very few characters from the first book appear in this one, except for Adam, who follows Emiko to Tokyo and stirs up trouble, and Fiona. I enjoyed reading about the lore of the dragon and learning why Emiko is "broken". The book mainly focuses on delving into a big family backstory, as well as Emiko preparing her brother for the trials she couldn't participate in. There's a great deal of family involvement in the book's emotions and story. I have a feeling that this whole backstory and assassin plot in Tokyo will lead to a much bigger story in the third book. Overall, it's a beautiful urban fantasy narrated by Natalie Naudus, who does a fabulous job bringing the author's words to life.

I loved this book. The narrator is excellent and the story is so engaging. The story ends with you wanting more and needing to know what happens next but also super curious about some of the other characters which isn’t △⃒⃘lways the case in books. Definitely recommend!

Can I just say that I LOVE when a sequel starts off with a summary of book 1?! Absolutely fantastic! I love that we travel outside of San Fransisco in this novel. We get to see more of the power dynamics within the families. There were also more mysteries being unraveled with a great ending. Book one was really good, this book is even better - which I don't say often with sequels. If you haven't read this series yet, what are you waiting for?

I received a free copy from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

So, I wrote this review weeks ago, and then life got in the way. This was the book I needed at precisely the right moment. I’ve been watching a lot of K dramas lately as they are all action and storytelling packed into a very distinct timeline so the pace is amazing. This has that same feeling of plot and pacing. It ebbed and flowed with the story and characters in such a way it both felt like I lost track of time and somehow it felt too short. I loved the growth in both her role as Sentinel, and the slow unfolding of her history and importance in the world. I felt like I was learning something at the same pace she was, and that impact did so much for the feel of the story. I really can’t wait for book three…..

The Phoenix Hoard series is arguably one of my favorite urban fantasy series thus far with its snarky but endearing main character Emiko, a fast-paced action-filled plot, a unique clan-based magic system, and a nuanced portrayal of familial relationships. I thought that Blood Jade, the follow-up to Ebony Gate, shined even brighter as we navigated more of Emiko’s culture and familial influence when she travels to Tokyo to investigate a murder and show support for her brother entering his school competition that will solidify his place in the clan.

I had the honor of dually reading a physical arc provided by Ken BeBelle and Julia Vee and the audiobook, narrated by Natalie Naudus, that was courtesy of Netgalley and MacMillan Audio and it was such a satisfying experience. Natalie Naudus did an excellent job of bringing sharp-witted Emiko and the world she lives in to life, giving each character their own tone and nuance. The narrator does make a very audible intake of breath before speaking consistently throughout the story which could at times be distracting.

I LOVED the deep dive that Blood Jade took into Emiko’s family life and how those relationships shaped who she is and what drives her. It created such an emotional depth to Emiko’s character and helps us understand her and the push and pull of her sense of responsibility and need for independence. The unraveling of family secrets and the complicated family dynamics were fascinating and kept me hooked throughout the story. I will also say that there was such a breadth of magic in this installment with such vividly described mythical/magical creatures and a deeper development of the magic system. Vee and BeBelle's ability to detail every fantastical element with such clarity and imagination makes the magical realm feel incredibly immersive and alive. Also, the deep affection these authors have for their characters and their world is vividly evident on every single page which endeared me as the reader even more to this work.

I am really loving this series and if you enjoy adult urban fantasy I am confident that you will too! I am excited to read the next installment in The Phoenix Hoard series.

First off the narrator of these books breaths so much life and cinema into the story. I don't know that anyone else could have done as much justice as she did. When I read Ebony Gate I completely fell in love with this modern fantasy oozing with culture and mythology. Blood Jade picks up right where book one left off and starts full force without letting up until the end. I love Emiko and think that she is such a fantastic character who really grows and steps into her own in this series. I was so excited when she finally figured out why she was "broken" and was thrilled to see how that all played out. The world building in this series is fantastic, everything is so vivid and easy to fall into. There was so much action and so many things packed into this book. It was so neat to see get an in depth look into Emiko's family history and drama and well as get more insight into the different family clans. There is a scene towards the end of the book that is absolutely stunning I don't want to give anything away but I was absolutely enthralled. And that ending eeeeek! I will be waiting somewhat patiently for the next book because I have to know what is in-store for Emiko next!

Blood Jade, second book in the Phoenix Hoard series, once again features Emiko Soong, the new Sentinel of San Francisco. Despite her new responsibilities, multiple situations conspire to bring her home to Tokyo. Emiko has newfound strength and abilities that she does not fully understand in addition to near constant attacks. Are they after her brother, Tatsuya, who is preparing for his tournament? Is there a darker family secret that is coming to light? Who is the General and why does Emiko keep crossing paths with members of the General’s army? It is challenging to compare this book to the first, Ebony Gate, bc in my mind they felt different. Ebony Gate has a quest feel and this book was more about her family and the battles they were facing. Happily, I enjoyed both books. The characters are flawed but likable and I was rooting for them while trying to figure out what was going on. The momentum was good as long as you enjoy fight sequences (which I do) otherwise it might feel slightly repetitive. The ending had many surprises and finally some answers which was satisfying. I found this book more on the serious side which is not a bad thing, but hope more humor is displayed in future books. The setting was enhanced by many descriptions of food, including various flavors of Kit-Kats (I had no idea) and I would love to learn more about these libraries as they sounded amazing. Eager to return to this world in the next book, Tiger Eye. Narration by Natalie Naudus was perfection—she is the voice of Emiko in my mind. Thank you to NetGalley and Macmillan Audio for the opportunity to read and review.