Reviews tagging 'Bullying'

Jade City by Fonda Lee

13 reviews

pri_lakshmi's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional informative mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.75


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lejones1785's review against another edition

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dark emotional sad slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

1.25

I had a tough time with this book, and I was really looking forward to reading it. It seemed like a lot of space in the story is just filler. Jade this, jade that, jade is worth ruining a city for. The characters are so smart, the characters have inner turmoil, on and on without much real substance. The main scenes in the book are over in a matter of moments, so there wasn't really any payoff for the filler material. It felt like this book was just for world and character building, so maybe the second book has more story?

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widowrites's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional mysterious tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

I really enjoyed this book. The family draws you in despite their flaws. The plot is tense and keeps you on the edge of your seat. The only reason it didn’t get five stars is that there are chunks of story that felt unnecessary. It made the book feel long when otherwise it might not have.

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olympia98's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional reflective sad tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

Ottimo inizio.

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vnderseelie's review against another edition

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adventurous dark tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? N/A
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.5

The overall setting of Jade City was amazing and the structures of the clans and Kekons society was intriguing. However, most if them were introduced too late in the story for my opinion and that made it difficult to understand them from time to time. As a reader you are treated as if you already know everything about the terms, phrases, gods, etc. that are mentioned in the book and I feel like some points have not been addressed at all and you are forced to accept them as they are.

The characters are really interesting and actually carry a lot of the story, since their flaws and decisions let the events progress and escalate further, which makes them feel alive and well merged with the world Fonda Lee built. Nevertheless, a lot of the actions that the characters took did not make a lot of sense in specific situations or were needlessly cruel, even given the topics the book deals with. Especially the grandfather gave the impression that he just appeared to talk the others down. Additionally, I really disagreed with some scenes and the behavior in them, which made it hard for me to continue the book sometimes.

Some scenes felt a bit too long or they were repeated in almost the same way too often, which made them repetitive to read and it seemed to just add to the page count of the book, without providing a real impact on anything.

All in all the idea of Jade City was really interesting to me, but I think the actual translation into the story was lacking in my opinion.

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lonelylooper's review against another edition

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dark tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.0


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rnbhargava's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional funny hopeful inspiring mysterious reflective relaxing sad tense fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0


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sup3r_xn0va_maya's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional mysterious sad tense slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

I wanted to like this book way more than I did and I just didn't. 
I wish I had read a review that said "this Godfather-esqe story", because then I would have been prepared for how politically based boring it was. This was 612 pages of politics, I read it all and the question still remains, "why should I care?". I don't know which side to root for because I just simply didn't care. 

I really enjoyed the magic system and the martial arts/hand to hand combat scenes that were described. 

I'm giving this 3 stars out of 5, I didn't really like it very much. 

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listette's review against another edition

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dark emotional tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

A very strong opening to a trilogy! 

I loved how the characters were flawed and made mistakes, horrible ones at times, but you’re still rooting for them and have your heart skipping beat for their success. 

Really happy that I don’t need to wait to read the next parts! 

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sarah984's review against another edition

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adventurous dark tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

"She felt, strangely, that it all made sense in a perfect and terrible way. It only confirmed in her mind that the will of the gods was a conspiracy of many things; people laid the tracks of their fate yet were helpless at the same time. They’d all played their part in this—them and their enemies."

This book really just blew me away. It's a family saga, and a gangster novel, and a story about a formerly isolated nation forced to confront the wider world and figure out how to live alongside it. The world (especially the advantages and drawbacks of jade magic and how that is integrated) is fascinating, and all of the characters feel like real people. This book is long but not a single word feels wasted - everything that comes up even once matters.

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