Author: trueth33

Jade Legacy by Fonda Lee is a novel par excellence, and draws the Green Bone Saga to an heartrending and heartwarming conclusion. As with the rest of the series, the Kaul family sits at the core, though Lee masterfully crosses continents and decades to tell the story. Like the best of books, I snuck in every opportunity to read a page or two, and several developments kept the book glued to my hands—I had to keep reading.

Jade Legacy picks up shortly after the end of Jade War, but if you’re a first-time reader (go back and read the first two!), Lee does a good job at subtly providing waypoints to the world and characters. The narrative continues No Peak and the Kauls’ slow war against the Mountain and Ayt Mada, and the Kaul family’s internal struggles with parenthood, sibling rivalries, and finding one’s place. In this book, the Kauls continue to jet around the world, and Lee weaves the ongoing geopolitical threads back into the family’s lives in masterful ways, setting up threads hundreds of pages before you realize how she knots it all together. And that, to me, is one of the most masterful parts of Jade Legacy—it feels like a family drama unfolding. Her use of different perspectives to build different threads for the reader without “telling” a single character too much is impressive.

And the characters! They make you root for them, question your impulse to root for them when they do some frankly vile things, and return to rooting for them to undermine the Mountain. Over the course of the book, each of the characters grow and mature in a way that feels so natural, even as the years pass. Helo has always been my personal favorite, and his aging and maturing in Legacy was the highlight of the book for me. And that’s all I can say without getting into spoilers!

Perhaps one of the most interesting through lines in the book is the mirror Lee holds up to the Green Bones through the Espenians, Stone eyes, and everyone’s favorite lowlife, Bero. Lee’s subversion and questioning of the Green Bone culture of honor and way of life contemplates on what a world without Green Bones might look like, developing ideas from Jade War in a satisfying and introspective way.

And, Green Bone or no, family remains at the core of Jade Legacy. Her series, and Jade Legacy in particular is a wonderful meditation on all aspects of family, and I find the close to be ultimately hopeful. The Kaul family fights, yes, they can be insensitive and brutal, yes, but they carry each other when they are weak, they family learn from their collective mistakes, and they cross the world for each other. And for all the tragedy and loss that comes from leading No Peak, their ability to adapt and soldier on paints a hopeful picture for the reader to frame with their own family… though hopefully their family’s suffer significantly less loss and violence.

Jade Legacy is incredible. I laughed out loud, I gasped, I cried. Fonda Lee ties up the Green Bone Saga perfectly. It is certainly my favorite book of the year, and catapulted itself into my all-time favorites. Read this book!

There is nothing so satisfying as a well-written ending to a series, and in The Fall of Babel, Josiah Bancroft delivers. Everything about the book—the prose, the character relationships, and the satisfying conclusion all leave me feeling warm and satisfied, but also a tad melancholic that Babel has fallen.

Bancroft opens the book with an in-universe reminder of recent occurrences, which was as helpful as it was delightful, and instantly brought me back to his embrace of his prose stylings, one of my favorite aspects of his work. His voice as a writer is distinct, flowing, beautiful, and never overwrought. His metaphors are unique, vivid, and utterly delightful.

The story follows Tom and his merry band of followers as race to save the tower from Marat and his hods, and their dynamic relationships, which drive the plot as much as the need to stop Marat. Though over seven hundred pages, The Fall of Babel flies at a breathless pace that left me itching to pick the book up again.

Humor runs through the book, bringing a much needed levity to what is often a melancholic, deeply reflective book, and I find myself continuing to consider what Bancroft has to say about art, identity, and relationships now, long after I have read the final pages. It’s hard to say much more without getting into spoilers, but despite the drama the characters experience, I find that a pervading sense of optimism in human beings and our capacity to love undergirds the characters mindsets and their resolutions.

And the characters! Bancroft crosses from head to head, showing us the different interior lives and voices of a large portion of the cast, and their vivacity is the highlight of the book to me. I feel as if I know Tom as an old friend by now, and the crew of the State of the Art is the most dynamic throughout the book, and their journeys through the wildly creative ringdoms was a delight. Every action, every word, is in service of developing the characters—even the fight scenes clarify the characters and their priorities.

The Fall of Babel is one of my favorite books of the year… and if you haven’t read the first three, now’s your chance before coming to the incredible conclusion.