The tl;dr is that this is a great book. I didn’t want it to end. I found myself reading through the night, wanting to see what happens, but also not wanting to finish up. That’s always the mark of a great story. I suspect it’ll keep you all up late reading it as well!
This is a sublime family saga, filled with pain and joy in equal measure. Explosive, brutal, graceful violent action dovetails with raw emotional honesty, politics, crime and conspiracy. All ties to the lives and loves and hard choices and harder costs borne by a family we’ve followed for two books now. It’s a bloody, compelling, emotional story, and a fantastic finale to a cracking series.
Fittingly given the title, legacy is a core theme here. he country of Kekon is a minor power with a unique resource, surrounded by global superpowers engaged in a long, slow, cold war. How Kekon navigates the geopolitical reefs will be decided by its clans, groupings of families and tributaries who are the heart and soul of politics and finance in Kekon. The clans run retail, they run manufacturing, they run housing. They have economic arms which look after their people, which buy factories and movie studios, and more martial arms, with one eye toward arms and drugs, and the other protecting the assets of their clan, and looking to seize the territory of others. We know the No Peak clan best of all from this series, and their rivalry with their closest contender, the Mountain, the conflict in ways that these entities want their country to work, is a core part of this book. Because the families at the top of these clans, they can’t stand each other. Theirs is a decades long history of blood and violence. But it’s also becoming something else - because if the clans can’t stand together to the outside world, they’ll be ground on the uncaring edges of superpowers that only see them as pawns in service of larger games.
We can see through the eyes of the higher echelons of No Peak as they attempt to navigate their personal feud, whilst preserving their country in the face of outside pressure. But also, they have to contend with a changing world, a world that is moving forward as it is in part because of their actions. A more connected world. A more tolerant one, perhaps. Or perhaps not. It’s a question, you see, of values.Hilo, the head of No Peak, is someone we’ve seen move from young, hotheaded killer to, well, something different. A leader who banks the fires of passion until needed, with a personable style, raw cunning and personal charisma - but Hilo is also aware that he’s shaping his country, and working out how that will work. And so are the rest of his family - mothers and sisters and sons, brothers, occasional cousins. Everyone has an agenda, and everyone is shaping the future.
Hilo and his family, at the head of one of the largest socio-political engines of their nation, have to decide what sort of future that’s going to be, and how willing they are to fight for it
Of course, it’s not all council meetings, quiet bribery and blackmail. There’s simmering revolution out in the streets. There’s Kekonese immigrants in other countries, whose communities are under threat (and this nuanced ,thoughtful exploration of cultural identity in different contexts is a joy incidentally, one with deep roots), and whose sense of self is a little more fluid, out from under the thumb of centuries of cultural shaping; being able to decide who they want to be, though of course under the strictures of another culture entirely.
And there’s questions of class, and the way that those who wear the jade, and are able to fight and kill with supernatural speed and pwoer, are also typically the power elite in Kekon. What does that mean for those that don’t, or can’t wear jade. What society do they live in? Is it the one we see between the cracks of the dream of the clans?
Which is all getting rather wooly. So let me put this out there, grounding, and an ending:
Jade Legacy is a brilliant book. It explores class and culture and identity through the personal lens of a family steeped in soci-opolitical power. But it also explores the personal stories of that family. Their loves and woes, triumphs and tragedies. The way they bounc eoff each other, and off those around them. It’s not all big questions. Some of it is intimate, emotional, parents working on marriages, children deciding who they’re going to become (and family trying to help them decide, with varying success!). There’s blood and sweat and tears here, but it’s laced right through with passion and friendship and love that comes off the pafe and seeps right through your fingers into the bone.
This is a family story, a personal story, and that’s what will make you feel, what will make your heart break and your soul soar as the story errands. And it will, and it does.
Go now, and read this book; it’s worth it.
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