I appreciate so much about this whole series but in particular I want to highlight that Fonda Lee is an absolute craft master of echoes—Chekov's gun, the way she plants things that pay off 200 pages later, and also how she creates these little moments that mirror each other in different ways across the story. In particular, the way she has Hilo learn how to use his jade abilities to deflect a car bomb and then like half the book later, just when we've forgotten about him learning how to do that, he gets blown up by a bomb and ends up protecting himself from it?! She had me a nervous wreck waiting to find out if Hilo would still be alive and I didn't even remember that he probably had the skills to handle an attack in that way! 

I also love and absolutely hate the way she will mercilessly kill a beloved character on-page for... really what seems like almost no reason. As furious as I was at Ru's death, and despite having said that it seems like no reason, the fact is that it is for a reason and I know what that reason is: to really drive home how easy and how fast it is for someone to be killed in this jade world she's created. 

Fonda Lee has created a completely gorgeous world in this series and I'm devastated that there's not more to read, but I guess that just means I'm going to have to go right back and start over again with Jade City, huh? I will be thinking about this series for a long time. 

(ALSO WHEN DO I GET MY TV SERIES PLS I BEG!)

The base premise of "what if grad school but for D&D classes" is absolutely delightful, and although I could absolutely see the Critical Role influence a mile away I thought this was such a fun and fresh interpretation! As an avid D&D player myself I am hugely in favor of stories set in that kind of universe, particularly if they have a new and modern twist, so this book was a perfect fit into that niche for me. 

I also really like the type of storytelling where you can tell that there's something major in a character's past, but the character themselves doesn't reveal it until later on and mostly thinks about whatever it was in little glimpses—I find that much more realistic than a big info dump at the beginning of the story, because after a certain amount of time I think a lot of us don't consider our traumas to be a narrative, rather we think about the bits and ways it affects our daily lives but don't necessarily reflect on the whole. Getting to learn about Sebastian's past in little bits, seeing how it impacts the development of his relationship with Elethior, and yet not really getting to put the entire picture together until the very end was a really interesting tactic and I felt that it paid off well here.

The sort of stumbling way that Sebastian and Elethior interact with each other and slowly get closer was really satisfying for me, and even though I'm not normally one who goes for the "persistent misunderstandings" trope I think that it was executed quickly enough here that it didn't drag on unnecessarily and actually contributed to the characters' development, which was nice. 

Lastly, what a super satisfying ending. I feel like Sara Raasch really understood the assignment and executed on it perfectly. 

What a fun book, I'm so glad I got the rec on TikTok and then saw it on the shelf at the bookstore!