Bero has found himself tied up with a bunch of anarchists trying to bring down the clan system entirely.Īnd within the Kaul family compound, Wen and Hilo's children - Niko, Ru and Jaya - are growing up.
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Shae is no longer the trusted Weatherman (advisor) to Hilo that she'd once been. Wen is recovering from the terrible injuries she suffered during Jade War. It is a "slow war," and No Peak is losing. The war with Mountain clan has become one fought politically, through spies and traitors, and in the press. Hilo has been Pillar for 6 years when Legacy opens. Its chapters fan out like a stack of photographs dropped on the floor - each a moment fixed on the page, set on a timeline so much more expansive than in previous Green Bone books.Īnd, yet, it feels more close, more frantic, more whole, somehow, than an unbroken narrative would. But instead of looking at a few months or a couple years in the lives of Hilo and No Peak, Jade Legacy covers decades. The capstone to Lee's wuxia-gangster family drama does the familiar dance of bouncing between multiple POVs (centering largely on Hilo, his sister Shae, brother Anden, wife Wen, their son Niko and gutter-level hustler Bero - who has somehow managed to survive three books despite literally everyone he has ever met wanting him dead), and balances its focus between huge, history-making events and the small, intimate moments between characters that often shape the narrative even more profoundly. Jade City focused on Hilo as a young man on the rise - younger brother of the No Peak Pillar and leader of his clan's Green Bone soldiers -and Jade War tracked Hilo through his first years as leader of No Peak as his generation grew up and assumed leadership positions within the clan during a time of non-stop war. Jade (and vengeance, and honor, and pure bloody-mindedness) is why the No Peak and Mountain clans have been at war for so long. But Kekon Island is the only place in Lee's urban fantasy world where one can find the science-y/magical bioenergetic jade that powers both the economies of her world and the borderline superpowers that it imparts to those among the Kekonese clans born with the genetic ability to use it to punch through walls, deflect bullets, almost fly, nearly read minds and generally behave like a bunch of old-school wuxia badasses in designer suits and thousand-dollar sunglasses. Not wizards-in-pointy-hats-magic or avada kedavra magic. But they're also the recognized power that holds Kekon together and defends the island against its many, many enemies. They burn and murder and wage bloody war in the streets. They do crimes like it's going out of style. They are the mafia with a sense of national duty, yakuza gone legit and multinational, with skyscrapers and schools and seats on charity garden club boards. It begins when Hilo is young - just an arrogant, powerful, Green Bone street soldier in his family's criminal empire on the imaginary island nation of Kekon - and follows him through triumph and tragedy (mostly tragedy), across a 20-year war with the family's rivals, the Mountain Clan.
#BONE ART OF WAR 3 SERIES#
You pick them up and it's hard to put them down.įor the uninitiated, here are the basics: The three books in the series ( Jade City, Jade War and Jade Legacy, the newest) exist, essentially, to tell the tale of the Kaul family of No Peak Clan and, specifically, of Kaul Hilo, his sister Shae, and their extended families. They are terrible temptations, these books.
![bone art of war 3 bone art of war 3](https://cdn4.spong.com/pack/g/e/gearsofwar323249l/_-Gears-of-War-3-Xbox-360-_.jpg)
Both more ordered and more chaotic at the same time. Mostly you get hooked because Lee has created a world that feels as real and logical and lived-in as the one outside the covers. You fall into these books like a love affair - all rough physicality and surprise - but stay (across thousands of pages) because there's so much more to it than that. Watermelon soda and sea air, delicate perfume and gunsmoke. Open the cover of a Fonda Lee Green Bone Saga book and you can smell the blood on the pages.Īutumn leaves, too.