There were things I liked about this, but it didn’t hit the spot. I didn’t really get into it in the way I would have liked. As much as I enjoyed Ying, her voice didn’t capture me in the way that other characters have in the past. I also got annoyed with her for constantly going against her father’s final request in the worst possible ways.

As with The Night Ends With Fire, I feel I need to issue a warning that this book does contain a woman disguising herself as a boy, and there is some suggestion that her body could give her away. This was, however, much better handled than The Night Ends with Fire, though with less emphasis on it. However, it’s there, so trans readers who are triggered by this should be advised.

I enjoyed watching Ying progress through her lessons in the engineer’s guild and the inventions she made. I especially liked the ending and just the brutality of it. The feeling that the characters are trapped in endless cycles, where they can’t get away from the issues that the empire has.

I really do think this was a good book, even if I didn’t get what I wanted from it. So I’m looking forward to the rest of the series.

Of Jade and Dragons is stunning and heartbreaking. I need more from Amber Chen. Immediately.

“…who had asked her to trust him, who had sworn to protect her, had used her like a weapon to cut down obstacles standing in his way of absolute power.”

This fantasy inspired by Chinese mythology is beautifully immersive and poetically written. I adored Ying and particularly loved her relationship with Ye-Kan. Not going to lie, this was a real whirlwind of emotions and I had the best time. The friendships and romance and the awe inspiring sacrifice for her family; Ying is an absolute powerhouse. I loved the trials and time in the engineering school. The sneaking and sometimes poor attempt stealth was so much fun. This was as devastating as it was light hearted, which is an impressive balance to reach.

I would highly recommend this to lovers of YA fantasy and Chinese mythology.

Great writing style, engaging story and characters. A very enjoyable read.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for providing an e-ARC copy of this book, in exchange for this honest review.

I enjoyed this story but it wasn't my favourite. I expected there to be more dragons from the title so I think it failed to meet my expectations.

Overall, there was nothing wrong with the story, i just didn't tickle my fancy at the time of reading. Ying was a great main character who had a strong moral compass but some of the other characters did make some decisions that felt off to me.

In a nutshell -A great story which many YA readers will love.

I really enjoyed this book!

I have everything that you wanted from a book: mystery, intrigue, little bit of romance, and war. It was well written and I absolutely love the chemistry (romantic and platonic) between the characters.

Highly recommended!!

Rating: 2.5

I really wanted to like this book, but I found uninteresting and lacking. It's ok to read, so I managed to finish it.

There is nothing interesting about the world, characters are not interesting and mostly annoying, story very predictable and simple and writing is very juvenile.
The book starts almost interesting, when juvenile writing is ignored, but the plot gets no depth as the book progresses.
I don't expect to read the next book, as this one didn't leave me wanting more. I will see once it comes out if it is better.

I'd expect it may be interesting and fun read for someone young who has read little fantasy and Asia based world.

What a brilliant book from start to finish! Ying is a great MC for the story - she's clever and compassionate and determined to work out who murdered her father and have her revenge. There were a couple of twists along the way that I didn't see coming. I'm excited for book two!

Dragons in the title and on the cover hook my attention straight away. And though in Of Jade and Dragons their presence is more metaphorical than real, the story is definitely gripping. Drawing inspiration from the real historical figures in Qing dynasty of China and mixing it with C-drama vibes and angst, Amber Chen creates a vivid silkpunk story of murder mystery, revenge and establishing oneself in a strongly patriarchal world steeped in political intrigues.
Ying enjoys her life on one of the lesser of Nine Isles. Following in her father’s steps, who was a renown engineer of the Guild, she dabbles in constructing mechanism for her own satisfaction, dreaming of being able to fly one day. True, neighbours keep reminding her that with such behaviour she is not going to get herself a good husband, which is all she is supposed to be thinking of. But her dad supports her endeavours and loves her so much that it simply has to work out.
But then one day Ying returns to the lab to find her dad killed by an assassin. She manages to rip a jade pendant off the killer’s belt. To her surprise, it has a dragon carved on the surface and the jade is not an ordinary one. Both are the symbols of the Empire the Nine Isles are at war with. But why would the Jade Empire want her father dead? On top of that, with his last breath, her father bestows his engineering diary on her with a strict order to burn it. Yet curiosity pushes Ying to look inside, and she finds her dad was working on the weapon systems. Unable to let go of her revenge and desire to find the truth about her father, Ying dresses herself as a boy and ventures to the Engineer’s Guild on Fei Island.
On her way she is rescued from the same assassin by no other than the Fourth Prince, who sees through her disguise yet offers her help in becoming the Guild’s apprentice. Ying dives into the world of her father, discovering things about his youth and talent. But she also has to work hard not to get kicked out of the guild. As her studies progress and more truths come out, Ying will have to decide what kind of engineer and person she wants to be and what to do with her revenge.
A YA-novel, Of Jade and Dragons offers you a bit more, in my opinion. Amber Chen is good at twisting the tropes and giving them a fresher perspective. You can definitely see some references to Mulan – what with Ying pretending to be her younger brother and entering the male-dominated world. She might not be going to the war front, but she keeps working on her father’s weapon designs. Yet with Ying’s strong personality, the mystery of her father’s murder and the contemplation of what it is to be an engineer, the story shifts in a totally different plane. Chen gives us a wide assortment of character – other Guild apprentices alongside their masters and royal family members, each and everyone of them ambitious and flawed. Though young, the characters make quite an impression: driven by a harsh, competitive world of the Guild and political intrigues, they feel and sound more mature, and it makes it more interesting to follow them. The same goes for the romance that sparks between Ying and the Fourth Prince: it gives you a satisfaction of the usual love story elements, yet in the end takes you to an unexpected decision.
I cannot finish my review without talking about the language. Being a silkpunk story, where engineering goes beyond steam machines and zeppelins, Of Jade and Dragons offers you a vivid and almost poetic relationship with inventions. Just like stories are a continuation of an author, so are the mechanisms for Ying and her father and the Guild Masters – they are the expressions of their own souls from a tiny butterfly to automaton dragon or a hybrid chimera. To elevate that relationship, Chen raises the questions of engineering ethics. Where is it that your talent and your love of inventing end and your responsibility begins? And what will your stance be when the war is on the doorstep?
An entertaining vivid read with beautiful atmosphere and plenty of intrigues, Of Jade and Dragons is definitely worth a read without age limitations.

OF JADE AND DRAGONS is a pacy YA about a girl going undercover to discover why her father was murdered.

This is a very pacy story, rattling through events from the murder into her journey to the guild and her time there. It goes along at a fair clip which makes you appreciate the slower moments when there is time to develop relationships between the characters more.

This is a book with a nice found family forming around Ying. Ye-kan is my favourite of her friends. They start of grudgingly allies knowing each other's secrets but then it develops really well, helped by the fact that Ye-kan is a good friend who's quick to forgive.

The love interest, Ye-yang, is very much in the "too good to be true" category for most of the book, understanding and helping for no apparent reason. This somewhat jaded outlook on YA love interests does pay off in the end, setting up a juicy conflict between them that I hope the following book continues.

There is some engineering in this book, but not much. It's mostly focused on the injustices against Ying - the rule against women, the fact others are deliberately trying to get rid of her. I would have liked to see more inventing than simply a few scenes and for her to make more things of her own to really lean into the engineering promise. Also, there's only one dragon and it's an automata and features for once chapter, which was a bit disappointing.

The finale sets up a war for the next book and Ying is probably going to be dragged back into it, despite her attempts to stay away, now she understands her father's decisions. That should bring some interesting moral dilemmas.

*Thank you to NetGalley and Penguin Random House UK Children's | Penguin for providing me this book in exchange of an honest review*

I don't know how I feel about this book. It started so well that I couldn't put it down. But afterwards? I mean the world building lacked. It either had excessive info dumping where it shouldn't have and the parts that could have been explained more were unanswered. I kept reading to find what would happen and nothing really ever did or nothing that was important to the story. The MC read a little too juvenile for my taste and when I wanted character development, I got none.

For the record: I was very excited about the book and thought that it would be a great YA fantasy read but oh boy, I was in for a disappointment because ultimately, the novel feels very half-baked and unfinished.

Ultimately, the novel doesn't just feel very unfinished, it also seems to be aimed at the wrong target group. Based on Ying's age (18 years), I would have expected something that is aimed at 16+ but it reads as if it should be aimed at younger readers (e.g., Middle Grade). The only aspect that is slightly too much for Middle Grade is the light violence, the brothel scene (although it's mild), the romance and Ying's age herself.

Aside from this, my main issues are:
1) The engineering focus is lacking. The setup makes it seem as if it will be on the engineering aspect as Ying also enrols in the equivalent of a university for engineering that offers academic competition. It could have been great to highlight how technologically advanced the nation is and could have been used to showcase Ying's genius for engineering. Instead, it is shoe-horned into the plot instead of acting as a well-incorporated device for plot and character development. If I'm not mistaken, there are four scenes where Ying does something related to engineering. The author mentions multiple times how much Ying loves engineering, how much she learned from her father by shadowing him and being trained by him, so I would have assumed that her skill would be a major key element to solve the murder mystery. Instead, Ying just shows her skills when she meets her love interest, during two trials, and when she develops two weapons in the last 80%. It is very underwhelming because the author could have done so much with engineering in an Asian-inspired fantasy world.

2) The lack of character development for Ying and the side characters. Ying is the main character who is 18 years old, is the oldest daughter of her family and has ultra manly brother (yes, she highlights that Wen is very manly in comparison to the boys/young men that she meets in the Guild), and several younger siblings. Unfortunately, she acts much younger than her 18 years because she is reckless, hot-headed and never thinks things through. Concerning her siblings: as oldest daughter, I would have expected her to step up into a mother-like role as it would fit into the expectations of their society/culture. Instead, she seems not to be involved in their upbringing at all. Further, she is completely unchanged and unfazed by the deaths of her parents. Yes, she is angry at her father's death, and whines that neither him nor her mother fought enough to stay alive, but she never truly grieves. He's dead, they hold the funeral and then she is off to find revenge. Of course, she's a special snowflake who survives everything by luck or because of the side character.
The side characters are two-dimensional, stereotypical-like, underdeveloped and often inconsistent. There's Ye-kan who is feisty/bratty/selfish/entitled/angry/... and whose behaviour differs in terms of "Does it benefit Ying or not?". Chang-en is supposed to be Ying's best friend in the Guild but you could swap him for anyone else and it wouldn't make a difference. His only personality trait is to rile up another character. Ye-yang, the love interest, is as grey and bleak as his eyes.

3) The romance happens out of nowhere. It felt very unrequired to begin with as it quickly becomes just a plot device to add some tension. Aside from that, it is instant love/attraction after one scene and I don't understand what they saw in each other.

4) The world-building doesn't exist. The book starts on Ying's home island and highlights that they live in tents and have a semi-nomadic lifestyle. Then, Ying travels to the neighbouring island which has solid houses and already fancy technology. Then, she ends up on the main island with the capital and here, the world-building just leaves the book. The city is barely described and when it is described, I cannot get an image of it in my mind. There's the guild, the new palace, the most famous brothel, tons of canals, a bridge that's 10 stories high (???), and an artificial forest outside of it. Apparently, there are six more islands (technically seven islands but the 10th island is forbidden and the kingdom's leader even wages war against the 10th island although one of his wives/concubines came from there) but names are never mentioned. In general, the entire political aspect of the kingdom's clans & co is extremely underdeveloped. An important aspect of the novel is engineering and how technologically advanced they are with airships, robots, and steam-powered carriages, ... - it's very futuristic in some aspects but there's no explanation of how they got to it aside from "yeah we basically copied the airships from the Jade Empire and the green-eyed strangers". There's also no explanation for why the capital is so advanced while Ying's island has no technological tools to use.


TL;DR
A Middle Grade novel in the trenchcoat of a Young Adult novel. Extremely underdeveloped in terms of writing, world-building, plot and characters. The engineering and competition aspect is reduced to the sidelines and the plot is inconsistent and jumps from chapter to chapter. The murder mystery is no true mystery and the author throws a romance into the mix to keep the reader from figuring it out too early. The only reason why I gave it two stars instead of one star is that there's nothing truly problematic in the book. It just needs more editing and a few more rounds of revisions. And another marketing strategy that pushes it to younger readers in the Middle Grade age range.

A cdrama in a book, at least that's what it felt like for me, when I read this one. It has a great writing style. The story and the characters are well developed and I just couldn't stop reading. I had to know what happens next. I hope to see more from the author in the future.

Mulan is still my favourite Disney movie of all time! So when I heard that there was a new Mulan retelling in town, I just had to read it! The cover alone had me convinced that this must be an interesting story and I wasn't disappointed.

Ying is an intelligent, headstrong girl who infiltrates the guild’s male-only apprenticeship trial to solve her fathers murder. The Asian setting and Steampunk atmosphere was a perfect fit for this story and it was a quick and delightful read. I was definitely suprised by the ending (which doesn't happen often if you've read as many fantasy books as I have) but for me it was a really good ending that matched Yings character perfectly. It was a nice suprise for the end.

I can't wait for the sequel and I hope we will get just a bit more world building and background for some of the other parts of the story.

Fast paced, edge of your seat action that will have you enthralled right from the very start (The cover is beautiful too!!)

Of Jade and Dragons drew me in and held my interest right away. The author did a fantastic job creating a vivid mental picture of the well-developed, distinctive society that this narrative is set in, notably the city of Fei. This was such a great debut novel and a delightful read even with its imperfections. I'm very happy that I had the opportunity to read this gem before it was published. But I'm positive that this would have been an impulsive cover purchase even if I hadn't seen it on NetGalley! The characters, idea, and storyline of this novel truly appealed to me, and I particularly liked how Ying demonstrated to everyone that girls can be engineers as well.

To me, this book is close to C-Dramas similarly as how "The god and the Gumiho" is to K-Dramas. Just to clarify my statement, these two books have nothing in common apart from reminding me of the vibes and recurring tropes you can find in these two distinctly different types of TV dramas.
While the book read a little younger than I expected, I finally found a MC whose story I was happy to follow, and didn't drive me crazy. Aihui Ying's story is not necessarily unheard of, but touches meaningfully on topics and thematics that are - as a woman in tech - close to me. While I will definitely continue with the duology as I think Amber deserves all support she can get, I do understand this book is perhaps better suited for a younger audience - to me this is the perfect christmas stocking book for everyone with a younger someone that may appreciate a little encouragement in following their own path, mind and morals.

This felt slightly like a retelling of mulan in a way with the hidden identities but thats not a bad thing. Ying is probably the most persistent and righteous FMC I’ve read about in a while. She strives to obtain justice and the truth, and find out who murdered her father. She enters the guild as a would be apprentice to uncover secrets and betrayals.

Nothing cuts deeper than that ending with Ye-Yang, I wont give anything away but I’m truly hurt by his order of priorities after the way he uses Ying for his end game. I really hope there’s a book 2 because this was a great story.

It definitely feels as if Ying and Ye-Yang’s adventures are only just beginning and I’m excited to read more.
With a wonderful mix of palace intrigue, intellect, gender defiance and resilience, the war between the Empire and the Nine Isles is secondary to Ying’s journey of discovery.
There’s an element of mystery as Ying attempts to find out the truth behind enigmatic assassins and her father’s hidden past.

The pacing and development of the novel didn't feel rushed leading to believable friendships and relationships between characters and avoiding periods of stagnant filler! Although I can understand why it may not have been possible (she had a hectic schedule with the assassins/hiding her identity/passing the guild tests) I would have loved to see Ying inventing more and developing her own creations - perhaps this is something to look forward to in the subsequent novels!

I would like to thank the publisher and NetGalley for allowing me to read and honestly review an advanced reader’s copy of this book.

Whoop, I really meant to finish this one before the release date! It took me a little while to get into it, but I think that was a me-problem, not the book.

Of Jade and Dragons was a great read; I do my think I’ve read anything considered “silk-punk” before, but I genuinely really enjoyed the uniqueness of it. I loved the world building; the weapons and other feats of mechanical engineering - all of it brought to life by easy flowing prose.

The plot was easy to follow; not mind-blowing in the end. I wasn’t honestly that invested in the main romance of this; but I didn’t dislike any of the characters either.

Overall, it’s a great addition to my Asian Fantasy shelf!

4✨

I absolutely loved this book! I was invested from early on and loved finding out more from this world. Anytime I wasn’t reading this I kept finding myself thinking about it which is the sign of a great book for me!

There is an engineering school with fantasy elements and trials so I was immediately interested in this book and it didn’t disappoint! I liked the main character but I was also a big fan of the side characters and I enjoyed seeing some of those relationships develop.

Often in fantasy many of the more ‘magical’ elements are explained away as being part of the magic system of the world, but in Of Jade and Dragons I particularly enjoyed the engineering aspect and how big of a role it plays in this world. I have a background in STEM so I loved that aspect.

I am now desperate for more in this world!