The AmWritingFantasy Podcast: Episode 153 – Critical Reading of Jade City by Fonda Lee

Today we delve into the Nebula Award Nominated and bestselling book Jade City by Fonda Lee. What can this highly acclaimed AND popular novel teach us about worldbuildling, plotting, and characters? Join us and we share what we love, what we didn't prefer, and our thoughts on this novel.

Tune in for new episodes EVERY single Monday.  

SUPPORT THE AM WRITING FANTASY PODCAST! Please tell a fellow author about the show and visit us at Apple podcast and leave a rating and review.  

Join us at www.patreon.com/AmWritingFantasy. For as little as a dollar a month, you’ll get awesome rewards and keep the Am Writing Fantasy podcast going. 

Read the full transcript below. (Please note that it's automatically generated and while the AI is super cool, it isn't perfect. There may be misspellings or incorrect words on occasion).

Narrator (1s): You're listening to The Am. Writing Fantasy Podcast in today's publishing landscape, you can reach fans all over the world. Query letters are a thing of the past. You don't even need a literary agent. There is nothing standing in the way of making a living from writing. Join two best selling authors who have self published more than 20 books between them now on to the show with your hosts, Autumn Birt and Jesper Schmidt.

Jesper (29s): Hello, I'm Jesper and

Autumn (31s): I'm Autumn.

Jesper (33s): This is episode 153 of the Am Writing Fantasy podcast. And it is time for our Critical Reading of Jade City by Fonda Lee. And we'll be sharing our thoughts and views with the aim to see what we write as can learn from

Autumn (51s): Yes, I'm looking forward to it because it was such an interesting story, but you know, listening right now, if you were planning on reading this book and you haven't yet spoilers, there will be spoilers. So keep that in mind. If you're listening, this is a critical review, not a blurb or a teaser. We're going to rip it apart and say what we love, what we wish had been different and see what else we can learn from this book.

Jesper (1m 15s): Yes. And we also got a few remarks from patron supporters. So we will also mention some of that

Autumn (1m 23s): As well. Yes. I'm looking forward to it. I happen to have read some of those comments and I'm kind of in agreement with them. So that'll be really fun.

Jesper (1m 32s): I am for the most part as well.

Autumn (1m 36s): All right. End of episode. No,

Jesper (1m 38s): That was it. Go on. Read, read, threatened. That's it

Autumn (1m 43s): Awesome. Well, how are things over at Denmark? It's been a little while since we talked, which was partially my fault. I will warn viewers now. I am still, I had a cold. It really knocked it. Wasn't COVID knock on wood, but it's definitely knocked me for a loop. So if my voice is a little hoarse or if I will, I swear I will cough. I'll either mute myself or he'll go away from the microphone. But yeah, there's, there's a chance I'm still coughing a little bit. So it's been awhile. This episode was supposed to be the previous one and we just couldn't get together because cold I've got to call.

Jesper (2m 18s): Yeah, this was supposed to be 100 and episode 1 55, 2, and then it now turned out to be 1, 5, 3, and, well, it was a bit of a mess because we had to rearrange stuff and redo stuff and rename podcast episodes and whatnot, but we succeeded and we're here now.

Autumn (2m 36s): That's what counts. So how are things been? It's been absolutely ages since we talked.

Jesper (2m 42s): Yeah. Well now I don't remember if it was last week or the week before, to be honest. But we were in here during winter time, as I've said on previous podcasts, I started doing sea kayaking. So here during winter time, well, you can go out, see kayaking, but you need a dry suit, which costs a lot of money. So, and we don't have that, but then what we can do is we can go to the swimming hole. So we take the kayaks into the swimming stadium and we train in the swimming pool to do like, you know, Eskimo rolls is what we call them. Dana's I don't know what the English word is, but you know, without getting out of the kayak, you basically you're upside down in the water and then you learn how to get back up out of the water without exiting the kayak at all.

Jesper (3m 31s): And I actually managed to do the first roll this last time when we went to practice for the first time I succeeded in rolling around. So that was pretty cool.

Autumn (3m 42s): That is really cool. I've never managed to do a full one note. I usually, I was a whitewater kayaking so much smaller, like half the size of a ocean kayak, a sea kayak. And I still never quite learned the hip snap part to get myself fully back on my own. So that's really cool that you could advantage one.

Jesper (4m 2s): Yeah, well, it was like a w the time before my wife succeeded doing it and she was just lik