Series Review: Green Bone Saga

Im going to begin this review with a tangentially related discussion about… Diversity in cultures!

There are a lot of fantasy books set in some kind of medieval Europe, filled with a bunch of non-descript races that either don’t get their skin color mentioned, but they’re definitely white, or are just straight up white with the same basic vaguely-European cultures and idealisms. The vast majority of the time, this isn’t done with any sort of personal vendetta or ire against minority cultures, but because it’s most common for authors to write what they know and what they are familiar with.

The generic background can also allow for better focus on the more fantastical elements of a story to shine without having to spend time on creating or explaining other elements of the story. It’s the same reason why there’s a lot of proxy-races for elves, dwarves, and orcs (or orks, if the author’s feeling particularly feisty.) It’s just something the readers are familiar with, and so it’s the easier path to take. Not that the author is doing it to be lazy, it’s just that creating a brand new, never-before-known race or culture takes a lot more words to describe, and more pages that have to be dedicated for the reader to understand it. Saying “John lives in Eurotopialand with his wife in a castle,” is a lot easier to understand than “Vwayne lives in Kuroubinor with his crablesnov in a guponagrast.” Stories of Eastern cultures, especially Japanese culture, have risen in popularity relatively recently for this reason; Anime has become extremely popular in the rest of the world over the last few decades, and as a result, a lot of Japanese culture has seeped into the minds of non-Japanese peoples.

Of course, there absolutely are authors that create fascinating cultures and still cultivate amazing stories. In fact, such finds are becoming more commonplace in the current fantasy landscape. But there are also examples of people trying to just shoehorn something into a story without putting any thought into it to disastrous results, such as with Netflix’s Bright starring Will Smith.

In the Bright universe, fairy tale creatures exist. Two thousand years ago, the Dark Lord tried to rule the world and failed. The orcs sided with the Dark Lord (who was an elf, btw) and so, even in the present day, orcs are all universally hated by everybody everywhere. The movie completely disregards the history of a world where fairy tale creatures and magic exists alongside mankind and just plops the story into modern day U.S., and gave orcs a gangsta culture identical to those associated with the blacks and Hispanics in poorer neighborhoods, which in of itself would have been fine, if not lazy, except that black/Hispanic ‘gangstas’ also still exist in Bright’s universe.

Then you have Harry Potter, where wizards do have their own culture, even if that culture is oddly frozen in time, but it’s so separate from the rest of the world that it’s confusing how the two worlds coexist in the same reality, even if one does so in secret from the other. Many urban fantasies also fall prey to this problem, though a typical explanation in those stories is that magic interferes/ruins modern technology.

It’s rare you find a book, let alone a series, that tackles a non-standard culture outside specific subgenres, but there are some marvelous works out there that do just that. N.K. Jemisin is an author who’s done quite a few different works, and so does my current topic focus, Fonda Lee and her Green Bone Saga. Hey, look at that! We finally made it to the series this post is about!

The Green Bone Saga is a trilogy set in the fictional country of Kekon, which is based on Eastern Asianic places such as Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan, and China. The country is ruled by clans, and headed by one central family, whose ranks comprise other families and businesses who pledge allegiance to the leader known as a Pillar. The country is divided into several territories ruled by many clans, but the vast majority of the country, and the focus of the series, are the two most powerful clans; The Mountain clan and the No Peak clan. Kekon does have a ruling governmental body, but the politicians are practically all in the pocket of one clan or another, so it’s the dominant clan that holds the most sway in the government, and the clans have been an essential part of the country for so long, the government accepts and even relies on them.

To grossly simplify it, it’s a mix of the American mafia and the Japanese feudal system. But this is a fantasy novel, so what makes this fantasy instead of just some fictional crime drama? Fear not, for there is a magic system in place, though the world doesn’t necessarily treat it as such. Somewhere in the genetics of the people of Kekon lies an ability that is unlocked when they come into contact with jade that gives them superhuman abilities. The clans are a warrior culture, their history’s defining moments involving defending their smaller country against larger outside threats. The warrior culture continued into the present day, and honor is a defining attribute to the clans, and it dictates how business is done and how the clans interact with each other. Businesses pay their clan tribute for protection against outside criminal activites. People will often ask the Pillar for their blessing to marry. If someone feels they’ve been insulted, a duel can be made, the winner obtaining the loser’s jade. Of course, the clans also do their fair share of dirty, shady, and dishonorable things in the shadows.

The protagonists of the story is the Kaul family, who rules over the No Peak clan. And yes, I’m using the word family here as both a literal family as well as something Godfather-esque, because the clans are ran fairly similar to how fictional mafias are ran. The books follow the Kauls through family events as mundane as school ceremonies and one another’s dating lives, but also life and death decisions as war ramps up between the No Peak clan and the Mountain clan.

The Green Bone Saga consists of three books; Jade City, Jade War, and Jade Legacy, as well as a short story I have yet to read. The first book details the ongoing conflict between the No Peak and Mountain and escalates into a full-blown war between the two clans. The second book continues as the war still rages, with international considerations playing a larger factor. And the third, well, I’m going to be a bit vague considering I’m trying to stay as far from spoilers as I can, because you should absolutely read this series, but as the titles give a bit away from each book I’ll just say that Jade Legacy chronicles the legacy left behind in the aftermath of the war. The first two books cover a relatively short span of time, but this last book covers years and comes to a very satisfying ending after the book spends its entire time taking the reader and its characters on a whip-lash ride of an emotional rollercoaster. My only complaint about the final book is that you don’t really get to know the newer characters as well as you do the ones introduced earlier.

Fantastic series. You should definitely give the books a read.