Of jade and dragons by Amber Chen

The Antaran Territories encompass the Nine Isles overseen by a High Commander whose bamboo and bison skin airships, with their cobra insignia Aihui Ying can sometimes see flying over the pastoral lands of her Huarin Isle home. Ying, the eldest daughter of chieftain Aihui Shan-jin, dreams of visiting the capital, Fei, not for its wealth and fine architecture but its Engineers Guild. She would like to be an apprentice, following in her father’s footsteps but they don’t allow girls to apply. Her mother died when Ying was 8 and she has spent many hours with her father encouraged to learn and invent intricate engineering marvels. When she disturbs an intruder in her father’s workshop she is able to wrench an oval jade pendant from the stranger before he escapes but her father is mortally wounded and his last act is to give her a hidden notebook which he asks her to destroy. The pendant has a dragon insignia, the mark of the Empire so Ying decides to find her father’s killer and infiltrate the Engineers Guild in Fei to see who is trying to steal her father’s secrets. There is so much going for Of Jade and Dragons, the lovely cover, the Asian, medieval world, the celebration of engineering and the female engineer protagonist but it was strangely unsatisfying. After getting into the Engineers Guild the first trial is an essay, which the privileged candidates were assured of passing, the second trial involved getting lost and the third destroying a sophisticated automaton, very little engineering involved. I hated the focus on destruction and war with the Empire (for unspecified reasons), including the beheading of their ambassador. The characters were one dimensional, the minor ones especially so, presumably to be developed in subsequent books. Ying is supposedly 18 but she acted much younger and her attraction to her prince seemed more suited to a junior romance. I would have loved to see more creativity, engineering and friendship-building, Ying seems to learn little from her experiences and it was a missed opportunity for some growth which is disappointing. The characters of fellow candidates Ye-kan and Chang-en have a lot of potential, maybe they will come to the fore in the following books as this is the first part of the Fall of the Dragon series.

Themes: Fantasy, Engineering, War, Romance.

Sue Speck