“Jade City meets Never Die”
At Emerald City Comicon, Ken Bebelle pitched the book he co-authored with Julia Vee to me as “Asian female John Wick with dragon magic in San Francisco’s Chinatown.” It’s a simple tagline with a well-known touchtone, and at the Con, it was enough to sell dozens of copies of the Tor-published Ebony Gate.
After reading the combination of glitz and glam of Asian warrior clans jockeying for power and influence, and a hidden spirit world that overlaps our own, I would describe Ebony Gate to the average person as, “if John Wick was in Crazy Rich Asians, and it was directed by Miyazaki Hayao.” (Though more apt director might be Makoto Shinkai, but we assume a normie might not know who that is).
Now for fantasy readers with discerning tastes, as we would expect on Fantasy-Faction, I will be more accurate: it’s Fonda Lee’s Jade City overlapping with Rob Hayes’ Never Die, with the main character being a darker female version of Lindon from Will Wight’s Unsouled—all high praise, as these are some of my favorite books.
Told in first-person, Emiko Soong’s internal narrative feels 75% snarky YA heroine. The daughter of a prominent Jia-ren family where everyone has some level of Qi-fueled magical ability, she has no special power. By the time we’ve met her, she’s failed out of her people’s magic academy, fled a guild of assassins and lived to tell about it, and finally abandoned her duties as her family’s enforcer. There’re mysteries surrounding her, hinted at throughout, yet expertly hidden in the first-person narrative.
Choosing San Francisco as home for her self-imposed exile, she makes a living hunting down supernatural creatures and recovering artifacts. Like Wight’s Lindon, what she loses in magic she makes up with preparation and perseverance.
When a seal to the underworld is broken, she is tasked by a Shinigami death spirit with resealing it or losing her eternal soul. Throw in a magical sword that’s mistaken for a famous antique, and it’s one mishap after another in a maze of plots Emiko has to navigate.
The supporting cast of characters help paint the dual worlds Emiko straddles. Possible love-interest Adam and business partner Tessa are normies whose lives touch the supernatural without them ever knowing it, and look very much like daily life in present day San Francisco, with landmarks familiar to anyone who knows the city.
Twins Fiona and Freddy head another Jia-ren family and are nominal allies in Emiko’s quest. More than any other of the secondary characters, they give insights into the fashion, politics, and magic of the fantasy side of the world, and also help make it feel real and lived in.
With the imaginative worldbuilding, clever tangle of plots, and engaging narrative voice, I rate Ebony Gate 8.75/10.
(Reviewer’s Note: I listened to the audiobook, which is marvelously narrated by Natalie Naudus. She brings the story to life, and her voicing of Fiona and Freddy made them my favorite secondary characters.)
Julia Kitvaria Sarene