Of Jade and Dragons is a debut young adult sci-fi/fantasy novel by Amber Chen. The book is the first in an anticipated duology.
The book follows eighteen-year-old Aihui Ying dreams of becoming a world-class engineer like her father. When she comes how to find he has been attacked and is dying, she has not clue what to do next. Left with a notebook of his that he told her to burn, she is determined to figure our why he was attacked, and who is looking for what is inside of this notebook.
In order to do that, she needs to get to the capital and the infamous Engineer's Guild. She believes it is the only place that would have the answers she needs, the problem is the Engineer's Guild won't accept women into its yearly trial.
Aihui decides to disguise herself as her brother to get into the trial and hopefully get far enough to get the answers she desires. In an effort to make it to the Guild on time, she runs into Aogiya Ye-yang, the taciturn eighth prince of the high command. Ye-Yang says he will help her get a bid into the trial for the Guild, and will do the best he can to help her through it. But all the drama with her father has now put a target on her back. She is being hunted by the assassin that killed her father, while also trying to stay a step ahead of the other's participating.
When she starts to develop feelings for the Prince who has been helping it, it adds even more complications to her plan. Plus, she can't help but believe that Ye-Yang has plans of his own. As she continues to learn more about the Guild and meet people that knew her father, Aihui starts to figure out why her dad left the guild behind in the first place. With a lot of corruption, hard-ass professors and students that would rather hurt her than let he win.
This book was beautifully written, with the emotions of the girl's feeling felt across the page. Aihui and Ye-Yang start to grow closer together, you are the reader even start to believe he might be lying. This book does have a steampunk theme to it as well, which we know I always love. I enjoyed the way things were described and how I could visualize it. Overall, the plot and story made a lot of sense, though never trust the cute man. There were a lot of invetions and physic and the story overall was really fun.
4/5 stars!
This book came out June 18,2024!
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