lia

i finally finished reading jade legacy and i think i need to be put down

how do you even describe the Green Bone Saga. it's a mob family story. it's set in fantasy Taiwan. it's got martial arts (lots of them). it's also one of the most emotionally devasting set of novels I've ever read

rereading parts of jade city and thinking about how book 3 tells us that lott jin hates cruelty, especially unnecessary cruelty. thinking about how that recolors that one interaction he had with anden in book 1 where anden calls lott less than his father, and how we knew that lott hates his father but now understand why he couldn’t stand anden’s accusation. thinking about hilo’s comment to anden after the fact and how he tells anden “for the most part, you give a man something to live up to, you tell him he can be more than he is now, more than other people think he’ll ever be, and he’ll try his godsdamned best to make it true.” thinking about how lott then goes on to say in book 3 that hilo “was the first person in the clan who spoke to me like a man.” how hilo “expected me to be my own person, not just a poor copy of my da. he made me think it might be possible to be green without being cruel and angry.” thinking about how hilo being there for lott and his family at the very beginning combined with how cruelly his father was murdered got him up on that stage at the end of book 1 to be the first to take his oaths. thinking about how he loves his family and probably to some degree still cared for his father and how he now had a reason to go to war and do something about the cruelty that he saw. thinking about how hilo’s mentoring in jade war and his reassurance to lott that he’s different from his father and can be a different green bone gave lott something to live up to. thinking about lott’s subsequent determination and resolve to shape his life around being a green bone and ultimately horn. thinking about how so much of what happens in jade legacy changes how you read things in the previous books. thinking about how i care too much about this one minor character.