Jade City (The Green Bone Saga, #1)

by Fonda Lee

True love, Hilo mused, was sensual and euphoric, but also painful and tyrannical, demanding obedience.

A truly skilled Green Bone, of the kind Anden and all his classmates desired to be, could call upon any of the six disciplines—Strength, Steel, Perception, Lightness, Deflection, and Channeling—at any time.

“Kaul Lan is dead,” Gont said. “His family has come down from the forest. We are now at open war with No Peak. Their lives and livelihoods are for the taking, and jade goes to the victor.”

Always glaring, never a kind word to anyone. The sort of person who kicks dogs. No wonder his son mouths off and has such a gloomy face. Not sure how to be his own man, with a father like that.

Any old horse will run when it’s whipped, but only fast enough to avoid the whipping,” Hilo said. “Racehorses, though, they run because they look at the horse on their left, they look at the one on their right, and they think, No way am I second to these fuckers.”

But 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.”