Roseanne A. Brown is an immigrant from the West African nation of Ghana and a graduate of the University of Maryland, where she completed the Jimenez-Porter Writers’ House program. Her work has been featured by Voice of America, among other outlets.
Her novels are A Song of Wraiths and Ruin and A Psalm of Storms and Silence.
At Tor.com Brown tagged five favorite SFF books where magic has a steep cost, including:
Jade City by Fonda LeeRead about the other entries on the list.
On the island nation of Kekon, jade is king, and the Green Bones who can harness its power gain enhanced skills and abilities thathave made them the backbone of their society. But jade can be a corrupting force as well, driving some people to literal madness and exacerbating the fault lines within the already divided country. Jade City follows the Kaul family as they struggle to hold onto power in a rapidly changing world full of threats but close to home and across the sea. Lee expertly avoids the pitfall of having jade be wholly good or bad, and instead explores how the meaning and relevance of the substance changes depending on social and political contexts. For some, the obvious risks of jade make it not worth the trouble, but Lee convinces us why her characters would risk life and limb for a substance that causes so much strife.
Jade City is among Chloe Gong's five top SFF books about warring families, Mike Chen's five recent titles featuring superpowered characters, David R. Slayton's ten favorite urban fantasies that break new ground, Emily Temple's top six epic fantasy series for fans of Game of Thrones and R.F. Kuang's five top East Asian SFF novels by East Asian authors.
The Page 69 Test: Jade City.
--Marshal Zeringue
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