Eighteen-year-old Aihui Ying dreams of becoming a brilliant engineer just like her beloved father – but her life is torn apart when she arrives a moment too late to stop his murder, and worse, lets the killer slip out of reach. Left with only a journal containing his greatest engineering secrets and a jade pendant snatched from the assassin, Ying vows to take revenge into her own hands.
Disguised as her brother, Ying heads to the capital city, and discovers that the answer to finding who killed her father lies behind the walls of the prestigious Engineers Guild – the home of a past her father never wanted to talk about. With the help of an unlikely ally – Aogiya Ye-yang, a taciturn (but very handsome) young prince – Ying must navigate a world fraught with rules, challenges and politics she can barely grasp, let alone understand.
But to survive, she must fight to stay one step ahead of everyone. And when faced with the choice between doing what’s right and what’s necessary, Ying will have to decide if her revenge is truly worthwhile, if it means going against everything her father stood for . . .
I’m so excited to interview debut author, Amber Chen on her novel, Of Jade And Dragons. Hailing from Singapore, her novel is a story filled with lots of exciting developments and one girl’s duty of avenging her father’s death. My ARC review can be found here!
- Of Jade And Dragons is your debut novel. What was your publication journey like?
AC: Although I’ve been writing web-novels for quite some time, Of Jade and Dragons was the first manuscript I wrote with the intention of getting traditionally published. In 2020, I submitted the manuscript for the now-defunct mentorship programme, Pitchwars, and was very fortune to be selected! After revising the book together with my amazing mentors, OJAD plunged into the query trenches in 2021. It took me about nine months to find an agent who was keen to represent my work, and subsequently we went on submission with OJAD for about two months before it sold at auction! Two years on and here we are, with OJAD finally hitting the book shelves. 😊
2. Your book is set in a Chinese/Asian-inspired setting. Were there any shows or writers you were inspired by while writing Of Jade And Dragons?
AC: One of my all-time favourite authors is Tong Hua, a Chinese author who has had her novels adapted into many TV dramas, such as Scarlet Heart and Lost You Forever. I absolutely love her historical fantasies and the way she is able to bring me to tears with her words! Scarlet Heart is one of my all-time favourite stories and its Qing dynasty setting and palace dynamics was a key inspiration for OJAD. Besides that, OJAD is also inspired by one of my favourite classic Chinese tales, The Butterfly Lovers, and the girl-dressed-as-a-boy to enter an academy trope came from there instead of Mulan!
3. Ying is a smart and resourceful young woman who is smart and does things to the best of her abilities. What do you hope readers take away from OJAD?
AC: The idea of empowering girls to not only take on but also excel in traditionally masculine fields, like engineering, is an important theme in OJAD, and a theme that is particularly close to my heart. Even though things have certainly improved since the Qing dynasty, the patriarchy and its accompanying misogynistic attitudes and casual sexism still exist today, and there is still much work to be done to dismantle these harmful mindsets and behaviours. Before we can do any of that though, having self-confidence and belief is important! I would very much like a reader to pick up the book and think “hey, maybe a girl like me can build airships and mechanical beasts one day” and then go on to do it the way Ying has—because why not?
4. Ye-Yang and Ying’s relationship is complicated, yet there was an undeniable tension beneath it all. How did you craft their characters?
AC: I think that underpinning Ye-yang and Ying’s actions and decisions are their respective life experiences—what they have each been through prior to meeting each other. Their stories don’t begin at the start of the book; their stories have already begun from when they were born. Ying grew up in a loving family, with parents who were willing to indulge and support her, whereas Ye-yang grew up in the palace, suffering the trauma of losing his mother from a young age and then having to fight to survive all the cutthroat court politics. In crafting their character arcs, I would always keep in mind how these different upbringings would have given them vastly different outlooks on life, and manifest itself in the way they behave and make decisions.
5. Ye-Yang is a young man with a lot of secrets. He is also passionate in what he believes. What would his greatest flaw be?
AC: Ye-yang’s greatest flaw would probably be keeping too many things to himself and thinking that he knows better. He’s someone who is very used to operating on his own and probably finds it very difficult to trust someone else because he grew up in an environment where he must fend for himself in order to survive. This flaw will no doubt have negative repercussions on his relationship with Ying and others around him, so it remains to be seen (in Book 2 maybe?) whether or not he will manage to overcome it eventually!
6. OJAD deals with mechanical engineering and inventions in a silkpunk/steam-punk environment set in the Chinese culture. How long did the plot and brainstorming take?
AC: The first draft of OJAD took about three months! But of course it went through several rounds of big revisions after that, with input from my mentors, my agent and my editors. A lot of the worldbuilding and tech that you see if OJAD was inspired by actual history—for example, some of the weapons in the book were spin-offs from real inventions that came from a manual known as the Huo Long Jing (Fire Dragon Manual) that dates to the Ming dynasty!
7. Ying portrays her brother to get into the exclusive male-only Engineers’ Guild. What was the best part about writing Ying’s character?
AC: The best part was getting to show how she outperforms all the boys! Because there’s nothing that boys can do that girls can’t do better J On a more serious note, I think what I like best about Ying’s character is that she never allows herself to be constrained by the limits placed upon her by society, and that she’s not afraid of chasing her dreams, despite the risk. The opening scene to OJAD, where Ying leaps off a cliff with her flying apparatus, is a good summary of that spirit!
8. Do you have any advice for writers who struggle to cross the finishing line of their book?
AC: I completely understand the struggles of crossing the finishing line! So I typically don’t start a project unless I have a clear vision of what the ending will be like, because if I don’t then I’ll have a tendency to lose the plot midway and end up shelving the project altogether. Once I have an idea of the ending for a book, I’ll usually come up with a rough outline—nothing too detailed, just a couple of bullet points that cover the main plot beats for the entire story. This outline will then be my writing map, providing the “road markers” that I will work toward as I draft! I find this helpful because it gives me small checkpoints to aim toward and before I know it, we’ve reached the end of the manuscript!
9. The competition in OJAD is fierce and Ying puts up with other competitors who are jealous of her success and her family background in the Guild. However, there are also soft characters like Ye-Kan whom Ying befriends. What do you hope readers take away from their friendship?
AC: That finding your own community is so important! When you’re thrown into a new environment like Ying, everything can feel very overwhelming and intimidating. I think that in such situations, finding the right like-minded people to form an emotional support group is super helpful—and that forms the basis for the very popular found family trope. In the guild, Ying found these emotional support pillars in the form of Chang-en, Ye-kan and even An-xi, and I think these friendships have had significant impact on her character’s journey. I personally experienced something similar when I was studying overseas, and I don’t think I would have lasted very long if I hadn’t found a close group of friends that I could lean on when I was so far away from home!
10. Family is an important part of OJAD. There are also instances where Ying misses how things were before her father’s death. What can we expect from Book 2?
AC: Family is definitely a very important part of Ying’s life, and her interactions with her family members, particularly her father, has played a great part in shaping her into who she is. However, those same relationships can also be viewed as a barrier in some ways, preventing Ying from establishing her own identity and becoming who she wants to be. In OJAD, Ying very much abides by her father’s teachings and places family first, but in Book 2, we will see her grow past that and step out of his shadow, to define for herself who she wants to be and what she is capable of.
About the Author:
Amber Chen is a Singaporean-Chinese author of SFF and contemporary fiction. She spends much of her free time living within Chinese fantasy novels and dramas, and also drinks one too many cups of bubble tea. Her debut silkpunk fantasy novel, Of Jade and Dragons, is forthcoming from Penguin Teen in Summer 2024. One of her webnovels, The Cutting Edge, has been adapted for television.
Amber is represented by Laura Crockett at Triada US.
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