Reviews tagging 'Murder'

The Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon

251 reviews

lalu's review against another edition

adventurous emotional fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes

5.0

This was recommended to me after I mentioned that I hated the lack of women in LOTR. It even says on the cover "[A] feminist Lord of the Rings". And I have to disagree. It is high fantasy in a big world with lots of lore and different cultures. But that's were the similarities end (imo). 
Priory puts so much more focus on its characters, their role in society, their hopes and dreams, growth and their relationships. And none of the characters is perfect, it's not black and white, and for that I loved (most of) them even more. And there are stakes! Characters actually die and it's heartbreaking but also it made me a lot more emotionally invested in the story. I even had moments when I thought that

there wouldn't be a happy ending and the Nameless One would win and kill everyone

. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Miscarriage, Blood, Murder, Fire/Fire injury, War, Injury/Injury detail, and Pandemic/Epidemic

iammmartina_'s review against another edition

adventurous emotional slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Violence, Blood, Religious bigotry, Death of parent, Fire/Fire injury, and War

Moderate: Animal cruelty, Animal death, Confinement, Infertility, Miscarriage, Abortion, Murder, Pregnancy, and Injury/Injury detail

Minor: Alcoholism, Gun violence, Infidelity, Gaslighting, and Alcohol

chimichannika's review against another edition

dark medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? N/A
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated

2.75

three stars is generous tbh and I ended up changing it to 2.5 to be more honest about it 🫠 I have so many thoughts on this book (a few good, quite a few nuanced, and many critiques) and maybe will try to condense them to an appropriate review length; if I do so successfully I may come back and lengthen this review later but tldr… priory I yearn for the book you have the potential to be 🥲

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child death, Death, Gore, Torture, Violence, Blood, Murder, Pregnancy, Fire/Fire injury, Injury/Injury detail, and Pandemic/Epidemic

Moderate: Animal cruelty, Gun violence, Incest, Miscarriage, Xenophobia, Vomit, Cultural appropriation, and Pandemic/Epidemic

Minor: Infidelity and Excrement

meghan_w's review against another edition

adventurous emotional inspiring mysterious sad tense slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

What a perfect book to finish as Pride month begins! I did not plan this, but it is just perfect. At a whopping 848 pages/26 hours in audio this book is not for the faint of heart. I previously DNF’d it because I didn’t have the attention span for its length. So glad I came back to it because I loved it! Sabran and Ead are my two favorite characters with so much character growth. There’s magic, adventure, love, heartbreak, and best of all DRAGONS. 🐉 

My struggle with high fantasy is keeping track of characters, but the author is amazing and has a glossary of characters and definitions in the back. 👏🏻 

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Child death, Miscarriage, Violence, Grief, Murder, War, and Injury/Injury detail

Minor: Sexual content

nutsacktragedy's review against another edition

adventurous mysterious slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

2.75

I want to like this book, but it honestly disappointed me. The worldbuilding didn't engage me, and some of the main characters are utterly insufferable. The plot is hard to be interested in because it's chock-full of MacGuffin quests.

It's strange to have Niclays as one of the main characters because of how pointless he is. He's so disconnected from everything else that it's difficult to justify why he is even given screentime. He would work well as a side character.

Tané is also disappointing. Actually, everything in the East is, except for the dragons (and they didn't get much screentime!). She is pretty unlikeable too because of the shit she did towards Niclays. Her POV got lazy somewhere halfway into the book especially when

the book speedran her learning her jewel powers

. We could have gotten to know her better if only she took over Niclays' chapters lol.

The other two is fine. Ead is especially the most interesting because of her background. What's frustrating is the wait between POVs until I get to the Ead chapters. 

My biggest problem is the final confrontation. I can't believe that

The Nameless One got defeated so quickly after all that build-up. It was so anticlimactic that I was pretty sure that was just a 'first phase' boss scene and not the actual end lmao. I felt cheated, overall.

The dragons are cool, though. I also like how religious differences as one of the major conflicts is handled. Inys being a queendom gets plus points from me because I don't see that often. And the fact that the typical -isms in medieval fantasy settings just don't exist? It's awesome. Points for having queer people as well, as always.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Miscarriage, Violence, and Murder

Moderate: Xenophobia, Religious bigotry, and Pregnancy

Minor: Incest

electrachet's review against another edition

adventurous medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.75

I loved this story and would definitely recommend it to anyone even remotely interested in high fantasy. The length may seem daunting at first, but I read the first half of the book in less than a day and I'm usually a slower reader. There's so much world building to really keep you engaged! However, there were a few details that keep me from giving the book 5 stars. I wish we had a tiny bit more in the way of an epilogue. Niclays Roos was also an unnecessary character in some ways and The Nameless One had very little overall participation in the book. I felt the overall "villain" (or villains) driving the plot were underdeveloped. I also wish we got to experience more of Tané's story. I felt her POV was abandoned in the middle in favor of Ead, Sabran, & Loth's stories but she was still a compelling character I wanted to get to know better. I ultimately think the confinement of the story to a single book does weaken the overall narrative. This would have been better as a duology or even a trilogy, but maybe I just wanted to spend more time with the characters in the beautifully rich world that they live in. :')

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Violence, Murder, Injury/Injury detail, and Pandemic/Epidemic

Moderate: Infertility, Miscarriage, Sexual content, Grief, Religious bigotry, Pregnancy, War, and Classism

Minor: Death of parent

torturedreadersdept's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Alcoholism, Animal cruelty, Animal death, Body horror, Bullying, Confinement, Cursing, Death, Genocide, Gore, Gun violence, Infertility, Infidelity, Miscarriage, Misogyny, Sexual content, Torture, Toxic relationship, Violence, Xenophobia, Blood, Vomit, Dementia, Grief, Religious bigotry, Death of parent, Murder, Pregnancy, Fire/Fire injury, Gaslighting, Toxic friendship, Alcohol, Dysphoria, War, and Injury/Injury detail

nineinchnails's review against another edition

adventurous emotional mysterious tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.75

i will definitely be rereading this at some point! partly because there was a lot of stuff i didn't fully understand but mostly because i enjoyed it so much. i don't think i've ever read such a rich, sprawling epic fantasy contained within one novel. the characters were complex and interesting but i wish we got a little more focus on tané and loth. they both felt less fleshed out to me than ead and roos. the only other thing that kinda bugged me was how rushed the ending felt in comparison to the rest of the book. i expected the final battle to be drawn out longer than it was so it felt almost anticlimactic but it was still tied up pretty neatly. my main priorities in fantasy are character development and worldbuilding and those elements were near perfect!!

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Violence, Murder, Fire/Fire injury, Injury/Injury detail, and Pandemic/Epidemic

Moderate: Alcoholism, Homophobia, Infertility, Miscarriage, Sexual content, Grief, Religious bigotry, Pregnancy, War, and Classism

Minor: Incest, Death of parent, and Abandonment

Pseudo incest

rainydaycookies's review against another edition

adventurous dark tense slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.5

There was a slow start as the reader got to know the world and characters. I didn’t know how all the pieces fit together but once I started seeing the whole story I really enjoyed this book. Very heavy on descriptions of death, blood and guts. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Gore, Miscarriage, Sexual content, Torture, Violence, Blood, Religious bigotry, Murder, Pregnancy, and War

a_novel_craving's review against another edition

adventurous emotional hopeful inspiring reflective sad tense slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Addiction, Child death, Death, Gore, Infertility, Miscarriage, Sexual content, Blood, Grief, Murder, Pregnancy, Fire/Fire injury, War, Injury/Injury detail, Classism, and Pandemic/Epidemic