Reviews tagging 'Terminal illness'

The Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon

15 reviews

hannahpings's review against another edition

adventurous emotional hopeful inspiring fast-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? No

3.75

i grappled with the rating on this one a little bit, because in terms of likability and recommendation, this book is a solid four to five stars: i loved it! i was engaged the whole time! i dragged my feet finishing it because i was sad it's over! i still am!

at the same time though, for me it's cursed with having been a good book that also could have been better. overall, priory's pacing is good––it comes out swinging and still manages a good amount exposition, the action is well-timed, it's engaging every step of the way––but there are significant gaps and skips throughout, and especially so in the final third. journeys that once took immense narrative tolls and lasted close to 40 pages are reduced to quotidian, one-sentence tasks that seem to exist only because not mentioning them would render the plot unadvanceable. characters make choices that, while you can see how they might make sense given the adequate development, are complete opposites of their intentions up until that point without the text taking the time or putting in the work to achieve that development. things that are given immense weight and word counts early on are not held to the same standard later and are treated like whims, if they're acknowledged at all. (the story's climax is overly convenient too, but it was an emotionally satisfying one, even if a little more mess was to be desired.)

samantha shannon has created a worthy fantasy epic; it's a wold i don't want to leave, a necessary addition to the genre, and one both accessible (even for folks who don't like fantasy or who may be revisiting it for the first time in years) and that made me excited to have to flip to the map or appendices every few pages. all the same, it's hard not to feel that by the end of the book, shannon was ready to be done with it, and glossed over chunks of the narrative accordingly. priory is a story and scope worthy of three, 300–400-page books, and it's hard to understand why it wasn't given the adequate time to breathe and grow into itself.

ultimately though, that's not my decision, and in the end i'm still happy with what we got: something relatively well-written, intercultural and anti-hegemonic, compelling and whose characters it's impossible not to root for, and to whose world i can't wait to return.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal death, Bullying, Death, Gore, Incest, Infertility, Infidelity, Miscarriage, Racism, Sexual content, Terminal illness, Violence, Xenophobia, Blood, Medical content, Kidnapping, Grief, Religious bigotry, Medical trauma, Pregnancy, Fire/Fire injury, Alcohol, War, Injury/Injury detail, Classism, and Pandemic/Epidemic

Moderate: Alcoholism, Panic attacks/disorders, Rape, Suicide, Torture, Trafficking, and Death of parent

incest/rape:

one character adopts and raises a baby boy as her own, acting as and ultimately becoming his mother. when he gets older, she decides she is interested in him both romantically and sexually, pursues him, and he rejects her advances, telling her he would never consent to either. she is a shapeshifter, and takes on the appearance of the woman in whom he is interested. under the impression that she is someone else, he begins a sexual relationship with her, they marry, and she has a child. she then reveals her true identity to him.

if you would like to know the characters, they are

kalyba and galian

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fanboyriot's review against another edition

adventurous slow-paced

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

3.5

Read For:

Dragons

Slow Burn

Fantasy Map

Sapphic Romance

High Fantasy (but make it queer)

I definitely have some mixed feelings about this book.  I wanted to love it but it fell more flat for me than anything else.  It was just kinda meh.  It wasn’t bad but I also just didn’t fall into the hype about it either.  I was a bit bored at times, honestly.

While the worldbuilding/setting was done really well the characters overall just lacked personality.  I found myself confused as to who was who for more than half of the book, which might be more of a me thing than anything else, but even then I just didn't really care for any of them.  I am much more of a character person than a world-building person.

Then there were some chapters that just dragged out, and while in the beginning, it was fine.  It's high fantasy and that's expected to get to know the world and everything but it was no better by the last chapter.

However, I didn’t totally hate this book either.  I really liked how the Queen was the one running things.  It was super nice to read a high fantasy without it being majorly sexist or borderline creepy.  Plus it had some queer relationships as well, a sapphic relationship being the main hype of the book besides the dragons.  And lastly the dragons, I loved how they were written into the story, how they interacted with their riders, and the bond they shared.

Overall, if you're a fan of high fantasy and want to see some queer rep within the book then I recommend this to you.  However, if you’re more like me, where contemporary books have taken over your tbr, then I probably wouldn't recommend it to you.

POV: Switching, Third Person

Spice: 🌶️🌶️🌶️

Rep: Queer MCs, Queer SCs, Sapphic (main), Achillean (side), Aspec MC

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Alcoholism, Animal cruelty, Body horror, Child death, Confinement, Death, Gore, Infertility, Miscarriage, Sexual content, Torture, Violence, Xenophobia, Blood, Medical content, Grief, Religious bigotry, Death of parent, Murder, Pregnancy, Fire/Fire injury, War, Injury/Injury detail, and Pandemic/Epidemic

Moderate: Addiction, Animal death, Bullying, Domestic abuse, Emotional abuse, Genocide, Homophobia, Incest, Infidelity, Mental illness, Misogyny, Physical abuse, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, Terminal illness, Kidnapping, Medical trauma, Suicide attempt, Outing, Gaslighting, Alcohol, and Classism

Minor: Adult/minor relationship, Cursing, Drug use, Panic attacks/disorders, Rape, Self harm, Sexism, Sexual assault, Toxic relationship, Excrement, and Dementia

tyr2607's review against another edition

adventurous challenging emotional hopeful mysterious 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

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child death, Death, and Violence

Moderate: Child death, Chronic illness, Gun violence, Hate crime, Infertility, Mental illness, Terminal illness, Death of parent, Murder, and Pregnancy

talonsontypewriters's review

adventurous emotional 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

4.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Gore, Violence, Xenophobia, Blood, Grief, Religious bigotry, Murder, Fire/Fire injury, War, and Injury/Injury detail

Moderate: Alcoholism, Animal cruelty, Animal death, Confinement, Drug use, Gun violence, Infertility, Miscarriage, Misogyny, Sexism, Sexual content, Suicidal thoughts, Terminal illness, Torture, Medical content, Dementia, Kidnapping, Death of parent, Pregnancy, Alcohol, and Classism

Minor: Child death, Domestic abuse, Incest, Infidelity, Pedophilia, Rape, Self harm, Suicide, Excrement, and Vomit

Illness, epidemic.

this__nerd's review against another edition

adventurous emotional funny tense slow-paced

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

3.5

This book has a very good story. I was a fan of Ead and Tané. This book also has very good world building. The descriptions of the geographic locations were rich and detailed, and the descriptions of the dragons were lovingly depicted. This book doesn’t get a higher rating from me for two reasons: 1) there are characters who exist solely to create motivation for other characters and then are thrown away. I felt the way this was done was haphazard and unconvincing. 2) the pacing is very inconsistent. This book could not decide whether it wanted to move quickly or slowly so it simply switched back and forth. This makes it hard to spend time developing the relationships between characters while also pushing the plot forward. I feel like this should have been 2 five hundred page books rather than one 800 page book.

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Infertility, Miscarriage, Terminal illness, Grief, Death of parent, Murder, and Injury/Injury detail

Minor: Confinement and Pregnancy

unsuccessfulbookclub's review

adventurous challenging emotional hopeful 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

4.0

I’m going to do my best to condense this absolute unit of a book into a succinct review. Here goes -

Likes:

All my favorite fantasy tropes: magical weapons, quests, DRAGONS, political intrigue, royals, spies, mages, witches, religion and myth. It’s all there. It’s also queer-normative with a gorgeous sapphic romance subplot and other world…EVEN WITH pressure to continue a bloodline happening in several ways. 

The depth of portrayal around how religion and myths get told and perpetuated was excellent. No one point of view was fully accurate in portraying the world these characters were functioning in and also none of the points of view were portrayed as morally superior to any other. It is clear where each of these societies gets their dominant views and the shortcomings of each come through, yet the ending is hopeful and ultimately collaborative.

The prose is beautiful. Some lines struck right to my heart. I’ve included a few in the slides for your enjoyment.

There’s a plague!

Dislikes:

This story would have hit harder as a trilogy. I was desperate for more details of particular parts of this narrative: Tane training with her dragon, the Unending Emperor, Niclays and Jannart’s backstory. 

Because it’s all in one book, some of the parts of the story felt a little rushed or too tidy. I suppose if your biggest gripe is that you wanted more, that’s a good thing!

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Body horror, Child death, Death, Miscarriage, Terminal illness, Xenophobia, Kidnapping, Religious bigotry, Pregnancy, Fire/Fire injury, War, and Injury/Injury detail

meg_sc's review against another edition

adventurous emotional medium-paced

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

5.0

This book is kind of enormous. I say kind of, because I've been reading the Stormlight Archive books as they've come out, which means I've almost lost perspective for how long books should be. I really loved this book, especially how it challenged assumptions of what high fantasy should be, but without feeling too much like the characters have been transplanted from our world. Ead and Tané's storylines seemed to mirror each other beautifully, and sometimes tragically. I appreciated the friendships between the characters (mainly that Shannon doesn't fall into the 'not like the other girls' trap that YA fantasy authors seem to run into full force), and I also enjoyed the twist on familiar stories like St. George and the Dragon. My one complaint is that the middle of the book is a little 'shocking death' heavy. Overall, I really enjoyed this and am looking forward to reading more of Samantha Shannon's work. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Miscarriage, Terminal illness, Murder, Pregnancy, War, and Injury/Injury detail

fatherprozac's review against another edition

adventurous emotional hopeful mysterious reflective sad 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

4.5

I really enjoyed this book's female characters and the lack of homophobia, racism in relation to skin color, and blatant misogyny (other than that toward Sabran) in the world. It feels very socially modern and so it managed to capture me in a way that many other fantasy books haven't. Overall, a great story. I do wish that

Tane's part of the story had been bigger, I found myself frustrated at the clear focus on the West's side of the narrative. I also wish we had seen more of Nayimathun--even the book itself points out how often she and Tane are separated.  I also despised the long chapters surrounding Niclays as I personally found him extremely unlikeable--which may have been the point, but they were a chore nonetheless. Finally, the climax of actually fighting the Nameless One was a bit disappointing for me, pretty anticlimactic.

 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Body horror, Death, Domestic abuse, Gore, Incest, Infertility, Infidelity, Miscarriage, Sexual content, Suicidal thoughts, Terminal illness, Torture, Violence, Xenophobia, Blood, Medical content, Dementia, Grief, Religious bigotry, Death of parent, Murder, Pregnancy, Fire/Fire injury, War, Injury/Injury detail, and Classism

Moderate: Alcoholism, Animal death, Confinement, Cursing, Kidnapping, Abandonment, and Alcohol

quinn24's review against another edition

adventurous emotional inspiring 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

3.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Misogyny, Violence, Xenophobia, Suicide attempt, Fire/Fire injury, War, and Injury/Injury detail

Moderate: Alcoholism, Gun violence, Miscarriage, Terminal illness, Medical content, Kidnapping, Death of parent, Murder, and Classism

Minor: Infertility, Sexual content, and Dementia

prettiestwhistles's review against another edition

adventurous emotional 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? No

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Violence, and Murder

Moderate: Mental illness, Miscarriage, Sexual content, Terminal illness, Pregnancy, and War

Minor: Incest and Religious bigotry