Reviews tagging 'Toxic relationship'

The Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon

17 reviews

eni_iilorak's review against another edition

adventurous hopeful mysterious tense medium-paced

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

4.75

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Confinement, Death, Emotional abuse, Infertility, Misogyny, Physical abuse, Toxic relationship, Violence, Xenophobia, Blood, Trafficking, Kidnapping, Religious bigotry, Pregnancy, Fire/Fire injury, Gaslighting, War, and Injury/Injury detail

Moderate: Gun violence, Mental illness, Miscarriage, Torture, Medical content, Dementia, Lesbophobia, Alcohol, Classism, and Pandemic/Epidemic

Minor: Cursing, Infidelity, and Sexual content

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

fluffy_comet's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious slow-paced

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

3.5

What started out as a beautiful feminist reshaping of the classic sweeping fantasy novel got bogged down by too much worldbuilding (I cannot believe I'm saying this as a worldbuilding lover???) and too many characters. 130 characters in 800 pages? That's a new character every 6 pages. Absolutely bonkers. The characters were loveable and the ending bittersweet; but like many things in this book, the ending was dragged out a few chapters too long. Felt it truly for lost in the weeds towards the end - specially when the author suddenly relied on mantages for important fights, had a character make EXTREMELY SUDDEN mindset changes 3 times in a row within 3 pages, referred to a character (Tané) we've known from THE FIRST PAGE as a completely different word/name, and took way too long for the main conflict to pay off. I should not have 70 pages left and wonder when the fight they've been eluding to for the last 730 pages is going to start! Other than those (honestly large) issues, I did enjoy the book and grow to live the characters. Mostly. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child death, Confinement, Death, Emotional abuse, Gore, Infertility, Infidelity, Mental illness, Miscarriage, Misogyny, Physical abuse, Self harm, Sexism, Sexual content, Slavery, Torture, Toxic relationship, Violence, Blood, Vomit, Medical content, Trafficking, Grief, Religious bigotry, Death of parent, Murder, Pregnancy, Fire/Fire injury, Toxic friendship, Abandonment, War, and Injury/Injury detail

filipa_maia's review against another edition

adventurous challenging emotional hopeful inspiring mysterious sad tense 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? It's complicated

5.0

This book just made its way in to my all time favorites.

Despite the heavy world-building, the long list of characters, the very different settings that are described, this book is extremely easy to read. You can easily fall in love with these characters even though you are constantly aware of their flaws.

In the end I was so scared that my favorite characters were going to die that I didn't want to finish the book. That's how much I started to like these fictional people (and non-people too).

I can't wait to read more stories in this world.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal cruelty, Animal death, Child death, Death, Emotional abuse, Miscarriage, Sexual content, Violence, Blood, Medical content, Grief, Religious bigotry, Death of parent, Murder, Pregnancy, Gaslighting, Abandonment, War, Injury/Injury detail, and Classism

Moderate: Confinement, Gun violence, Torture, Toxic relationship, Vomit, Toxic friendship, and Alcohol

Minor: Infidelity

mscalls's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark inspiring reflective sad tense 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? Yes

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Alcoholism, Animal cruelty, Animal death, Bullying, Child death, Death, Emotional abuse, Gore, Infidelity, Miscarriage, Misogyny, Physical abuse, Sexual content, Torture, Toxic relationship, Violence, Xenophobia, Blood, Vomit, Medical content, Grief, Religious bigotry, Death of parent, Murder, Pregnancy, Fire/Fire injury, Alcohol, War, Injury/Injury detail, Classism, and Pandemic/Epidemic

achay91's review against another edition

adventurous challenging emotional 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

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Body horror, Chronic illness, Death, Miscarriage, Toxic relationship, Blood, Religious bigotry, Toxic friendship, War, Injury/Injury detail, Classism, and Pandemic/Epidemic

Moderate: Gore, Death of parent, Murder, and Pregnancy

Minor: Alcoholism, Child death, Sexual content, Forced institutionalization, and Alcohol

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

singalana's review

adventurous inspiring lighthearted medium-paced

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

2.5

I feel cheated after reading this book: a long book with a very little payoff to the reader. This is a fantasy story of opposites: east and west, good dragons and bad dragons. It’s also a story about tradition, prophecies and expectations - and the way these things affect the POV characters’ lives.

We follow four POV characters: Ead, Tané, Loth and Niclays, but not in equal measure. At first the chapters are divided evenly between East and West (since 2 of the POV characters are from East and 2 from West), later in the book that structure is abandoned. The main POV characters (Tané and Ead) seem to be better at things than the people surrounding them: a student that is top of her class and a magician secretly protecting the queen. And I can’t stress this enough how I did not care about the other two POV characters. Something was missing and I could not connect with the characters, and especially towards the end they seemed to lose the little personality they had managed to gather in the beginning of the book.

The story is classic fantasy material: an ancient evil rises and the protagonists must work together to stop it. The other thing about this book that is too familiar is that just when things are starting to look up for the character, then disaster strikes. It’s a bit predictable and annoying. Considering the story, I found the choice of POV characters and the events this book focuses on a bit strange. There were many interesting elements I would have liked to know more about, but they were barely even discussed (like what was going on in Yscalin). Then there are things that seem like they are going to play a part in the book but are abandoned (like the rivalry between Tané and Turosa). There are same-sex romances in this book, but they too are strangely executed.

Why the hell is this book called The Priory of the Orange Tree, when barely nothing takes place in the Priory?

My main gripe about this book was the pacing. Sometimes scenes that feel important to the plot are written like: blink and you'll miss it, and then there are pages after pages of something trivial. It got a lot worse towards the end: 500 pages of barely nothing happening, and then everything happens all at once. 

The villains in this book could have been interesting, but we barely see some of them (the king of Yscalin for example), the others (e.g. Kalyba) are too busy doing monologues, and the Biggest and Baddest Villain of them all and the reason why all of this is happening is defeated just like that. We barely even get a description of it!

The ending was so confusing and over so quickly that I think that the author must have realised that she had written 500 pages already and hadn’t resolved anything. And in the end, everything got resolved so easily, the POV characters instinctively knew what to do, the evil was defeated and everyone lived happily ever after. What a disappointment.

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Content Warnings

Minor: Addiction, Animal death, Body horror, Child death, Confinement, Death, Infertility, Infidelity, Mental illness, Miscarriage, Toxic relationship, Violence, Blood, Kidnapping, Death of parent, Pregnancy, Fire/Fire injury, Alcohol, War, and Deportation

americiumam's review against another edition

adventurous challenging emotional inspiring 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

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Mental illness, Miscarriage, Panic attacks/disorders, Xenophobia, Grief, and Religious bigotry

Moderate: Addiction, Cursing, Incest, Infertility, Infidelity, Racism, Sexual content, Slavery, Suicidal thoughts, Toxic relationship, Violence, Dementia, Death of parent, Murder, Pregnancy, Fire/Fire injury, Outing, Sexual harassment, War, and Classism

Minor: Genocide, Gun violence, Incest, Misogyny, Racism, Rape, Vomit, Medical content, Medical trauma, Stalking, Suicide attempt, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , Fire/Fire injury, Gaslighting, and Abandonment

smithreads's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional funny mysterious reflective sad tense slow-paced

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

4.75

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal death, Death, Infertility, Miscarriage, Physical abuse, Sexual content, Violence, Xenophobia, Blood, Medical content, Kidnapping, Grief, Religious bigotry, Death of parent, Murder, Pregnancy, Fire/Fire injury, War, and Injury/Injury detail

Moderate: Addiction, Alcoholism, Confinement, Emotional abuse, Homophobia, Suicide, Toxic relationship, and Alcohol

Minor: Gun violence, Infidelity, and Torture