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A review by leona
The Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon
adventurous
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? Yes
2.0
I let this book sit for a bit before I wrote a full review, because I wasn't entirely sure how I felt about it or what I wanted to write. Now, I'm still not sure what I want to write and I barely even remember how I feel about this book, not to mention I've forgotten like half of the plot and characters, and maybe that already sums up the majority of my feeling towards this book. Prepare for a big long rant.
Firstly, the characters. For the first half of the book, the only character I vaguely cared about was Niclays, the alchemist, because he had some interesting backstory and potential villain arc. He also had a few witty one-liners and was a pretty funny character at the start. My main problem was that we were introduced to like 100 characters in the first 100 pages. The beginning was so incredibly slow and boring, despite having a good opening couple of chapters, because every page damn it I was introduced to another 5 characters, with long, uninteresting and complicated names that I couldn't even remember. Now half of these characters are important for the later story, and half of them never show up again. This slows start made some of the plot reveals later completely uninteresting and almost irrelevant, for example, Igrain Crest being named as the traitor or whatever it was, because I didn't even remember who this Crest lady was and had no feelings towards her at all. Some of the characters became more interesting towards the end, I liked Ead and Tame, was meh towards Loth and still enjoyed Niclays arc. My god the scene where he finds out that Truyde is also dead is pretty heartbreaking. But I still didn't really feel that connected to any of the characters. For the majority of the first half to 2/3 of the book I found myself thinking, why do I care? I don't care whether they defeat the Nameless One, and I don't care if these characters die. Speaking of the Nameless One, this is another reason I found myself not caring. Our central villain to the plot barely makes an appearance until the tiny battle at the end and it has no motivations for being evil. It just is. No satisfying moral greyness, it's just evil because it is, but we don't really see it being that evil, no. The evil people are mostly the humans in the book doing things for the name of their religion or occasionally a 'wyrm' that comes in the nick of time to cause some chaos.
Now that brings me on to character deaths... Now, I feel quite mixed on this front. Some of them were good, and some of them were not. Most were used for shock value, and again, most of them I didn't really care about because I had no strong connections to any of the characters in the story, let alone the dead side characters. I found Kit's death, Truyde's, Sulyard's and Sabran's prince fella (sorry can't remember his name) to be relatively sad and I think the characters reactions to their friends death's were relatively realistic (but their could have been more grieving with some characters). Death's like Susa's (Tame's friend) however, were so egh. I don't care that you have told me she was your childhood friend. I've only seen you interact with her twice when you unloaded a criminal on her to preserve your own future. I don't care about Turosa your childhood bully, all he did was give you a few mean comments and he was never mentioned again. And there were no deaths in the main cast particularly either. And some parts were so messy.
Eg: When I thought Nayimathun had died (cause she was bleeding and just fell in the ocean after saying her last words or whatever) and just springs out magically alive to save Tame's arse again. Okay fine, the water saved you and now you're alive again. Great.
Or Margaret's fella, did he die? I don't think he did because it said he would live with a scar, but then Loth bursts in and says 'He's gone' or something and I'm like who? I think he meant the Nameless One but I was just confused.
And then that ending. WHAT THE HELL. Is Tame dead or not? Why has she woken up with a bloody great gash in her side? With absolutely no explanation at all! This is meant to be a stand-alone! What? I was pissed off.
Action: there was some, most of it came when the 'wyrms' decided to show up out of nowhere because the author felt like she needed to make the plot more interesting. However, the pirates that I didn't care about at the start at all actually became quite interesting and the plot line with Tame at the end was pretty cool. I also enjoyed the final battle although I think it was too short (it was only like 20 pages after about 700 pages of build-up. Generally, I don't feel like this was a very action-heavy story.
Now I must talk about something else, the quote on the back claiming this is a 'feminist Lord of the Rings'. Now I can see some similarities between this story and the Lord of the Rings including the ancient evil that hasn't really got any motivations for being evil, the magical items that will save the world, and the large cast of characters but really, it's nothing like it at all. I hate these kind of quotes on books. And just because it has a cast of characters including some strong women and a queendom, it doesn't make it necessarily feminist. Sure there were a few good quotes and one-liners but mostly this was about a woman running a queendom still in the wake of a patriarchy. The ideas of religion and how religious views can conflict with others I thought were pretty interesting. I just felt there needed to be more, more 'feminist' stuff, more character development.
Overall, I was going to rate this book 3.5 stars, but I decided to lower it to a 2, which on goodreads equates to: 'it was ok'. And it was. It was just ok. And considering this long rant review I really just couldn't justify giving it 3.5.
Firstly, the characters. For the first half of the book, the only character I vaguely cared about was Niclays, the alchemist, because he had some interesting backstory and potential villain arc. He also had a few witty one-liners and was a pretty funny character at the start. My main problem was that we were introduced to like 100 characters in the first 100 pages. The beginning was so incredibly slow and boring, despite having a good opening couple of chapters, because every page damn it I was introduced to another 5 characters, with long, uninteresting and complicated names that I couldn't even remember. Now half of these characters are important for the later story, and half of them never show up again. This slows start made some of the plot reveals later completely uninteresting and almost irrelevant,
Now that brings me on to character deaths... Now, I feel quite mixed on this front. Some of them were good, and some of them were not. Most were used for shock value, and again, most of them I didn't really care about because I had no strong connections to any of the characters in the story,
Eg: When I thought Nayimathun had died (cause she was bleeding and just fell in the ocean after saying her last words or whatever) and just springs out magically alive to save Tame's arse again. Okay fine, the water saved you and now you're alive again. Great.
Or Margaret's fella, did he die? I don't think he did because it said he would live with a scar, but then Loth bursts in and says 'He's gone' or something and I'm like who? I think he meant the Nameless One but I was just confused.
And then that ending. WHAT THE HELL. Is Tame dead or not? Why has she woken up with a bloody great gash in her side? With absolutely no explanation at all! This is meant to be a stand-alone! What? I was pissed off.
Action: there was some, most of it came when the 'wyrms' decided to show up out of nowhere because the author felt like she needed to make the plot more interesting. However, the pirates that I didn't care about at the start at all actually became quite interesting and the plot line with Tame at the end was pretty cool. I also enjoyed the final battle although I think it was too short (it was only like 20 pages after about 700 pages of build-up. Generally, I don't feel like this was a very action-heavy story.
Now I must talk about something else, the quote on the back claiming this is a 'feminist Lord of the Rings'. Now I can see some similarities between this story and the Lord of the Rings including the ancient evil that hasn't really got any motivations for being evil, the magical items that will save the world, and the large cast of characters but really, it's nothing like it at all. I hate these kind of quotes on books. And just because it has a cast of characters including some strong women and a queendom, it doesn't make it necessarily feminist. Sure there were a few good quotes and one-liners but mostly this was about a woman running a queendom still in the wake of a patriarchy. The ideas of religion and how religious views can conflict with others I thought were pretty interesting. I just felt there needed to be more, more 'feminist' stuff, more character development.
Overall, I was going to rate this book 3.5 stars, but I decided to lower it to a 2, which on goodreads equates to: 'it was ok'. And it was. It was just ok. And considering this long rant review I really just couldn't justify giving it 3.5.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death, Gore, Miscarriage, and Pregnancy
Minor: Cursing and Sexual content