A review by seastheday
The Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon

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

3.5

This book is NOT for the feint of heart. You must be willing to wade through almost 200 pages of world-building since there are 4 main characters. There are 2 maps, a glossary of terms & a glossary of people from the east/west/south. This may be a popular BookTok book, but make no mistake- it is HIGH fantasy with romance dappled in here and there. And since this is a standalone as well, most of the things you learn only will apply to ONE book. A tome of a book, yes, but still just one. Also, I have beef with everyone who was like “it has dragons!!” The dragons are barely in it until almost page 740. There is a lot of politicking, speaking of, and debating dragons. But for the actual dragons I expected… barely anything. The idea of them spurred different plot lines on here and there. But was the dragon present and being bad ass? NO. I was really disappointed on that front. You mostly spend your time with a mopey queen, a jerk of a fake grandfather, a mage clouded by love to actually do what she should & a ghost of a dragon rider who doesn’t have a dragon most of the time. 
I think it was a cool concept. I definitely enjoyed that it was normalized in the society for queens to rule, the line of succession was only based on eldest & not gender, race wasn’t an issue it was merely regional (it wouldn’t be so regional if the plague didn’t exist), & there were sapphic storylines.
All in all, I liked this book. It was interesting. Near the 650pg mark,  I did wish it was over. I didn’t find myself WANTING to pick it up. I wanted to READ and that’s a huge difference for me. I didn’t give up  because I felt like it had to be worth it in the end. I don’t think it was. The entire book mounted to this huge end battle and it wasn’t amazing or unbelievable. It was predictable and nothing shocking occurred.
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