Reviews with content warning for Adult/minor relationship - The Priory of the Orange Tree

Reviews tagging 'Adult/minor relationship'

The Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon

10 reviews

amschelly153's review against another edition

adventurous challenging emotional mysterious 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

4.5

Good read overall, the pacing is a bit slower than its prequel though. I really enjoyed the character development and look forward to more journeys in this world!

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fanboyriot's review against another edition

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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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micaelacccc's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional hopeful 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? Yes

5.0

Absolutely beautiful, I loved it so much!

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caitonline's review

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adventurous challenging emotional reflective 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? No

4.5

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mostlyvoidpartiallystars's review

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adventurous dark emotional hopeful 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

4.75

Beautiful romances, heart rending tragedies, terrifying magic, political webs...this book has everything a good fantasy epic needs.

This book doesn't shy away from death, treachery, or despair, but there is still room for the tension of love, hope, and even triumph.

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rynaissanceenby's review

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adventurous emotional 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

5.0

When I first picked up this book, I thought to myself, "There's no way this book actually needs to be this long," and at 800 some pages, it's definitely the longest book I've read in some time. But I could not have been more wrong about how deserving it is of it's length. This book deserves every page it has,.

If you are looking for classic high fantasy, look no further. This book has dragons and magic and swordfighting and alchemy and everything you would expect from fantasy, but none of it feels overdone or boring. Shannon finds so many completely natural feeling ways to put new spins on various tropes. The world is incredibly rich, and I felt like I just wanted to live there forever and learn the secrets of every corner. The mythology was compelling and the way that different areas of the world interpreted events in different ways sent a clear and interesting message about unreliable narrators and the flaws of historical accounts.

Every character that's introduced feels so three dimensional and real. They all exist in shades of grey. There are pieces of them you love, pieces that make you cringe, and pieces that make your heart hurt for them. With the sheer number of characters in this book, it seems like it would be hard to keep track of them all, but all the major characters are characterized so well that they remain relatively easy to keep track of. The slight exception to this being that if one of the points of views had a long break, it sometimes took a bit of work to remember who all the important characters were there. The lesser characters are a little bit harder to keep track of, and I'm pretty sure there are some connections between the various storylines that I missed because I didn't realize, "Oh, I've heard that name before." I think this is compounded by the extensive use of fantasy names, though Shannon cleverly uses more common nicknames to help alleviate some of that (e.g. Kate short for Katryen).

As a queer person, I am always looking for representation, and I definitely found it in this book. Most of the time when I'm reading a book, there comes a point were I think to myself, "This story could really be more queer." One of my favorite moments reading this book was when I had this thought, and then about two chapters later it got beautifully queer. I really appreciate that the queerness (and how acceptable it is) is a small plot point, but it doesn't take over the story.

I was really impressed with how well the perspective switches were handled. There were a lot of moving parts, but I never felt like the story was being told in the wrong order. Clearly there was a lot of care put into when to give the reader various pieces of information.

I think my only major gripe is that sometimes it feels like things work out a little bit too conveniently for the protagonists. There are just a few too many coincidences that make what should be challenging problems a bit of a breeze. This also seemed to accelerate near the end of the story. Almost as if the end of the story was coming, so the characters didn't have time to face adversity in certain circumstances. Instead things just conveniently worked out. The main characters did also seem to have some amount of plot armor. I appreciated Shannon's willingness to kill off side characters, even important ones, but it was hard to actually believe the main characters were in danger after they had already narrowly escaped so many close calls.

Overall, I absolutely adore this book and this world. I don't give very many books 5 stars, but this is absolutely a 5 star read. I will be heartily recommending it to every avid reader I know for a long time to come.

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bel017's review

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adventurous challenging dark emotional hopeful inspiring mysterious 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

The ending is good. I feel that's critical when reading such a chonker of a book.
The story is told from the viewpoint of four different characters, which were woven together well - I was never confused as to whose viewpoint I was reading. I did get confused in some of the historical plot and side plots, but it's a huge cast of characters, with two different sides giving the same characters different names, and some having the same or similar names. The confusion didn't diminish my enjoyment though. I enjoyed it so much that, even though I literally just finished it I am very tempted to just turn back to the beginning and start all over again.

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