Reviews with content warning for Xenophobia - The Priory of the Orange Tree

Reviews tagging 'Xenophobia'

The Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon

119 reviews

rubybastille's review against another edition

adventurous challenging emotional tense medium-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

5.0

I don’t read a lot of epic fantasy nor do I tend to read gigantic books. I’m glad I made an exception for this one. It had a couple pacing issues and convenient coincidences, but I’d much sooner take an imperfect but still *really good and enjoyable* single volume over a strung-out (and possibly never completed) series. I loved the contrasts in religions and cultures and the way different POV characters learned key plot points at different times. I also loved how it felt like a completely new fantasy experience, from Roos’ character arc to Tane’s relationship with both her dragon and her nation to Sabran’s mental health struggles.

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ssmylie's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional mysterious tense medium-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? No

5.0

“I do not sleep because I am not only afraid of the monsters at my door, but also of the monsters my own mind can conjure. The ones that live within.”

This was easily a 5 star read for me. I highly recommend it.

I haven’t read a high fantasy novel in a while. I’ve been scared to invest time into their lengthy stories and juggle the demands of my personal life. But, when I started to read Samantha Shannon’s “Priory of the Orange Tree”, I knew that I had to sit down with this book for about a month to get to the end of this book. And that’s what I did. Throughout the month of June, I was captivated by Shannon’s world with strong, young, talented women characters and their allies who are fighting against sexism, ageism, and past traditions to end the greatest evil in the world “The Nameless One.” Also, they are doing this in a world that was divided by their ancestors. So, they were going through A LOT. I was really into the world building, how the stories shaked out, and the ending had me in a chokehold the whole time but I’m glad it ended well!

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ka_cam's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional hopeful mysterious fast-paced

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

3.5

This is a solid fantasy read- if you’re looking for a fantasy world where sexism, racism, and homophobia just don’t exist (women characters in all kinds of major and minor roles, characters of all colors, queer/same sex relationships central and generally completely normalized) in a clear but not overwrought way this is a great choice! Outside of that it was a pretty average plot, a bit predictable, and somehow not as satisfying an ending as I was hoping for. Given that a decent amount of fantasy is p openly sexist and racist though it is refreshing on that end. It’s giant but a great choice for a summer/beach read.

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sofipitch's review against another edition

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adventurous 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 was fine. I'm not sure I would have finished it if it wasn't an audiobook which I could listen to while driving to work or at work. I did consider DNFing and what saved it was the first dragon appearance. This book has a TON of lore, at least the first 5 hours just feels like being hit with a firehose, and at the same times lots of parts of the world still felt undeveloped. I think the world Shannon created was maybe too large and as a result, a lot of the countries and cultures of color were the ones that suffered, as opposed to Innys, the England stand in. I actually thought I was stupid and had just missed a lot at the beginning, bc the beginning has 3/4 of the POVs all being different ppl from different cultures entering a new one and commenting on it, but no there just wasn't much. This got a lot of praise for having lots of characters of color but I only thought it was okay in effort there.
There are also a lot of potentially interesting scenes that aren't shown on screen, such as the water trials, competitions to determine if you are skilled enough to be a dragon rider. You get scenes of Tané stressing about them but not the scenes itself. Shannon likes writing exposition a lot, very obviously not action, which for an 800+ page epic is not great. A lot of information is given to you only as it is relevant, and directly from the characters in dialogue. There is no sense of the readers figuring anything out. The villains are 1-D just plain evil and pretty boring. I did end up caring for the characters but that did take a while for me to get into. Overall, entertaining, it was a throw back to the kind of huge fantasy novels I remember reading as a kid, but nothing special

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atalea's review against another edition

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adventurous dark mysterious slow-paced

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

4.25

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goldenluck's review against another edition

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adventurous slow-paced

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

3.0

A solid 3 star. Enjoyable, but definitely has its flaws. I don't think it needed to be 800 pages at all, it could have been much more concise. I did notice some plot holes, but it could be that they were explained but lost in the pages upon pages upon pages of seemingly not important stuff going on. Characters would appear and fall away pretty much at the demand of the plot, and it was so difficult to keep track of who was related to who and who was in charge of what. The writing was beautiful though, and the amount of development the characters went through was shockingly impressive. Honestly, it's just too long. I think people just rate it highly because it is decent and to make it seem worth slugging through. I can't recommend it though honestly, unless you're desperately in need for some lesbians and dragons and have 30+ days to spend on reading this doorstopper.

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