Reviews tagging 'Miscarriage'

The Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon

627 reviews

berrytart's review against another edition

adventurous emotional hopeful reflective 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

4.0

i really like this book, the mix of western and eastern dragons was an amazing idea!

Sabran did annoy me for quite a while but she grew on me!

i will be getting the prequel, i absolutely love the world-building in this book

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Blood, Miscarriage, Death, Fire/Fire injury, Grief, Infertility, and Violence

Moderate: Religious bigotry, Torture, and Death of parent

macklemo77's review against another edition

adventurous challenging slow-paced

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

2.75

The premise and world is pretty basic, though the blend of East Asian dragons and Western European is pretty cool. The book has some good going for it, but ultimately suffers by trying to be too many things at once. It tries to be a pirate adventure and a training academy story and a political thriller all at once and I found myself just wanting to skip chapters to get to the stories I actually was interested in

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Suicide, Miscarriage, and Suicidal thoughts

honeys's review against another edition

slow-paced

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

3.0

Edit: I sat with this book for a couple days after finishing and I've found myself missing the characters. I changed my rating from 2 stars to 3 because of that. 

I do still believe it was unnecessarily long, but if you're someone who enjoys a long, slow build with never ending world building I believe you would enjoy this. 

It also felt silly to have an 800 page book about a terrifying monster who was defeated in 2 pages

Original: I think this book has more characters than there are people on earth. 

It was a fine enough book, but there was no need for it to be 800 pages. The story could have been told with just as much gusto with half that at most. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Miscarriage

electrachet's review against another edition

adventurous medium-paced

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

4.75

I loved this story and would definitely recommend it to anyone even remotely interested in high fantasy. The length may seem daunting at first, but I read the first half of the book in less than a day and I'm usually a slower reader. There's so much world building to really keep you engaged! However, there were a few details that keep me from giving the book 5 stars. I wish we had a tiny bit more in the way of an epilogue. Niclays Roos was also an unnecessary character in some ways and The Nameless One had very little overall participation in the book. I felt the overall "villain" (or villains) driving the plot were underdeveloped. I also wish we got to experience more of Tané's story. I felt her POV was abandoned in the middle in favor of Ead, Sabran, & Loth's stories but she was still a compelling character I wanted to get to know better. I ultimately think the confinement of the story to a single book does weaken the overall narrative. This would have been better as a duology or even a trilogy, but maybe I just wanted to spend more time with the characters in the beautifully rich world that they live in. :')

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Violence, Pandemic/Epidemic, Injury/Injury detail, and Murder

Moderate: Miscarriage, Grief, War, Infertility, Sexual content, Classism, Pregnancy, and Religious bigotry

Minor: Death of parent

torturedreadersdept's review

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: Alcohol, Animal cruelty, Blood, Cursing, Gun violence, Sexual content, Toxic relationship, Vomit, Body horror, Bullying, Xenophobia, Confinement, Dementia, Genocide, Grief, Infidelity, Misogyny, Death, Torture, Violence, War, Alcoholism, Fire/Fire injury, Infertility, Miscarriage, Animal death, Dysphoria, Murder, Pregnancy, Toxic friendship, Gaslighting, Gore, Injury/Injury detail, Religious bigotry, and Death of parent

nineinchnails's review against another edition

adventurous 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? It's complicated

4.75

i will definitely be rereading this at some point! partly because there was a lot of stuff i didn't fully understand but mostly because i enjoyed it so much. i don't think i've ever read such a rich, sprawling epic fantasy contained within one novel. the characters were complex and interesting but i wish we got a little more focus on tané and loth. they both felt less fleshed out to me than ead and roos. the only other thing that kinda bugged me was how rushed the ending felt in comparison to the rest of the book. i expected the final battle to be drawn out longer than it was so it felt almost anticlimactic but it was still tied up pretty neatly. my main priorities in fantasy are character development and worldbuilding and those elements were near perfect!!

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Fire/Fire injury, Pandemic/Epidemic, Violence, Murder, and Injury/Injury detail

Moderate: War, Pregnancy, Infertility, Miscarriage, Sexual content, Homophobia, Alcoholism, Religious bigotry, Classism, and Grief

Minor: Abandonment, Incest, and Death of parent

Pseudo incest

_ao_'s review against another edition

adventurous mysterious medium-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

4.75

My criteria for a 5 star book means it moves me to tears, so I can't give 5 stars to Priory of the Orange Tree. But it's sweeping and lore-rich, with a ton of bad-ass women leading and supporting the story. Give yourself some time to read this baby, and you'll find something to love about it. 

Also, I would have liked a tiny bit more in the way of an epilogue.

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Xenophobia, Miscarriage, and Death

Minor: Infidelity, Rape, Fire/Fire injury, Grief, Violence, Alcohol, Blood, Body horror, Cursing, Infertility, Vomit, Animal death, and Pregnancy

corrinaababee's review

adventurous tense slow-paced

• Diverse cast of characters? Yes

4.0

It took me a while to read the whole book. I’d say I got interested interested around page 500. Maybe it’s because there were four perspectives and investment was trying. Also I do feel like Roos perspective was unnecessary but overall the book was filled with adventure and was written very excellently. Ead was by far my favorite character, a true badass. 

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Miscarriage

rainydaycookies's review

adventurous dark tense 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? It's complicated

3.5

There was a slow start as the reader got to know the world and characters. I didn’t know how all the pieces fit together but once I started seeing the whole story I really enjoyed this book. Very heavy on descriptions of death, blood and guts. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Gore, Blood, Murder, Death, Violence, Torture, War, Sexual content, Pregnancy, Religious bigotry, and Miscarriage

samglade's review against another edition

The themes of 'I must give birth to a daughter; my sole goal is life is to have a baby daughter' have become too much. I've got enough of talk like this IRL.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Miscarriage