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A review by halfcactus
The Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon
adventurous
slow-paced
- Strong character development? No
2.0
I wanted so badly to like this (and to some degree, I did, at around the 30-50% mark!), but it became such a different book from where it started.
Charitably: I have read het high fantasies that I actively hated. At least this book had an attractive women-centric aesthetic, a canon f/f main pairing (that I did root for), cool action scenes, and some very interesting side characters! In fact I wish this had just focused on the main romance and let them have the chemistry and personalities they deserve, instead of letting the plot take that away from them.
THOUGHTS:
1.
The way that book has 1) the East and South as non-white regions while having real-life analogs, 2) the writing feeling supremely Eurocentric and white is uncomfortable to me, especially because they each feel like a mishmash of cultures/stereotypes lumped together. Specifically the language feels too Eurocentric even in POVs where the characters are from ~the East~. I’m putting this down as weak writing & worldbuilding, the geopolitics was not thought out.
It's also annoying to me that there's this talk about different languages and writing systems, but the only ~linguistic~ difference that is reflected in the text is that the characters from Virtudom and the South have a derogatory word for dragons ("wyrms").
2.
Ostensibly the point of dividing the book into these POVs is so you can get a sense of their different cultures and perspectives. Their different cultures and beliefs SHOULD BE points of major conflict, to the extent that they affect diplomatic relations, but other than Niclays, it's all so... toothless between the main characters?!? They just talk it out for friendship or the greater good, which is not really what I expected from an adult epic fantasy??? (Loth does grapple with his worldview being challenged, but everything else is just too neat. Maybe it's because I played too much Suikoden as a child haha.)
3.
Because the worldbuilding was just fantasy elements superimposed over existing countries and cultures, pieces of it didn't feel like it fit with the others. I was a little confused with the concept of queendom/matriarchal society that was still built on some sort of patriarchal system? I think it is meant to criticize many different aspects of Christianity, but with religious things you need more nuance than "ALL OF CHRISTIANITY was wrong, while the other religions were completely right about everything" as the message. There is a similar moral flatness to the rest of the novel which makes it a lot less interesting to me.
4.
I really struggled with the syntax and writing, which I felt didn't flow very well and definitely had parts I couldn't follow no matter how many times I reread them. The author didn't have a good grasp on which parts should be written down, and which can be left implied. And sometimes there were just passages that were very confusing when they didn't have to be.
5.
The character writing fell into the trap of women being too competent to have room for growth. With the exception of Tane, who was around much less, most of the development went to Loth and Roos, who were much more flawed, even though Roos' "development" was so ham-handed. On the other hand, if you like competent women who help each other out, this has an abundance of them!
6.
Plot is... uneven? It sets up a large and complicated backstory, but then at the present day it's plot convenience after plot convenience and sudden infodumps about how a character has come to this information because of a childhood mishap years and years ago lol.
Charitably: I have read het high fantasies that I actively hated. At least this book had an attractive women-centric aesthetic, a canon f/f main pairing (that I did root for), cool action scenes, and some very interesting side characters! In fact I wish this had just focused on the main romance and let them have the chemistry and personalities they deserve, instead of letting the plot take that away from them.
THOUGHTS:
1.
The way that book has 1) the East and South as non-white regions while having real-life analogs, 2) the writing feeling supremely Eurocentric and white is uncomfortable to me, especially because they each feel like a mishmash of cultures/stereotypes lumped together. Specifically the language feels too Eurocentric even in POVs where the characters are from ~the East~. I’m putting this down as weak writing & worldbuilding, the geopolitics was not thought out.
It's also annoying to me that there's this talk about different languages and writing systems, but the only ~linguistic~ difference that is reflected in the text is that the characters from Virtudom and the South have a derogatory word for dragons ("wyrms").
2.
Ostensibly the point of dividing the book into these POVs is so you can get a sense of their different cultures and perspectives. Their different cultures and beliefs SHOULD BE points of major conflict, to the extent that they affect diplomatic relations, but other than Niclays, it's all so... toothless between the main characters?!? They just talk it out for friendship or the greater good, which is not really what I expected from an adult epic fantasy??? (Loth does grapple with his worldview being challenged, but everything else is just too neat. Maybe it's because I played too much Suikoden as a child haha.)
3.
Because the worldbuilding was just fantasy elements superimposed over existing countries and cultures, pieces of it didn't feel like it fit with the others. I was a little confused with the concept of queendom/matriarchal society that was still built on some sort of patriarchal system? I think it is meant to criticize many different aspects of Christianity, but with religious things you need more nuance than "ALL OF CHRISTIANITY was wrong, while the other religions were completely right about everything" as the message. There is a similar moral flatness to the rest of the novel which makes it a lot less interesting to me.
4.
I really struggled with the syntax and writing, which I felt didn't flow very well and definitely had parts I couldn't follow no matter how many times I reread them. The author didn't have a good grasp on which parts should be written down, and which can be left implied. And sometimes there were just passages that were very confusing when they didn't have to be.
5.
The character writing fell into the trap of women being too competent to have room for growth. With the exception of Tane, who was around much less, most of the development went to Loth and Roos, who were much more flawed, even though Roos' "development" was so ham-handed. On the other hand, if you like competent women who help each other out, this has an abundance of them!
6.
Plot is... uneven? It sets up a large and complicated backstory, but then at the present day it's plot convenience after plot convenience and sudden infodumps about how a character has come to this information because of a childhood mishap years and years ago lol.