Review by unbansheed - The Priory of the Orange Tree

unbansheed 's review for:

The Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon

0.5

adventurous slow-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Plot

Strong character development: No

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

I feel like this book would have benefited from having less pov characters. Some of them

(Tané, Loth)

got the short end of the stick and got virtually no character development.

Loth especially suffers from a lack of plot relevance in my opinion. His most interesting plotline was in Yscalin and that lasted 2 minutes before he escaped and then spent the rest of the story just witnessing Ead and Tané's plotlines.

The ending left me feeling very disappointed.

I didn't feel any stakes during the final battle, everything was predictable and kind of boring. You mean to tell me that basically everyone we've met in this book is present during the fight and no one important dies... Come on now. How are we supposed to be scared of the big bad dragon king if he gets defeated so easily and everything goes according to plan? All it tells me is that the threat was non existent and all that build up was for nothing.

I really wanted to love this book, but it tried to do too much with too little time. Should have been split into a series to flesh out the characters and their motivations more in my opinion.

Content Warnings