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A review by radioreadss
The Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon
4.0
I keep bouncing between giving this a four star or five star rating so I’ll put it at a tentative 4.5. Most aspects of this book I LOVED. Which is saying a lot because I am not a big high fantasy reader and tend to struggle through them. But this book was so rich in character and imagery that I genuinely had a wonderful time reading it even though I honestly was confused through a lot of it (which I put down to my inexperience with high fantasy). The imagery in this book is breathtaking and the love story between Ead and Sabran was absolutely perfect. In fact, to me, Ead’s pov/story was the most compelling part.
The aspects that brought down this book for me were some of the pov’s, the end, and the complicated world building which relied so heavily on history and legends that were so mixed up by all the different countries viewpoints. While I can admit that some of the confusion was definitely due to my own lack of experience reading high fantasy, I do think the different interpretations of the history made it a lot more confusing.
As for the pov’s, I really was most interested in Ead’s and some of the others moved a bit slow. Niclay’s especially moved slow and by the time I finished the book I felt like the plot had not gained much from his arc. It felt slightly detached from the rest of the story to me and, especially because of the way it ended, it did not feel satisfactory or like I had connected to him at all.
All that being said, I really did enjoy Priory, absolutely loved Ead and Sabran’s story, and feel more compelled to delve into high fantasy from now on.
The aspects that brought down this book for me were some of the pov’s, the end, and the complicated world building which relied so heavily on history and legends that were so mixed up by all the different countries viewpoints. While I can admit that some of the confusion was definitely due to my own lack of experience reading high fantasy, I do think the different interpretations of the history made it a lot more confusing.
As for the pov’s, I really was most interested in Ead’s and some of the others moved a bit slow. Niclay’s especially moved slow and by the time I finished the book I felt like the plot had not gained much from his arc. It felt slightly detached from the rest of the story to me and, especially because of the way it ended, it did not feel satisfactory or like I had connected to him at all.
All that being said, I really did enjoy Priory, absolutely loved Ead and Sabran’s story, and feel more compelled to delve into high fantasy from now on.