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A review by bennysbooks
The Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon
Did not finish book. Stopped at 15%.
I've been trying so hard to convince myself to return to this after not picking it up for about two weeks, but I can't. My mom got my sister and I copies for Christmas, so we'd agreed to do a buddy read, but I'm a weakling and a quitter (sorry Mic!)
I know I didn't get very far, but I also know my reading tastes extremely well at this point, and there is no way this book could have justified being 800 pages long. The lack of depth in the characters was a massive problem for me - I couldn't give you a character summary beyond their name/station, basically. The pacing was off, and not remotely helped by the way Shannon consistently switched perspectives as soon as the one you were reading finally began to take off. And then the East vs. West dynamic felt super shallow. The West was such a basic reflection of knights of the round table/Lady of Shalott/English-style medieval culture (the names of places, titles of people, etc. were SO painfully on-the-nose. Virtues of Knighthood? Knights of the Body? Sanctuary of Virtues? Feast of Fellowship? Mother of Maids? 😑 Would have been okay if it felt at all tongue-in-cheek, but there wasn't anything in the text that made me think that was the intent). The East seemed like it could be more interesting, but we weren't getting enough exploration yet. And the conflict between the Kingdoms seemed to boil down to "dragons are bad" vs. "dragons are good", with no real exploration of the other differences between the two?
The dragons were fucking cool, and I do want to know what is going on with them. But that alone wasn't enough to get me through the next 700-ish pages. What finally solidified the decision for me was watching Marines' review on YouTube (@mynameismarines). She listed all of the same problems that I was having, and didn't see any real resolution of those issues by the end of the book. She specifically said the book did not earn its pages in her opinion, so...
It's a shame because this cover is gorgeous, and now the prequel has a gorgeous cover too, and I wanted to love this one so I could justify buying the prequel. 😅
I know I didn't get very far, but I also know my reading tastes extremely well at this point, and there is no way this book could have justified being 800 pages long. The lack of depth in the characters was a massive problem for me - I couldn't give you a character summary beyond their name/station, basically. The pacing was off, and not remotely helped by the way Shannon consistently switched perspectives as soon as the one you were reading finally began to take off. And then the East vs. West dynamic felt super shallow. The West was such a basic reflection of knights of the round table/Lady of Shalott/English-style medieval culture (the names of places, titles of people, etc. were SO painfully on-the-nose. Virtues of Knighthood? Knights of the Body? Sanctuary of Virtues? Feast of Fellowship? Mother of Maids? 😑 Would have been okay if it felt at all tongue-in-cheek, but there wasn't anything in the text that made me think that was the intent). The East seemed like it could be more interesting, but we weren't getting enough exploration yet. And the conflict between the Kingdoms seemed to boil down to "dragons are bad" vs. "dragons are good", with no real exploration of the other differences between the two?
The dragons were fucking cool, and I do want to know what is going on with them. But that alone wasn't enough to get me through the next 700-ish pages. What finally solidified the decision for me was watching Marines' review on YouTube (@mynameismarines). She listed all of the same problems that I was having, and didn't see any real resolution of those issues by the end of the book. She specifically said the book did not earn its pages in her opinion, so...
It's a shame because this cover is gorgeous, and now the prequel has a gorgeous cover too, and I wanted to love this one so I could justify buying the prequel. 😅