The Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
This book was just okay. I didn’t feel like it lived up to the hype and I really wanted it to.
The plot was very intricate, as you would expect from a high fantasy novel, and I liked how thought out it was. However, I found the magic system to be a tad confusing with (unless I misunderstood) some inconsistencies, or concepts not fully explained. It has a very sluggish start as well. It wasn’t until about page 200 that I actually started to get into it. Then the ending was a bit abrupt. I felt that the ending fight scene was rushed through. She could have slowed it down and expanded it to include more detail and intensity. It just felt weird that there was way more thought and focus put on the exposition than the climax, which is expected to be the most exciting part of the book.
I liked the characters, but I didn’t absolutely love any of them. The one character I liked the most (Loth) hardly got any “screentime” and there was one character in particular that I just detested (Niclays). To be honest though, I kind of liked the reasons I disliked his character. He was selfish and cowardly, which make me despise him, but realistically, there are a lot of people in the world who would act like him, so I actually found it kind of refreshing that he wasn’t your typical hero. Another thing I found kind of annoying is that she did a lot of “telling” and not a lot of “showing” when it came to her likable characters. She would have other characters describe someone over and over as “kind” or “heroic” and you’d hardly ever see that character acting that way, you’d just have to take everyone’s word for it.
Overall, I didn’t hate it, but I didn’t love it. I think Shannon made a wonderful masterpiece that she should be proud of, I just was not my cup of tea.