![]() Hannah knows that you don't have to create unlikeable characters to portray their flaws. (1) Mature and tight characterisations that belied the author's years of publishing. So let me just point out all the things that stood out to me. There was nothing I could fault about this at all. It was a beautiful premise, and executed perfectly. In a world of new gods and old gods, human-created gods and wild gods, warring gods and greedy gods, we have a spectacular ensemble cast of unlikely allies: (1) Kissen, a godkiller with a sordid past, (2) Inara, a petulant noble child tied to a god and a fate that she has no idea about, (3) Skedi, the god of white lies bound to Inara, who awoke with no memories of who he used to be, and (4) Elogast, a jaded knight with royal secrets of his own. I can utterly say that this is going straight to my "favourites" list and look forward to grabbing the prequel when it hits shelves!. a random oil painting painted by someone in art class. It felt like seeing the highest quality Monet vs. ![]() ![]() It remains extremely difficult for me to pinpoint what about it was so great, because you do see these characters and worldbuilding tropes in other works, but I think Samantha Shannon just weaves it all so utterly brilliantly it felt like a league of its own. Yes, it had great character journeys, fantastic prose, extremely detailed worldbuilding and intricate plotlines, but even so it is not unique in that regard. I think that like no other The Priory of the Orange Tree made for a totally immersive reading experience. Now let's move on to what made the book SO FREAKING GREAT. So yeah, pacing was probably the most painful part of the book. Let's just say that the book is more about the tension of the looming threat and preparations for the looming theat, instead of the actual threat itself. ![]() Most glaringly, however, was how anticlimatic the threat of the "evil one rising" ultimately became. If book series have "middle book" syndromes, The Priory of the Orange Tree almost certainly suffers from a "middle arc" syndrome of its own. Additionally, I had thought that the book did seem kind of rambly and didn't really "come to itself" until 60% of the way in, which made for a slightly more painful read and a difficult read. Instead, that fizzled out almost immediately. Certainly the first 60% of the book seemed to suggest that. Perhaps this was a failure of expectations in a way (the kind I alluded to above), but I had genuinely thought we would be expecting a real East vs West and East vs South clash here. The biggest fault of The Priory of the Orange Tree in my view is undoubtedly the pacing. It did not feel like there was anything new to it. Like we still had a martial arts-style initiation arc, we had very standard fare court politics, we had the threat of "evil ones" arising, etc etc etc. It is not because I found many of the plotlines to follow some extremely well-established and slightly tired tropes and archetypical journeys that it didn't really "feel" like you were reading anything trailblazing. That was amazing and so neatly done that it leaves no question in the audience's minds that being a woman in those roles is the Priory world's default. It is so because it completely and elegantly subverted the expecation that heroes and side characters and specific roles in fantasy literature necessitated to be male as a default. In many respects it is so, and in many respects it is not. Now, many people have positioned The Priory of the Orange Tree as a trail-blazing, genre-smashing piece of work, the pinnacle of modern adult fantasy. Certainly this has occurred with me on a number of occasions, where my mood did not coincide with the book in question, and that has coloured and/or dampened my review.įor that reason, to give it the best possible chance of a great reading experience, I held off reading The Priory of the Orange Tree until I was specifically in the mood to read a gargantuan adult fantasy, replete with a complex plot, rich world, and multi-layered ensemble cast. Something that I think many readers - certainly myself in particular - do not do quite enough is give the books we are reading a fighting chance, particularly when we are not in the mood to read that particular kind of work.
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