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rocky41_7About nine months ago I plowed my way through Samantha Shannon's The Priory of the Orange Tree and reviewed it immediately after. Today, I went to post my review on StoryGraph, but looking through that original review, I find that it doesn't at all capture my thoughts on the book after many months of reflection. So I wrote a new review and I'm posting here for posterity, and in case anyone who read my first review took an interest in the book because of it.
Here is the original review, which highlights the things I liked about the book in the immediate aftermath. The following is the new review, which is a lot more critical.
I am a fantasy fanatic and hearing the way this was described online and what with my never-ending quest for more queer fantasy, I had to give it a go. Unfortunately, I have to report it is incredibly mid-tier. Nothing about this book stands out to me several months after having finished it. It's not bad, it's just not good. It was an entertaining read, but on the whole a mediocre work.
It has some very intriguing things going for it, and Shannon has obviously put a lot of thought into her fantasy world, but it lacks finesse in a lot of ways that make it far less entertaining than it could be.
Kill Your Darlings: First of all, bloat. I love a good long book; I love a plotline that starts off snail-slow and builds to a crescendo over hundreds of pages. But that enjoyment is predicated on the story being engaging. "Priory" feels like a textbook case of the author being so in love with her own characters and worldbuilding that she refused to cut or minimize any of it, even if it would have improved the book to do so.
Niclays Roos is an interesting character, and obviously a favorite of the author's. However, axing his entire plotline would change virtually nothing about the story. He's almost completely irrelevant, and so every time we were saddled with his POV it felt like wasting time from the more interesting and relevant other POVs.
Similarly, Loth's chapters were incredibly dull, barely important, and the most interesting things that happened to him happened off the page.
This also relates to:
Pacing: A lot of people have hit on this, and I agree. Niclays and Tane have zero relevance to the core plot for most of the book. Not until the very end does Tane become relevant, so it's often hard to care about what they're doing, because Sabran, Ead, and Loth are dealing with world-altering issues and Niclays is like. Having a day in the city.
The final conflict wraps up at lightning speed relative to its alleged importance, making it feel like it was never that big a deal in the first place, and the travel times around the world are all over the place; it felt like it took them however long the author wanted them to be traveling to get anywhere.
Characters: Someone else pointed out that Ead and Tane are effectively the same character, and it's rather true. Also, this feels like a book where the author is hyperconcerned with the characters being Moral and Likeable. Even Niclays at his worst oozes Shannon's desire for us to like him, and he never does anything truly bad (although the novel castigates him for his shadier dealings, apparently in an effort to make us see him as Problematic, but not Too Problematic).
All of them are morally upstanding and Ead is right about literally everything. Initially, I thought the religious aspect would involve both Ead and Sabran discovering they had been wrong, but no, one culture is objectively right about the religion and the other is just wrong. And for Sabran to simply accept, on Ead's word, that her entire religion, on which her power is based, is a lie--an ugly lie--boggled the mind a little.
Stakes: The outcome of the final battle, in addition to happening too quickly, lacked any real sacrifice. Nobody important dies or is even injured; nothing major changes. I did enjoy the ending for Ead and Sabran's romance and how it eschews a simple solution for them, but otherwise it made the whole affair with the Nameless One feel like a bump in the road.
The Power of the Bloodline: This is a personal gripe. I just despise storylines about someone who's remarkable because of their super special bloodline. One of the things I liked about Tane was how she'd fought her way up to where she was based allegedly on talent and hard work. So for it to turn out in the final hour that she only really matters because she's related to someone special was incredibly disappointing to me. I actually liked her less after that. This felt like it undermined all of her achievements up to that point because it wasn't really her, it was her special powerful bloodline that made her worthy.
On the whole, I don't regret reading it, but I do regret buying it instead of just getting it from the library. I will not be reading more from this author, and I think there is better queer fantasy out there. Although I liked Ead and Sabran's romance, and Sabran as a character, the rest of the book lacked much else to compel me. With more polish, I think this could have been a better book.
Here is the original review, which highlights the things I liked about the book in the immediate aftermath. The following is the new review, which is a lot more critical.
I am a fantasy fanatic and hearing the way this was described online and what with my never-ending quest for more queer fantasy, I had to give it a go. Unfortunately, I have to report it is incredibly mid-tier. Nothing about this book stands out to me several months after having finished it. It's not bad, it's just not good. It was an entertaining read, but on the whole a mediocre work.
It has some very intriguing things going for it, and Shannon has obviously put a lot of thought into her fantasy world, but it lacks finesse in a lot of ways that make it far less entertaining than it could be.
Kill Your Darlings: First of all, bloat. I love a good long book; I love a plotline that starts off snail-slow and builds to a crescendo over hundreds of pages. But that enjoyment is predicated on the story being engaging. "Priory" feels like a textbook case of the author being so in love with her own characters and worldbuilding that she refused to cut or minimize any of it, even if it would have improved the book to do so.
Niclays Roos is an interesting character, and obviously a favorite of the author's. However, axing his entire plotline would change virtually nothing about the story. He's almost completely irrelevant, and so every time we were saddled with his POV it felt like wasting time from the more interesting and relevant other POVs.
Similarly, Loth's chapters were incredibly dull, barely important, and the most interesting things that happened to him happened off the page.
This also relates to:
Pacing: A lot of people have hit on this, and I agree. Niclays and Tane have zero relevance to the core plot for most of the book. Not until the very end does Tane become relevant, so it's often hard to care about what they're doing, because Sabran, Ead, and Loth are dealing with world-altering issues and Niclays is like. Having a day in the city.
The final conflict wraps up at lightning speed relative to its alleged importance, making it feel like it was never that big a deal in the first place, and the travel times around the world are all over the place; it felt like it took them however long the author wanted them to be traveling to get anywhere.
Characters: Someone else pointed out that Ead and Tane are effectively the same character, and it's rather true. Also, this feels like a book where the author is hyperconcerned with the characters being Moral and Likeable. Even Niclays at his worst oozes Shannon's desire for us to like him, and he never does anything truly bad (although the novel castigates him for his shadier dealings, apparently in an effort to make us see him as Problematic, but not Too Problematic).
All of them are morally upstanding and Ead is right about literally everything. Initially, I thought the religious aspect would involve both Ead and Sabran discovering they had been wrong, but no, one culture is objectively right about the religion and the other is just wrong. And for Sabran to simply accept, on Ead's word, that her entire religion, on which her power is based, is a lie--an ugly lie--boggled the mind a little.
Stakes: The outcome of the final battle, in addition to happening too quickly, lacked any real sacrifice. Nobody important dies or is even injured; nothing major changes. I did enjoy the ending for Ead and Sabran's romance and how it eschews a simple solution for them, but otherwise it made the whole affair with the Nameless One feel like a bump in the road.
The Power of the Bloodline: This is a personal gripe. I just despise storylines about someone who's remarkable because of their super special bloodline. One of the things I liked about Tane was how she'd fought her way up to where she was based allegedly on talent and hard work. So for it to turn out in the final hour that she only really matters because she's related to someone special was incredibly disappointing to me. I actually liked her less after that. This felt like it undermined all of her achievements up to that point because it wasn't really her, it was her special powerful bloodline that made her worthy.
On the whole, I don't regret reading it, but I do regret buying it instead of just getting it from the library. I will not be reading more from this author, and I think there is better queer fantasy out there. Although I liked Ead and Sabran's romance, and Sabran as a character, the rest of the book lacked much else to compel me. With more polish, I think this could have been a better book.