was I fooled by the hype? reading and reviewing booktok/booktube darling, priory of the orange tree
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 31 มี.ค. 2023
- Not me picking this one so I could spend a video enjoying a book. The joke is truly on me.
Fooled by the Hype Playlist: • Fooled by the Hype Boo...
Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon
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okay, I DID leave out some things I wanted to mention:
1- I felt like all of these characters were less competent than they should've been/we sometimes were led to believe they were. Like we'd jump into some action, and someone would start masterfully fighting and I'd like like OH YEAH!!! That's a high skilled person!!!! because I forgot they were considering how incompetent they were through the rest of the story.
2- The balance of plot was off to me and it fed into a feeling that these characters had little agency. We weren't often DOING anything. Instead, things just kept HAPPENING to these characters. They'd step outside their home and get knocked out or kidnapped and then they'd be in some other circumstance where they had no agency. I was thinking of other books where it was "a string of bad things happen" that I do enjoy, and I came up with The Hunger Games and The Knife of Never Letting Go. The difference to me between those and Priory in terms of how successful they were in their "string of bad things happen and characters have little agency" story is that in THG and TKoNLG, there is a very well defined sense of the evil that is coming for them and the evil that has stolen their agency. In Priory? Not so much.
Is she done complaining yet? lol
I'm looking forward to hearing your review. I have been undecided about this one... So I far couldn't get a good feeling for the book and what it actually is about. Your points here are usually frustrating me in books
Each time Marines laughs uncomfortably I can feel the excruciating pain she endured getting through this book 😂 we laugh in the midst of agony
The chaos of the hard cut from “I’ve got 2 weeks” to “I’ve got a day and a half” made me LOL 😹 The collab curse was coming for you!
I was so proud of myself for starting early 🫠🫠🫠
As someone who doesn’t plan to read this book, I just love listening to her opinion.
same. for some odd reason i like hearing her talk 😂
that's such a huge compliment, THANK YOU. I hope this video about a book you didn't read is engaging enough! ♥
Me too! I really enjoyed this review.
Same here! I really love your thought process and choice of words. I feel like I truly understand where you are coming from and they make sense. Excellent as always.
The juxtaposition between the sweet laughter and the thought out, hard-hitting exposé is just so great. Love this channel.
Priory was a book that I had a pretty fun time reading but it instantly left my brain 😂
It's so shallow! There is nothing to retain!
@@mynameismarines I just finished it myself and I have not thought about it once in three days >< considering how long it took me to read that's pretty bad.
Yeah, it felt like some great ideas that were poorly executed. For such a long book to contain so little meaningful parts is baffling. In my head I compare it's length and pacing to the farseer trilogy and Samantha Shannon never gets close to the depth, meaning or even plot that Robin Hobb develops, not even close.
My favorite quote from you was “I am mostly sorry to myself.” That really made me laugh. 😂
I really do be signing myself up for these assignments 😂
I feel like I enjoyed Priory while I was reading it, but it all instantly fell out of my brain when I finished it 😅 it just felt like such a surface level view of culture and religion and history and folklore and the way it all kind of gets "solved" in the end just felt way too easy to me, especially having read high fantasy that approaches those same themes in a much more nuanced and realistic way.
People keep saying this to me! 😂 I hope I can forget this as easily as everyone who loved it!!! lol
do you have any fantasy recommendations that approached the same themes as priory of the orange tree but in a better way as i would love to read them :) ❤❤❤
I enjoyed the book and gave it 5 stars but I agree that the final battle was so short and happened so quickly and easily considering how big the threat was supposed to be.
@@apsuubabyyI literally re-read the big final climactic scene three times because I couldn't believe how lame it was.
It’s gratifying that you describe and summarize all the things I felt reading this. I thought there was something wrong with me that I was just wasn’t invested in this when everyone else was mad about it.
For a book that was soooo long, I remember thinking my audio book was broken at the end because how suddenly the climax and epilogue came on lol
Oh nooo :( Sorry you didn't like it, but I appreciate your thoughtful reviews as always. This book is one of my all-time favorites. I've read a lot of male-written fantasy in the past, and this book was SUCH a breath of fresh air - the idea of a Queendom and female line of inheritance is so rare and I really appreciated that. It was the first audiobook I ever listened to and I bought the physical copy right after. The slow-ness of parts of this book and the smooth writing really worked for me, I liked just being in the world. Tané was my favorite POV and there was a bit too much Niclays for my taste, but I still adore the book. The newly released prequel in this world "A Day of Fallen Night" is rouuuuughhhh though, and I absolutely cannot get into it.
I know this is a year old comment, but I had to reply bc I find it so interesting - although I enjoyed the Priory, I enjoyed the prequel way more!! I feel like it surpassed the original, I just couldn’t get enough! Funny how different people’s opinions can be.
This creators laugh is infectious. I love it.
I feel like a big reason for all the hype is that a lot of people just haven't read a lot of classic high fantasy written by women. There's so much amazing, well-written feminist (even sapphic) fantasy from the 70s/80s that kind of goes ignored today, and it's really a shame, because the worldbuilding of books like these pales in comparison
Hi! Maybe this comment comes really late, but if possible, could you maybe recommend me some of those books? I would love to read more sapphic high fantasy novels but I don’t know where to start. Thank you so much in advance! And I hope you are having a wonderful day 😊
I completely agree about the "convoluted" style being part of the appeal for some people! It definitely was for me. I had just finished reading a book I hated before reading this one, so I kinda just vibed with this one and let it wash over me.
It was way too long to be a just vibe with it book for me. I was annoyed lol
I finished priory recently too and I completely agree it was a huge letdown. It was a surprise because I've heard nothing but praise for it. The two worst things were the flat, samey characters and shallow worldbuilding. Particularly the "evil" country is kind of comically one-dimensional, which I felt undercut the hamfisted religious tolerance message at the end. A lot of your criticisms are spot on! Thanks for the review!
People like Harry Potter and Twilight. This is why I don't listen to people when they say something is good unless they have credentials. (IE book reviewers on TH-cam)
I personally loved Priory but I totally understand why it’s not for everyone and agree with your points! I always tell people who want to read it to get it from the library first unless they know for sure they’ll love it!
All I can remember from reading priory last year is that there weren’t enough dragons and that the ending wasn’t satisfying 😅
I read the French translation so I can’t fully judge Shannon’s verbose writing but kudos to the translator who in my opinion made it very readable.
A thing that helped too was that the book was cut into 2 parts so reading two books was a lot easier than a whole brick.
I enjoyed it for what it was, it was slow in the beginning before picking up and then slowing down again.. until the end where everything suddenly happened at once and the result felt like she knew she couldn’t write an extra 1000 pages so she wrapped it up.
I remember reading Naomi Novik’s trilogy, that is narrated in first person, and just saying OH MY GOD SHUT UPPPP out loud, several times, because the narrator just didn’t know when to shush it. So many details that didn’t matter, so many words, I guess it could be interpreted sometimes as the main character spiraling, but I remember reading a dialogue and a question being asked and then just pages and pages and pages of the main characters thoughts before she actually answered. Too much. So I get it 😅
You have such a warm & comforting laugh, Mari. I'm listening to you while I code, and I just had to pause for a sec to share that. thanx for being you 😁
I was so excited for this book to come out and felt very let down when I read it. I remember laughing out loud at some events especially towards the end because they felt so "deus ex machina" or just very convenient. I don't remember specifics but I think one moment was when a character was randomly saved by a giant mammal of some sort which turned out to be able to speak so it could explain some stuff to the character? Or the fact that they needed to find one specific ancient sword to kill the bad guy which a character had conveniently buried in some forest so they knew exactly where to go? Or the fact that there never really seemed to be a language barrier despite the fact that we are dealing with characters from different parts of the world? I had lots of thoughts (mostly annoyed ones) back when I read it, but most of them have slipped my mind since then. I am glad to hear though that you also had issues with this book because back then I couldn't believe that so many people loved the book and never mentioned any of the weak points!
Hearing you laugh through this made me so happy.
I've never been interested enough to pick Priory up, and I've had The Bone Season forever and never got around to reading it. I'm both susceptible and immune to the hype. 😂
Thank you! I remember thinking I couldn’t work out why I wasn’t overly thrilled with this book, and you have articulated so many things that helps explain my impassive feelings about the book.
This was a great review and it's such a relief to find someone else who wasn't the biggest fan of this book 😂
I tried reading Priory, fell asleep a couple of times, and couldn't keep up with it. There were so many info dumps and my brain found it hard to filter out important information from unimportant information. For example, in an effort to familiarize myself with the characters, I wrote down all of the character names that appeared in my notebook. It only took about 2 pages in Priory to fill the entire notebook page 😬 Your review makes me feel so much better about DNFing.
I was sooo excited to read this book for so long, but when I finally picked it up, I had to force myself to read on. I found it incredibly boring. I tried to push through for a while, hoping it might get better, but ultimately I DNFed it. I truly admire your determination to finish it. 😂
You save me so much time and money. Often hyped books on tik tok are not for me
Exactly, I planned on reading it but then I saw some realistic reviews on goodreads and decided against buying it 😅
I feel similarly about killing off characters. It feels sloppy to me and takes me out of stories. Like you wrote yourself into a corner and couldn't find a creative way to roll with it. It's part of the reason why I stopped watching Grey's anatomy years ago😂 - also, it just ended for me when Christina left
i'd be lying if i said my interest in this book wasn't mostly due to the cover and the title lol...this review was so good!! you're truly the best at giving interesting spoiler-free reviews!
that one mention of Temeraire...if you ever feel like doing a Temeraire video i will be 101% ears :D
The romance was the only reason I could push through this book. It put me in a reading slump, and I know I’m not alone. I think you really hit on every element that kept me from enjoying it thoroughly.
you are so nice to books, authors and booktok/tube/etc and your reviews are so informative because of it, and you are able to expose your thoughts very critically and clearly!
also, lmao i see a booktok/tube book is over 300 pages long i skip it even if i loooove long books; they rarely are worth it! how!! what a shame!!
Honestly if I could choose any person to review a book that I write it would be you. You are so good at explaining a books shortcomings!
I have indeed learned more about this book. I had bo clue what it was about. Thank you for your review. I am enjoying these collaborations.❤
Omg thank you for sharing this! I have been hesitant to pick this up since it came out. You explain your thoughts and why it didn’t work for you so well too I know 1000% that this won’t be for me, you mentioned so many of my bookish pet peeves!
your personality is so refreshing ! instant subscribe. i’ve been watching all your videos today
The fact that half of us started so early but then our last clip is basically "HI THIS GOES UP TOMORROW" 😭🤣
YES the shock value thing!!! like yeah I guess I didn't see it coming but that's because it makes no sense/has no story payoff??? I was surprised but at what cost lol
So I read this book back when it first came out, pretty sure I was the first person to check it out from my local library. So, I didn’t know anything about it, I was just drawn to it because of the gorgeous cover (honestly the design team deserves so much praise for selling the hell out of this book💐💐💐) and, being a size-queen, it being a nice meaty tome 😁 Long story short, I was left underwhelmed by the experience. Not that this was a deciding factor, but I couldn’t believe we made it 3/4 of the way through the narrative (the point when Eid goes back home to the south) when we learned that Eid was a non-white character. I was gobsmacked. I maybe a bit dense and missed some clues, but I swear the author never distinguished Eid as not being white. All of the other characters were white (except for the Japanese analogs). People talked about her name being different from other members of the royal court, but it’s a fantasy novel they all have made-uppy names. It really sent home the awareness that the author was white and didn’t know how to write about people of color. I felt that Eid was discriminated against because she was considered a country bumpkin or a religious zealot amongst a secular population.
As for the story… it didn’t stick with me. There was a lot of things going on but none of it was compelling. Even the sapphic relationship felt lackluster, the Queen and Eid’s relationship felt like a strong female friendship (which I’m here for), but the assertion that they were romantically involved feels like a stretch.
The one aspect that did get me thinking was whether, as authors, we can drop in real-world ethnic/ cultural analogs within a fantasy setting. I’ve been working on a fantasy novel full of people of color but have struggled somewhat to get across this person is Indian or this person is Latino without referencing wearing saris or eating tacos. With Priory I was really turned off by how lazy the author just copy +pasted in aspects of Japanese culture. But, it does feel unfair that I would need to disassociate African culture or Indian culture from a fantasy setting when most fantasy novels are based off of medieval Europe and unabashedly feature European food, clothing, architecture, etc. Idk, it’s just something I’ve been contemplating in my own work.
But yeah, I’d give Priory one star for word count at best😒
I recommend checking out ivan belikov's other works if you liked the cover
I'm not sure where you got the impression that Ead was the only significant character who was not white. Loth, Tané, Chassar, Margaret, Neporo, and Cleolind were all very significant characters who were also not white. Loth is described as having deep black skin, Margaret is his sister and would most likely have a very similar complexion, and Lady Katryen, who is a less significant character plot-wise but was otherwise in much of the book, is described to have brown skin, to give a few examples of descriptions from the book. But even if the author didn't directly describe every single character's skin color, she still took inspiration from real cultures around the world to create the ones in the book, and she also has a passion for language and used a lot of old languages that are mostly no longer used to create the names in the book. In my opinion, she does a pretty good job indicating which in-book cultures correlate to their real-world counterparts (or at the very least which general regions of the world those in-book cultures were inspired from) while also making the in-book cultures her own in the story. There are a lot of context clues about what each character probably looks like based on where they came from, the languages used for their names, and the in-book culture vs. their real-world counterpart comparisons. So, if some readers assume all the characters in the book are white, then in all honestly I'm going to have to come to the conclusion that is due to those reader's subconscious biases and the level of knowledge they have about real world cultures, and not due to the author inherently (at least not in this specific case).
Firstly, I was having a rough morning and saw this video in my recommended, and it was a great distraction, and got a laugh out of me. I’d heard of this work sooo positively, but tbh, the size/length put me off. I enjoyed hearing your thoughts in it! Thank you!
I love coming here and watching your videos, not only because I LOVE the way you talk about anything, but I also love your laughter, but also because when you point to stuff in books that rub you off it's always things I would HATE 100%, so, it's both a colossal delight and you "make room" in my tbr, because you knock off stuff I will dislike, making space for stuff I will actually enjoy reading.
totally agree, i'm halfway through 'a day of fallen night' because i forgot how much priory didn't work for me- if anything it's worse, but i've gotten too far in to dnf now lol... the actual plot didn't even begin until page 130, relevant events happen off page, while there's chapters of absolutely nothing; both books could easily be cut in half & not lose any plot. the worldbuilding is the worst part for me, it feels like she went ham on a fantasy name generator & didn't put much thought in beyond that
I feel the total opposite! I’m enjoying ADOFN way more than Priory, but I do tend to like more character driven things. I also feel like there’s so many questions that she leaves unanswered
@@SalemsL0t that's fair, I also prefer character driven books, but it's frustrating how something exciting (or a chance to develop a character/relationship) will happen off page in favor of yet another conversation between courtiers, especially since it's so long. honestly trying to remember more about priory and I can't lol
You should give This is How You Lose the Time War a shot! I'm kind of a new subscriber and I've been binging your content over the last couple weeks and I just think you'd love the vibes-only, go with the poetic prose, sci-fi romance novella. For what it's worth, sci-fi is very hit or miss for me, I almost always dislike romances, strongly prefer longer books and still this is a book I absolutely loved.
You've pinpointed all the issues I had getting through this book! It ticked so many boxes for me and then I didn't enjoy reading it at all. Was so confused lol
your laugh literally gives me life!!
you have such a lovely, genuine laugh!
The wordiness didn't bother me--in fact, I think I might find wordiness comforting, like a blanket, when it's not too dense--but by page 331, the amount of contrived moments had really stacked up for me that I had to pull the plug.
Thank you so much for your so excellent analysis of this. I;ve been hemming and hawing about reading this lately... it's long and seemingly dense (which I've been avoiding lately) but so many people love it and it's sapphic... but you made it so super clear that this is not a book I would enjoy.
So sad you didn't enjoy this. I had a great time with the book and I would never say it's perfect, but I also didn't mind that. :)
One thing I struggled with this was how it was labelled as a feminist fantasy, particularly in regards to Sabran's queendom - I remember people really singing the praises of that as a feminist vision of a fantasy society, but for me the queendom didn't seem to be presenting a political structure that was overtly feminist! It's been a few years so my memory is fuzzy but like, she had ladies in waiting, all the knights were men, gender roles felt pretty enforced there. There wasn't much to differentiate the political structure from a classic kingdom other than being like "this time, a woman is in charge!" I had wondered if this would be a plot point related to some of the reveals about the founding of the queendom and the myth at the heart of it, so I thought at one point that we'd have a bit of a "the system's foundation is rotten, let's tear it down and fundamentally rework it" but that didn't happen at all 😆 really enjoyed hearing all your thoughts on this!
you explained the problem I had with her writing so well.
I love this little project you guys have put together!
In terms of priory, I have no opinion whatsoever since I haven't even read the book 😂
You are literally an inspiration. I uploaded my first book Review video because of you ! You go girl ❤🎉
Oh my, I feel so vindicated for wanting to DNF Priory after 150 pages! I'm having such a hard time connecting to any of the characters and I really don't care what happens to any of them. The world building has a lot of elements to it but it doesn't feel like any of them have real influence over the others that isn't 1 dimensional. So sad that this is one of my friends' favourites and I just cannot with the style or execution.
Gosh I'm glad I came across your channel because I was so confused with the insane hype for this book. I read the first 200 pages or so on a long plane ride and I couldn't get through it. As someone who doesn't read a lot of fiction, I didn't trust my own judgment on it. Everyone loves this book, surely there was just something wrong with me? There must be something in here I'm not getting because I'm dumb and can't absorb fiction. Your review was a lightbulb in my head that made me realize it's not just me. Thank you for putting the words to what I was thinking but couldn't express.
It's disappointing, cause I really wanted to like it. I was so excited to finally see queer women as heroes in a fantasy story...we don't get much of those (I read Nevernight and......that's it I guess). Probably a big reason of why I was never into fiction was because I couldn't see myself in any of these books, and I thought this was gonna change that. Sadly, it didn't. It was so damn bland.
I agree with everything you’ve said about Priory- if you want to read another fantasy with queer characters that does everything Priory tries to do 1000x better (story within a story, plot and character development, well thought out magic, non-western setting) I highly recommend the Adventures of Amina Al-Sirafi!
no intention of reading that book but man did i enjoy hearing about your experience! i think these talk throughs are one of my favorites here on the channel!
i do have to add though that i’m almost finished with gild atm and i must say i’m definitely enjoying it as an easy, slightly trashy read. it’s got a couple “side eye” elements and there’s nothing particularly unique about it but it’s not overly offensive and i can definitely see myself grabbing the rest of the series when i’m in the mood for some guilty pleasure entertainment haha. i’d love to hear your thoughts if you can ever bring yourself to pick it up someday!
Those daisy earrings are lovely.
I read this book two years ago after seeing that pretty cover literally everywhere. I just did. not. get. the. hype. I trudged through it for a couple of months before I finally finished it, and agree with everything you said here. The romance was the "best" part to me and what kept me reading. But looking back on it now, I don't remember much of it at all lol
"Mostly I'm sorry to myself" 😂😂😂
I love how even though you weren't having a great time, you still found stuff to laugh about and that made this video so much fun.
Yess so excited to watch you flawlessly articulate every single thing that bothered me about this book!
It's been a moment since I read the book, but I remember enough to agree with you. I never really thought about the 'nobody talks about the plot' aspect because this happens to a lot of books :')
I still consider it a favourite, but I want to reread it for the prequel and keep your review in mind. Thanks for sharing your thoughts :)
Oh nooo I'm so sad you didn't like her writing style!! Honestly for me that was one of my favorite things about it, I was so drawn in by the vivid descriptions, and I also fell in love with all of the characters ahhhhhhh! If I had to pick a thing to complain about, it would be the ending (I'm so used to reading series instead of standalones that I was extremely shocked and a little let down when they actually won lmao), but even that was pretty fun in my opinion. I also wish we'd gotten more lore about the jewel and more time in the Eastern world, but overall this was legitimately one of my favorite books I've ever read and I'm so sad to hear that it just didn't work for you!
I liked Priory a lot but I agree with many of your thoughts here. Especially in the beginning, I had no idea how to discern what was descriptive to build imagery and what was important to the plot and what was worldbuilding etc etc
u're so real for this omg i can never go past the first few chps of shannon's books, that said my current fav fantasy series is malazan lol i started it a year ago and am now on book 8, need u to get in on this SO bad
Your laughing had me laughing. Excellent observations and points.
This has been in my tbr for a while and you’re correct the only things I know about it are dragons and a sapphic relationship 😂
I know it's been mentioned before, but I would LOVE to see a full review of Red Rising from you!
It's in the works! ♥
@@mynameismarines It's free on Audible with the subscription, so I have listened to book #1 and #2. I'm so excited about your review bec. I remember it being so popular on Booktube 7-9y ago.
This is so interesting, several of your points about enjoyment and plot delivery are exactly what I'm experiencing with Brandon Sanderson's Mistborn, which is not even that much of a chonk according to fantasy standards. I think the hype machine makes it feel like big books needed to be big because the author's ideas just could not be contained in 500 pages, yet when you go through it there's a lot of warm air and only three cracked fantasy doritos at the very bottom. The mere inefficiency of it annoys me so much, especially when there was absolutely room to develop characters or dive into complex interactions between cultures.
I also hate it when the world is or should be complex but the author only drip feeds this info to us in a very inorganic way. It's different from when a world is complex and remains so because the POV we follow is either too new to the larger reality or too shocked by events to process it. My one demand from high fantasy is that I never feel or see the author pulling the threads, and for larger books like Priory and all of Sndrsn, I can see everything and I do not enjoy it 😅
Thank you so much for your reviews!
HAPPY TO GET THIS VIDEO!! I love your snarkiness 😂
♥️
Thanks for this, I've been circling this book for a while due to the recommendations. But nothing about the sample was hooking me. And I had heard the multi-pov's were confusing, a pet hate of mine. Now I can accept my gut feeling from the sample was correct.
I like what you said about "the writing is incompatible with me." Sometimes I feel really stupid for not "getting" a hyped-uped or chunky book. But me and that book just aren't compatible! I felt this way about NK Jemisen 5th season books.
I'm so glad that you mention the size of the book contributing to its hype. People read such a huge book and feel like they accomplish something. But a 'big book' doesn't necessarily equal a long book. Sure Priory is sorta long, but it is mostly just big. At my local book store they have Lord of the Rings omnibus' that are PHYSICALLY SMALLER than Priory despite have almost twice the word count!😂😂😂
It's like if someone ate a bowl of popcorn and thought they'd eaten a full meal
Yay! Another excellent video from Marines!
I tried to read this because of the hype, and the start was SO boring. Gosh. Did not draw me in at all.
I’ve only seen folks read it as a means to get over their fear of big books so it was interesting to hear how the book is in terms of contents.
Oh, Mari. When you began with how ahead of schedule you were you were so bright-eyed and hopeful lol I felt so bad for Past Mari watching that since I already knew how it turned out for you! All of us in your Discord knew you'd persevere. =) I was wondering if the size of the book coupled with the ease of digesting the material may have contributed to its success, based on some of the reviews I've seen. I had the same experience as you did, watching a ton of reviews and getting only "stand alone epic fantasy with dragons & sapphic romance" as far as what the book was about. I used to think I was a plot girlie but I think now I just need a book to have one strong aspect going for it, be it plot, or characters or what have you. Priory sounds like it did nothing particularly well. 🙃
I read this a couple of years ago and didn’t really enjoy it. I had to reread my gr review to remind myself but basically : I thought the plot was a mess and the Worldbuilding just full of info dumps and pointless folktales, only one character was really interesting (tane) but one was really a core to read through (loth)… and so many convenient meet up and stuff happening, like you’re on an ocean and you just happen to meet the person you needed to meet?! Lmao, there’s multiple occurrence of this in the last part and it drove me nuts, like even the characters were saying « it seemed impossible but (this happened) » 😂
Anyway, great review ! I don’t know how you managed to read those hundreds of boring pages so fast, kudos to you !!
took me about 200 pages to get into Priory...but after that I couldn't put it down. If you held a gun to my head, I would still be incapable of explaining why lol
😂 I loved how you started the video. I'm ahead of the game. I have weeks. 😉 Next scene: 😬 It's due tomorrow. 🤣 I've heard of this one, but it was No Where near my TBR. I mean it wasn't in the land where 📚 are a form of punishment, like SJM and CoHo's catalogs. But it wasn't on my TBR radar, and it will remain in this land for all time. 😏
Oh my!! We had nearly identical journeys with this book. In a nutshell, the wasted potential of this story is it’s biggest flaw.
Ultimately I can’t disagree with your excellent critique.
Thank you!!!!
I'm currently in the middle of Priory, so it's super interesting to hear your thoughts on it! For me, evrytime I'm reading, I'm like "this is good, I want to know more", but at the same time, I'm struggling to continue reading. The pace is so slow, and except for Ead, I'm not attached to any of the characters.
Ead was definitely the more developed one. Everyone else could’ve died and I would’ve been like okay and kept reading.
Marina, you are crunching again (which I relate to so much). It's really bad chance, that The Priory is a book best enjoyed without a deadline. Still excited to get your review, sorry you had to suffer.
😂
I DNFd Priory at chapter four but now a friend wants me to read it because her boyfriend loved the book and wants her to read it too. I am going to send her the link to the video and stick with my DNF. Thanks!
I totally agree with this review, I’m currently reading this book and I’m in the last 3rd of it and I’m struggling. I bought this book & Circe based on reviews, I read Circe first, so coming after that it was always going to struggle cos Madeline Miller’s writing is just *chefs kiss* 😂😂😂
If you enjoyed Circe, you might like the Valkyrie by Kate heartfield which gave me the same vibes as Circe but sapphic and Norse mythology. I really enjoyed it!
This is how you lose the Time War IS SO FREAKING GOOD
idk if i should read it. i don’t know of a bunch of sapphic fantasy (i’d love recommendations!) but i’m scared that this won’t be the book for me. maybe i’ll try it idk :/
i’m currently halfway through priory rn, and by that i mean i got halfway, had to take a break to read something else (which i NEVER do), and haven’t picked it up in coming up on a year now. i read 400 pages and yet i could not tell you a single thing about the characters or the world.
edit: a couple of months have passed, and i've finally finished priory. unfortuantely it didn't end up landing for me. did i just think it was incredibly boring, and also i don't love the idea presented that there is a "correct" or "right" religion and an "incorrect" or "wrong" religion, and the idea that everyone who believes in the "wrong" religion is going to / needs to convert to the "right" one. i was honestly astounded that, even though a huge deal is made of how inys treats other faiths and how ead's faith is viewed as an evil heresy, not only does ead herself think the exact same thing about other faiths than her own, but in the end she is in fact justified and correct. like.. i don't love the ideas being presented here lmao?? but i choose to believe that samantha shannon just didn't think about the implications rather than this being indicative of her actual worldview.
loved your take on whether or not the book fooled you because yeah, i guess it did deliver on what everyone promised...it just turns out no one promised anything about the actual writing.
i ended up revisiting my review after watching your review because all i remembered was that i liked the first half and hated the second, and even going through my thoughts at the time, my main takeaway was "i have no memory of most of this book except being so mad at it when i was done."
Just absolutely nothing I heard talked about the writing or plot, which, fair play.
I’m finding it so interesting that even people who enjoyed reading this book have forgotten most of the details. I think it affirms my feeling of how underdeveloped this all was!
Romance involving a secret mage acting as a servant to a royal sounds very Merthur to me. I wonder if that was an inspiration for this book.
I feel validated by this review. I thought the non-Ead PoVs had no agency or significance. The two guys could have been cut entirely. Tane was disappointing at every turn. The book really read like a draft and I have no desire to read the new prequel :(
Also I love your laugh!
PRIORY! I was so nervous to read this book because of how hyped it was, but I ended up really loving it (it's probably a 4.5 out of 5 star read for me).
Shannon's writing style really worked for me, but I can totally see how it doesn't work for everyone 😅
I remember feeling like each of the 4 characters sounded distinct to be, so I'm surprised you didn't feel the same. I do think it feels like Ead is Shannon's favorite character (to the detriment of the story arcs of the other 3 POV characters), which meant I actually wanted this book to be LONGER 🤣
The book actually worked better for me BEFORE the midpoint reveals about the world. Maybe I'm just too happy to have a mystery and questions to keep me going as I read
I did hate one particular side character death, because I was invested in that character relationship and the balance they brought to each other.
This was a rare DNF for me. It felt more like a world building exercise than a novel and that the author was writing beautiful individual scenes that didn't add up to a story being told.
I have a "read this, not that" for this book - Arkady Martine's A Memory Called Empire. If you want an F/F queer romance, intricate worldbuilding, and beautiful prose, that book has all those things, but much better pacing than Priory.
i’m glad i’m not the only one who felt like this book was lacking! i honestly feel like the POVs could’ve been whittled down to just ead, because all of the others felt so pointless to me for at least half of the book.
Thank you for reading this, so I don't have to, the cover looks gorgeous but the confusion with multiple POVs and the book being so long, I don't think it would be a book for me.
Do you have any recommendations for multi POV stories you feel nail the pacing balance?
I just looked at the first page, and I agree. It's mad wordy. I have Aphantasia, and one thing I hate are wordy books. I also see what you mean about how there's unnecessary information giving as narration. Some of it would have been better suited as dialogue.
I tried to read this but I couldn’t even get to halfway
I enjoyed reading this but I don't know that I can remember a lot of details.
People keep saying this to me! lol It's very shallow. There isn't a lot to retain, except for of course, this experience is now burned into my brain. 😫
Thia book relied hugely on being "the big book" in its marketing. I always see people discussinf how its such a monster but never about what they liked about it. I read it and found it just fine, not good enough to pick up the new one
I tried so hard to read this book. First just reading, then an audiobook, each time it put me to sleep. And then I had a bad run in with the author (I will not go into it so please do not ask), so needless to say I gave all the way up on Priory lmao
Thank you so much for this video. I’ve been considering giving up on it and I think I will now I know it won’t get any better. I agree with everything you said. I’m at 30% on my Kindle so I’ve really tried.
Please could you recommend a fantasy genre book to me preferably with dragons. Im off to listen to your Forth Wing review. I’ve read it and liked the story but thought it was badly written. Looking forward to hearing your thoughts.
Thank you for your honest feedback on Priory 🍊 all anyone does is praise those books without actually saying anything of value about them. I started to read Day of Fallen Night in the store.. the writing seened clunky .. and the *only* thing I've heard is that DoFN is better written than Priory... if true... yikes. Definitely won't be wasting my time. Too bad since they are such beautiful covers. 🐉
It has been my observation that if a book includes feminist, sapphic or queer themes, it seems to be loved regardless of quality.
It was wild to me to realize that I had heard som much about this book except what it was about 😂😂 I have also heard the DoFN is better than Priory but I’m done giving Samantha Shannon chances. I’ve seen enough.
The Priory is soooo empty, a 700 pages build up for a 30 pages long war ? What ? And then the author hypes her next book being even longer ? WHY it's so unnecessary, you could tell the same story in 400 pages easy 😭
ALSO THE KILLING OF RANDOM SIDE CHARACTERS I'm so glad you also spotted that 😂😭 it was making me so mad, it's such a lazy way to add drama or tidy up loose threads, she's like 'oh I dont need them anymore, die'
Agree on all your points. The characters feel shallow, there's no world building, how are we supposed to care about the story when there's nothing or no one to root for ?
I wonder if some of the hype is bc at the time there weren't as many Sapphic high fantasy books? My first fantasy book had a bi storyline and that was the first time I ever saw that in a book and it was a 5 star for me. I reread it years later and I found so many annoying things with it but I still remember how I felt when first reading it 😂 so it'll always have my heart
Lol, you just brought up this point