The Priory of the Orange Tree, 

 

 

Ok so truly I loved this book, and I went into this expecting this to be a stand out five star read. I don’t give five stars away every easily and it really has to strike a chord with me to get one. And I’m slightly gutted that it wasn’t a five star book. I absolutely loved it, yes it had beautiful lines and take aways, Tane chapters specifically for me I have highlighted and underlined so many sections. The world building and magic was wonderful, the idea of balance coming from beneath the 

earth (fire) and the stars (water),

  stunning. The character development throughout, those that needed to adapt and change did, those that didn’t it was necessary and believable. The fact that Samantha Shannon constantly challenges and approached subjects like miscarriage, religion and belief, death, guilt and insane amount of very well written feministic stand points. Music to my ears. Tane by far was my favourite character, the depth and torment she had to go through. She accepted her fate yet still challenged her given path in life, she stood by her values and fought for not for redemption of herself but to set her wrongs right for the those that they affected. She was young and made mistakes, and admitted when she did. I loved every aspect of her character. A bad ass dragon riding selfless boss babe. 

 

My gripe, and why this didn’t absolutely do it for me. Is probably because I wished it was longer… eight hundred pages was not enough to build up to such an epic tall of events. 

I wish the battle was twice as long. For a beast the “Nameless One” as great as her was to be trapped for a thousand years and to finally get this freedom for their only to be one battle…

  I was kind of underwhelmed. Also what happened in  Yscali??? Queen Sabran had to negotiate for people to fight there – we visited it after and it was laid to ruins but they won.   I do wish we go to also see this battle and how it played out. 

 

Its great that this entire story was written within one book, and maybe its because I’m not opposed to long tales over the course of multiple books in order to really get into the nitty gritty of plots, but I do wish it was two books and we followed more of the characters.