What happened Samantha?? The Priory of the Orange Tree was SO good, this pales so tragically in comparison. 

I made it 150 pages into this and couldn’t make myself go any further. I even checked reviews to see if my trepidations were just the result of a slow start and would improve as the book progressed, but no. 

I am not exaggerating when I say 50% of this book is just Shannon info-dumping lore, and the other  50% is wildly confusing descriptions of the characters actions mixed with mind-numbing descriptions of scenery. 

I’d say the info-dumping is at a pretty similar level to that of Priory, but it was enjoyable in that book because I didn’t know anything about the world, and the other elements of the book were really strong. However, having read Priory, everything in here feels WAY too similar to be discussing it in so much detail. This is definitely not helped by the fact that two of the three locations/communities we’re in are EXACTLY the same as Priory. There are so many other interesting kingdoms/queendoms/republics that could have been focussed on instead, why are we just getting a repeat of Priory?? This has also meant that a lot of the discussions and themes in here mirror those of Priory to an infuriating extent – I felt like I was almost reading a retelling of Priory, not a book set 500 YEARS before it. 

Then the other half of the problem is the descriptions. In Priory Shannon used really lush descriptive writing. One of my favourite things about that book is that there was so much description. Yet here, all of the descriptive writing is so basic, so stripped down. It feels clinical, and alongside the walls of history Shannon throws at us, it really just reads like a textbook. Adding to this is the fact that in this first 150 pages there has been absolutely nothing of substance in the conversations or emotions of any of the characters, it’s just – ‘we did this’, ‘we did that’, ‘oh no I have to get pregnant’. Where’s the DEPTH?? 

It also doesn’t help that the ‘plot’ has been moving ridiculously quickly. There will be one sentence that mentions something vaguely interesting, then the next we’ve jumped to a completely different topic/scene/action with no follow-up. And because I wasn’t getting enough substance about the characters, none of their decisions made sense to me, especially in the Priory chapters – the extent of their character motivation was ‘Siya is an untrustworthy child, bad Siyu’. And in turn this all meant I didn’t like any of the characters or want to root for them, and I certainly didn’t care about their motivations/story lines. 

This disconnect from the characters was also impacted by the fact that all three locations have literally the same storyline. Three young women about to come into power, all of which are reluctant to do so. And there’s SO much about pregnancy in all three of them. 

The final nail in the coffin was how unclearly Shannon wrote most of the action (by this I mean anything that wasn't info-dump or scenery description). It read like she was trying to be poetic, but all it led to was most of the description being too abstract to make any sense. She was obviously trying to infer things and ‘show not tell’, but I could hardly understand any of it. 

Overall, what an utter shame. I was entranced by The Priory of the Orange Tree. This, on the other hand, reads like a history textbook. 

This was just weird… and not in a good way. 

One of the main problematic elements of this was that the audiobook narrator sounds like a 60+ year-old man, whereas the main male character is a 30ish-year-old hot, hot, hottie. This meant that I could only ever think of Ryan as a grouchy old man, making the ‘romance’ stuff with Anna feel ever grosser than it already was. 

It also meant the ‘romance’ stuff felt really creepy because it meant there was a LOT of a 60-year-old man reading a 30-year-old man’s sexual thoughts about a young woman AND a 60-year-old man reading a young woman’s sexual thoughts about a 30-year-old dude. All very weird. 

And then it comes to the actual ‘romance’ itself, which was just disturbing. Ryan’s possessive thoughts about Anna after knowing her for LESS THAN 24 HOURS are nothing short of psychotic. She should be running for the hills. He got blazingly angry finding out that she has had partners in the past?? 

Not to mention the two of them making out pretty much the second they find out her sister is probably dead??? I don’t care if they both wanted it, and that they were both aware it was wrong, it was still gross. And the language used throughout was also insanely gross – “plundered her mouth”??? Blurgh. 

And lawd what a misogynistic, judgemental dick Ryan is. Not a single part of me could root for, or even care about him, in any way. 

The actual mystery of the book did seem interesting, but in no way does it make up for the fucked up ‘romance’, constant weird sexual overtones, Ryan being an utter dick, and generally judgemental writing from the author. All of which was then compounded by the absolutely fucking bizarre and gross choice of audiobook narrator. If I didn’t know this book was written by a woman, I would be 100% certain that a male incel had written it. 

No. Thank. You. 

When I started reading this, I was ready to have a good time. The premise was interesting, and the first 80 or so pages were really intriguing. However, after the story settled, and I got past those first 80 pages, everything started to feel really flat. 

Apart from the main character, the characters were never fleshed out enough to feel real, so I couldn’t connect to them. This also made it doubly bad when we were introduced to a different version of the characters, as I was never quite sure where the differences lay apart from ‘good’ or ‘evil’. 

There are so many characters we’re meant to be terrified of, but as the reader we never see them do anything. We’re just told what they do second hand, so I never felt an impact when the mc was going through apparent emotional torture from their past actions. 

There’s also a huge amount of world building we are never given. In some books this would be fine, but as this one focusses so much on the mechanics of jumping, when essential information isn’t given to us it is so much more obvious. Like how could a full-on emergency bunker be made by the World Zero people on another Earth without anyone ever noticing?? Instead of being given the info we need, there's just pages and pages of detail about completely unnecessary things that don’t impact the story at all. 

The writing style is also very much all about telling, rather than showing. And the writing feels really disjointed in a lot of places – paragraphs, sentences, and sometimes even whole scenes don’t run on from each other, and it reads like chunks of the book were removed. I don’t believe this was the author’s intention, I think it’s just a badly edited book. 

Also, as I read on, the mc became more and more annoying. She makes almost exclusively awful decisions, and I couldn’t find any motivation to root for her. 

All in all, I don’t care enough to continue reading, and especially not enough to have to read my deadname every other page. 

Great premise, mediocre execution. 

The writing is too poor for me to continue this book. Walker is predominantly a romance author, and this reads like romance writing. I don't mind this kind of clunky/awkward writing in romances, but in fantasy where worldbuilding, description etc. is so important, it doesn't work. 

At first I thought that I was just being dumb when I kept having to read the same sentence over and over. Nope. It's the writing.

Also, I don't love that the author is a woman who seems to write exclusively gay male romances...

 

I could not carry on with this after the

gun

was found. SURELY that’s the time to leave? Jules is just so dumb; I couldn’t do it anymore. It’s just the same thought patterns over and over again, pretty accurate for anxiety rep, pretty god damn boring to read. 
 

Other things that annoyed me: 

- "I now have only four hundred and thirty-two dollars to my name." – said a woman who was saying she was completely destitute, it’s no way NEAR as dramatic of a situation as she made it sound. Yeah, it’s not a lot of money, but it is some, especially after being out of work for so long and having no financial obligations.
 

- Jules’ parents were absolutely fucking pathetic. Your kid moans about having to eat off-brand food once, and instead of having a sensible conversation about it, or just letting your kid sulk, you “never bought the generic brand of anything” again?? Bat shit parenting. 

Clearly Riley Sager is not for me. 

The actual premise of this book is fantastic, and I was enthralled at the beginning as we found out about it. The writing is engaging and created real atmosphere and setting. It seemed the ideal fantasy book for me. 
 
However, the horrific 'romance' in this book completely ruined the experience. 

Guiwenneth, the ‘woman’ brought into existence from the main character’s ideals as the perfect partner, is a literal child – “She was a girl. A child”. She’s “16 or 17”, while her only meaning in the book is as an object of sexual desire for the main character. What’s more, her childishness is seen as one of her best features! “childish, terrifying sexuality” – so gross and wildly disappointing. 

After reading other reviews and seeing that this disgraceful ‘romance’ plot only gets worse, I’ve decided to not put myself through any more of the book. I was SO disappointed by this turn, why couldn’t it have just stayed a nice, normal, non-predatory fantasy? Is that really asking for too much? 

 

If I read each of these stories independently, I definitely would have enjoyed them a lot more. My issue with this collection is that all of the stories follow a very similar circular narrative, and after two or three versions of it I got pretty bored.
 
I pushed through to the story 'Re-birth', as reviews state that’s the best story, and I'm glad I did because it was great. However, I can't bring myself to read any further anticipating that it would just be the same cyclical stories over and over again. The last one I read was one good, we'll leave it at that.
 
My short reviews for the stories I read are as follows:
 
What We Have Here - 4 stars
Definitely fucked, but ended a little abruptly so was an unsatisfying ending.

Theresa - 5 stars
Fucking heartbreaking.
 
Blackbird - 2.5 stars
Kinda good, but very similar to 'Theresa'.
 
The Sisters - 3.5 stars
Creepy, but left a lot unexplained for me to be fully convinced by the story.
 
Peeping Tommy - 3.75 stars
Really did creep me out, but the ending came out of the blue and I felt like nothing had led up to it.
 
Becca - 3 stars
This is where I started to realise all of the stories felt very similar. In isolation, this would have been pretty good, but was again the same cyclical story that was feeling overdone already.
 
Sleeptalker - 3.25 stars
Once again, a great concept, but the same cyclical story.
 
Re-birth - 5 stars
OUTSTANDING. Glad I didn't DNF before this one. It is still the same cyclical narrative, but done incredibly well. 
 
Overall rating for read stories - 3.75 stars 

I'm sad that I felt the need to DNF this, but I just wasn't enjoying my time. I read Volumes 1-3 a few ago and remembered really enjoying them, but these haven't lived up the them. I don't know if I've changed, or if the quality is different. 

All of the stories felt pretty pedestrian. Even the weirder ones were mainly boring day-to-day stuff, with little inserts of horror. 

I rated the stories I finished as follows, but the high ratings feel generous looking back. I think I was rating with too much optimism...

Volume 4 -  

'The Body Politic' - 5 stars - nice and scary
'The Inhuman Condition' - 3 stars - was interesting, but the ending made no sense to me at all...
'Revelations' - 3.5 stars - a different kind of horror, and not one that did much for me
'Down, Satan! - 4 stars - creepy, but I wanted more descriptions of the gross
'The Age of Desire' - 5 stars - I'm sorry, what?

Volume 5 -

'The Forbidden' - 2 stars - maybe 2 pages out of 37 were actually scary/of interest. The rest was pretty mundane - just a posho woman walking around an estate 

On starting this book, I was immediately captivated by the writing, and intrigued by cool concepts - both the reading feelings from books, and the story within a story (the latter of which I'm a sucker for). However, I have had to stop reading it because what the actual fuck??
 
My first red flag, is that the present-day parts of the book are set in 1984. Ashlyn mentions seeing a copy of Kazuo Ishiguro's The Remains of the Day, a book that was published 5 years later in 1989... Such an EASY fact to check, yet clearly no-one involved in the book gave a shit.  
 
My biggest gripe with the book, however, is that Hemi is such a goddamn CREEP, yet his actions are only ever seen as romantic?? Not just by Belle, but by Ashlyn, and according to reviews I've read every single other person who’s read this book? I'm truly baffled. Without ever having seen Belle, he manipulates his way into TWO parties he shouldn't be at, had completely deranged obsessive and intense thoughts about her by the third time they met, and knew WAY too much about her life as if he'd been researching and spying on her for years. And it's all viewed as romantic????? 
 
When I started getting creep vibes, I thought the book was going to be about that - a creepy stalker guy preying on a sheltered, emotionally abused woman. A woman who surely can't know what she actually wants in life or properly stand up for herself because she's only ever been treated as an object. And he’s just doing the EXACT same thing to her and she doesn't even notice. What the fuck is going on here??
 
I cannot read any more of this awful tripe. If the point of the book was commentary about his creepiness, good, I would have continued reading. But the fact that we're meant to think this is romantic is truly depraved. People need to get a grip. 

I was hate reading this for a little while, but that was only enjoyable for the first 90 pages. I can't get through the entire book.

I've never annotated a book before this one, but the burning annoyance I felt 14 pages into this compelled me to hate annotate. 

What a load of poorly written drivel. Did an editor even touch this??