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tilly_wizard's reviews
174 reviews
The Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon
1.0
It's been too long since I read this to give a full review, but I still remember why I was so incensed about it.
Firstly, the worldbuilding was tripe - the state religion of "Virtudom" is an unworkable mix of real-life Christian puritanism and fantasy "progressivism" - the royal line is matriarchal, descended from the blood of a Saint, but the Queen is a hostage to her fertility status, her most important duty being to marry a man and give birth to an heir. But at the same time as the court obsesses over the purity of bloodlines, m/f marriages and babies, they are apparently just fine with same-sex marriages (presumably for everyone but the queen?).
I kept waiting for the grand revelation that the fire dragons weren't pure evil, and were in fact necessary for the balance of nature, however it never really came about - we are told that the fire dragons were created by nature, in response to the water dragons arriving on the planet via panspermia, but the water dragons remain good and benevolent, whilst the fire dragons remain one-dimensionally evil, and therefore utterly uncompelling, forever after.
Secondly, the romance. I was aware going into this that it had an f/f romance, and since two of the viewpoint characters are perfectly complementary to one another - both elite female warriors, bearers of the magical twin jewels with the power to save the world, one hailing from the West, with the magic of fire, and the other from the watery East, and so on - I naturally assumed that they would be the central pairing...and yet, not only are they denied the romance, they barely even interact, only coming together for the climactic battle scene at the end.
Considering that the main focus of the book is the overcoming of the physical and cultural division of West and East, thickly wrapped in the symbolism of fire and water, the sky above and the depths below - considering that the book makes significant reference to real historical alchemy, one of the central principles of which is the transcendent sacred marriage of opposite elements, the fact that Shannon failed to actually marry the opposite elements for more than a few fleeting pages (out of so, so many hundreds) is a fucking crime.
Therefore, one star, due to failed execution of the central theme, and thoroughly wasting my time.
Firstly, the worldbuilding was tripe - the state religion of "Virtudom" is an unworkable mix of real-life Christian puritanism and fantasy "progressivism" - the royal line is matriarchal, descended from the blood of a Saint, but the Queen is a hostage to her fertility status, her most important duty being to marry a man and give birth to an heir. But at the same time as the court obsesses over the purity of bloodlines, m/f marriages and babies, they are apparently just fine with same-sex marriages (presumably for everyone but the queen?).
I kept waiting for the grand revelation that the fire dragons weren't pure evil, and were in fact necessary for the balance of nature, however it never really came about - we are told that the fire dragons were created by nature, in response to the water dragons arriving on the planet via panspermia, but the water dragons remain good and benevolent, whilst the fire dragons remain one-dimensionally evil, and therefore utterly uncompelling, forever after.
Secondly, the romance. I was aware going into this that it had an f/f romance, and since two of the viewpoint characters are perfectly complementary to one another - both elite female warriors, bearers of the magical twin jewels with the power to save the world, one hailing from the West, with the magic of fire, and the other from the watery East, and so on - I naturally assumed that they would be the central pairing...and yet, not only are they denied the romance, they barely even interact, only coming together for the climactic battle scene at the end.
Considering that the main focus of the book is the overcoming of the physical and cultural division of West and East, thickly wrapped in the symbolism of fire and water, the sky above and the depths below - considering that the book makes significant reference to real historical alchemy, one of the central principles of which is the transcendent sacred marriage of opposite elements, the fact that Shannon failed to actually marry the opposite elements for more than a few fleeting pages (out of so, so many hundreds) is a fucking crime.
Therefore, one star, due to failed execution of the central theme, and thoroughly wasting my time.