Whenever I write, I imagine the two of you going through the whole thing and either saying it's not as bad as it could be, or tearing it down, but being absolutely hilarious while doing so. It actually helps me see things in another perspective!
The issue is these authors never get developmental editors. They always get editors who care about grammar and syntax but then the story ends up not making any sense. Good writing should be prioritized over good grammar. Until this is realized, we will continue to get these half-baked stories with contradictory characters and a plot that is so stupid it hurts your brain to think about.
@@Minyadagniriel Maas writes stories where the focus is very much on the romance and sexual tension. Everything else - including the politics and world building - are purely secondary. I don’t recommend it for people who want serious fantasy, or who are especially sensitive. Some people can brush off certain elements, other people will feel that it ruins that romance.
I enjoyed the overall aesthetic of this book, but it was way too long and way too boring for what it delivered. I also think it says a lot about the author and her thought process that I saw her complain about critics of Niclays' arc in particular on Twitter. Critics - including myself - say that while Niclays went through a character arc, he was mostly driven by the plot and he didn't do much under his own power, on top of being barely likable (because at least he's a jaded old man who becomes less jaded, but is overall a frustrating person). Shannon blanket-responded to these criticisms by saying she was making a point about how many female characters in other fantasy novels are driven around by the plot and aren't as interesting as their male counterparts. So she was basically saying that Niclays - and possibly the other male POV whose name I forget, but he was really boring so idk - was made to be inactive in his own story to clap back at poorly written female characters in epic fantasy??? Like, congratulations, you made half your POVs to be extraneous to the plot and super boring...
The whole time I was reading this book, I kept thinking, “Well, there are certainly events happening, but I’ll be damned if I can tell you what’s happening and why.”
i genuinely thought i wouldn't agree with you bc i love the book but as i was watching i realised that i actually had similar issues when i read it myself. this is like the third video of the channel that im watching and i absoltely love all you takes so far (also best name for a bookish channel i've come across)
This is really great to hear! I actually had a coworker of mine who watched our video and he REALLY loved the book but he found he agreed with a lot of what was brought up! I'm glad we were able to hit that balance! - Maria
I feel like this book is 4 different books sown together. Eads save the world. Arteloths noir in sigoso. Tane becoming a dragonrider. and Nicholas's cynical villain protagonists adventure.
Finished it today. I'm so glad I'm not the only one who was baffled and disappointed by the poor quality of this book. All the hype led me to think it would be strongly character driven, have rock-solid and inventive worldbuilding, and be progressive. Sadly, only the last one came true. There were some interesting ideas but, as you said, it reads more like an over-stuffed teenage idea for a novel that ended up waffling and rambling for 800+ pages, with too many thin characters, plot holes, contrivances, deux-ex machinas, and lack of substance. Also, the total lack of humour or any moments of empathic levity really drained me. It took itself way too seriously, 100% of the time.
This book holds a very special place for me in that it was the first book I (successfully) read through after having a pretty serious concussion that hindered my ability to read/write. So I was a bit antsy going into this video, but I do agree with some of the issues brought up. It definitely should’ve been shorter, and some of the plot devices are… interesting (I think I mentally blocked out the embedded jewel bit lol). The geographical concerns are valid, though the physical book contains a map that helps greatly. Though the fact that you do have to consult it is indicative to the issues at hand. But I still really enjoyed it, enough that even though it was genuinely difficult to get through (on my end/because of my injury though the dry parts of the plot didn’t help) I still had a great time with it.
I may be the opposite of the guy here; I have a HUGE tolerance for the content I consume. Honestly, I'm not even sure what it takes for me to actively dislike a reading experience, because it's so easy for me to just sit back and absorb. To actually start thinking critically, I need to really crank that switch on, and it feels like such a slow, mentally taxing process, I only really do it when beta reading for friends.
I actually enjoyed the first two thirds or so. But the final battle was sooo anticlimactic. It was like the nameless one was finally revealed and I was expecting him to destroy everything and cause so much devastation. But he just... stayed in the water... and they just stabbed him... and that was it. Made me drop my enjoyment of it so much
Oh my goodness this book was a pain, I got half way through with immense effort and then stopped because the only character I'd vaguely started to care about after 400 hundred pages died. I couldn't help feeling that if I could not tell anyone what the book was about or have care for any of the characters after the length of an average book has already passed then the book clearly wasn't for me. I had no sense of where the different places were supposed to be or what cultures were meant to be respeesented so I went according to the accents in the audiobook. Also I am from South Africa and that one character also sounded African to me so imagine my surprise to finding out that they werent supposed to be. Thanks for the great discussion as always guys.
I personally think that Shannon approached this book as like a deconstruction of the chosen one trope with Sabran as protagonist and the four narrators simply being narrators. Because Sabran seemed to have the most active influence on the plot and 3 of the 4 narrators are specifically tied to her machinations. I'm not saying it was a successful deconstruction, though.
Wow did you hit the nail on the head with this book! I just finished it, and in the end I was mostly satisfied with it, but the pacing was atrocious. The first third was so slow and you are so right about being completely lost with names and places that make no sense. The end was insanely rushed. Would I recommend the book to others, probably not. It was just middle of the road 'meh' if that makes sense.
I couldn't agree more. I got about 200 pages in and I got bored with it. I looked up a synopsis just to see how it ends and it went exactly where I was expecting it to go. Should have been a 300-400 page book instead of an 800 page chonker. Hardly anything interesting happens until the very end.
Also, it sounds like the author wanted diversity points, but without doing any real work to integrate the cultures into the story. This is why you don't get a real sense of the character's clothing or accents beyond surface-level things.
As much as I usually agree with your opinions, I really enjoyed watching this and finding your gripes only further enticing me to the whole mess of it. I think sometimes fantasy should just be about strange collections of slow atmospheric moments and fairytale premises and politics talked about in-depth... But also I do love how picky you two are! Keep up the good work.
I like the *ideas* this book has and I think it incorporates some cool ideas but I really feel like this needed two. things. 1) Another draft or two to flesh out all the details. 2) It should've been broken into two or three separate books.
Oh my god thank you for saying it!! I also think this book is a fucking horse tranquilizer.. quite a shame cause the ratings sounded so promising… also I Love your Videos 😍
I too have a short attention span and my mind drifts everywhere while reading books. Plus I have a hard time remembering character names, their roles and the names of the places, hence I disliked GOT the series and other books that had too many characters. I came across the Priory of the orange tree and it caught my eye due to its beautiful cover and that it's available in hard cover and is thick book. I have always had a thing for lenghty books, even if they are not that interesting, so I'd just add them to my collection -- but no more. Now in the era of everything-digital and at the age of 38, I don't keep unnecessary bagage around and don't waste money on things I will not consume, and this review is what exactly i needed as I was about to order this book at an expensive price tag. I checked out first few pages of the book online to find out if it's interesting but it seemed to be pretty boring so I came looking for reviews. Would you recommend a similar book but one that is actually interesting and worth a read? @Unresolved Textual Tension, and all the other readers/commenters.
Maybe I'm just more patient than most or I'm not as picky as some people, but I really enjoyed this book on the whole. I read it pretty fast (I finished the whole thing in less than 2 weeks) and I really enjoyed the world. Some parts were definitely disconnected and I think Saban would have made an awesome POV character, but again I definitely don't regret the read and I'd probably recommend it to someone who mind a book being longer than it has to be!
to be clear i don't think this was intentional, i don't think this is the message that samantha shannon wanted to send, i just don't think she thought about the implications, but it's really weird that priory of the orange tree ends on the note of "there is a correct religion that everyone should follow, you should feel bad for having followed the wrong religion, the newly converted queen is going to slowly but surely make sure everyone in her country converts to the correct religion because their faith is wrong and bad and needs to die out" like. hello??? it's especially :-/ when you consider how heavily each region is based on real-world cultures (despite shannon trying to claim in the author's note that all similarities to real cultures was purely accidental) also the weird sympathy that ead had for kalyba at the end despite knowing what she'd done rubbed me the wrong way.
ahh I’ve tried to finish this book twice and DNFd both times at around 60%… when the jewels were introduced the story was no longer interesting, fetch quests are awful
Really enjoyed the discussion! I personally grew to love the book however, 100% agree with the first 300 pages being a slog. I read them and then switched to the audiobook which helped in pronouncing and remembering the names! I didn’t mind the multiple POV’s personally, I loved Ead but I actually really enjoyed Tané’s arc. I hated Niclays (he was a good character but very dislikable!). Loth was okay, didn’t mind him either way.
I enjoyed the book for what it was, but agree 110% that two of the four POV Character sections could have been removed entirely and basically nothing would have changed. They add next to nothing to the story, and I did not really like the ending. It overall felt like this book was unnecessarily bloated to the point that the author did not know what to cut out, so sent in everything. I liked a lot of the concepts, I enjoyed ideas, and as a queer woman myself, I enjoyed having the representation in the book. However, it was really weighted down by a lot of excess... junk for lack of a better word. Overall, I enjoyed the Ead parts, more or less forgotten everything else, and I enjoyed the Ead parts. Everything else to me felt like extraneous bloat.
When you read a book and 2 of the main characters for the plot end up being equally boring and having no personality traits except the other one is gay and the other is not. I really wanted to love this one but sadly adding gender politics does not fade the fact that she cannot write memorable characters. Only character that had personality was Niclays. Just this 800 page book is about 300 pages filler. Goodreads score I might assume is only because of the rainbow ideology. Nothing to do about the story or the characters
The most annoying thing was that everyone was like “dragons! WAW!” AND THE DRAGONS ARE THE LEAST IMPORTANT PART. or at least they were one of the most boring plot point tbh
I didn't hate this book, but I had to dnf because it felt like after hours and hours of this story, it just wasn't really going anywhere. I wanted to like it. But it was essentially boring.
I am with Will (for most part) on this one. I like her book The Bone Season (tho I know many people don't like it), but I did not like anything about Priory. This felt like a debut novel in many ways, like this was an experiment of an aspiring writer who just finished ASOIAF. The wordbuilding feels uninspiring and juvenile to me, like it was ripped from our history books in a very peculiar way so her world then feels artificial in the end. I see the intention behind it all, I see how the author picked just certain stuff from certain cultures and I don't like it. East is just our east, with eastern dragons, and west is just west, with the typical western dragons. It feels very "try hard", patting itself on the shoulder, idk how to describe the feeling this book gave me. I also missed some real (present) villain. The cover art is gorgeous tho.
As of now I am on page 630 of the Priory. It’s good, as you guys have stated I too have NO IDEA how to summarize the book into a sentence or less, but I’m very much emotionally attached because of time spent *cough cough* (a month) reading this absolute behemoth. As to the “characters having no emotional drive” I agree! It all sums up to “Hey, we all hate the nameless one, -everyone kinda knows he’s coming but are doing the bare minimum!- let’s go slay him.” I think Sabran would’ve made an interesting POV because of her internal torment but we get what we get ig. 🤠 So far 6/10/ I have no idea at all
I waited until I had fully read this brick of a book before watching this, and then of course the first thing y'all say is that you didn't fully finish it before recording, because of course Anyway great stuff and I fully agree! The experience is so... so so so very mixed.
I fucking HATED Ead so much. She's a Mary Sue, imo. She has all these ridiculous powers and there's zero dramatic stakes whenever she does anything because the author always has to let her win and refuses to humble her.
Ooo! Do you do book requests? I love the series “A Court of Thorns and Roses” and thimk you should check them out! The first book might not be to good but the second is said to be the best. And the “Mercy Thompson” series is awesome!!!
Maria you look pretty in this video! ( Not that you don't in order videos) but your make-up and pink top together 😻😻 Also I wasn't able to get through this book either. I tried so hard because everyone on RUclips loved it
@@unresolvedtextualtension Can’t wait to see those videos! I have a hard time coming across people who’ve read them. Very excited to hear your guys’ opinion. (Also the next Hyperion video because just yes)
One of my other best friends recommended the first trilogy to me and because Katie and Will haven’t read them I’m actually going to do the review video with her! We both enjoyed the books but for different reasons so it should be interesting! - Maria
Many thing they called out as not being described or relayed to earlier in the book actually were. I feel like a lot of this review came from lazy reading and them missing lines/references. Plus neither had even finished the book at the time of the review.
Nope this is a critically acclaimed book and y’all just use fanfic anytime something is not your taste. Done with it. Screw you. Give a real assessment or spare us the edgelord baby babble
I loved the Sapphic romance between the two main characters!!! It's true the author could've speared us a lit of details about every component of every meal that was served in court and the whole east part of the story... but sabran and ead are great. Please give us a nona the ninth review 🙏
Whenever I write, I imagine the two of you going through the whole thing and either saying it's not as bad as it could be, or tearing it down, but being absolutely hilarious while doing so. It actually helps me see things in another perspective!
The issue is these authors never get developmental editors. They always get editors who care about grammar and syntax but then the story ends up not making any sense. Good writing should be prioritized over good grammar. Until this is realized, we will continue to get these half-baked stories with contradictory characters and a plot that is so stupid it hurts your brain to think about.
PUHLEEEEase do A Court of Thorns and Gouge my Eyes Out! by Maas.
Seconded
Yessssss
No not that torture!! 😂😂
@@smolexfundie6458 is Court of Thorns really torture? My book clubs are all reading it and raving about it but I'm skeptical XD
@@Minyadagniriel Maas writes stories where the focus is very much on the romance and sexual tension. Everything else - including the politics and world building - are purely secondary. I don’t recommend it for people who want serious fantasy, or who are especially sensitive. Some people can brush off certain elements, other people will feel that it ruins that romance.
I enjoyed the overall aesthetic of this book, but it was way too long and way too boring for what it delivered. I also think it says a lot about the author and her thought process that I saw her complain about critics of Niclays' arc in particular on Twitter. Critics - including myself - say that while Niclays went through a character arc, he was mostly driven by the plot and he didn't do much under his own power, on top of being barely likable (because at least he's a jaded old man who becomes less jaded, but is overall a frustrating person). Shannon blanket-responded to these criticisms by saying she was making a point about how many female characters in other fantasy novels are driven around by the plot and aren't as interesting as their male counterparts. So she was basically saying that Niclays - and possibly the other male POV whose name I forget, but he was really boring so idk - was made to be inactive in his own story to clap back at poorly written female characters in epic fantasy??? Like, congratulations, you made half your POVs to be extraneous to the plot and super boring...
The whole time I was reading this book, I kept thinking, “Well, there are certainly events happening, but I’ll be damned if I can tell you what’s happening and why.”
These sorts of videos have helped me to become a better writer. I think they've been even more useful than actual writing classes.
i genuinely thought i wouldn't agree with you bc i love the book but as i was watching i realised that i actually had similar issues when i read it myself. this is like the third video of the channel that im watching and i absoltely love all you takes so far (also best name for a bookish channel i've come across)
This is really great to hear! I actually had a coworker of mine who watched our video and he REALLY loved the book but he found he agreed with a lot of what was brought up! I'm glad we were able to hit that balance! - Maria
I know right, the channel name is so creative!
I feel like this book is 4 different books sown together. Eads save the world. Arteloths noir in sigoso. Tane becoming a dragonrider. and Nicholas's cynical villain protagonists adventure.
And a bratty queen..
I'm pretty sure the first chapter shouldn't have focused on Tane, she isn't relevent for another 500 pages and we don't get much from her.
Finished it today. I'm so glad I'm not the only one who was baffled and disappointed by the poor quality of this book. All the hype led me to think it would be strongly character driven, have rock-solid and inventive worldbuilding, and be progressive. Sadly, only the last one came true. There were some interesting ideas but, as you said, it reads more like an over-stuffed teenage idea for a novel that ended up waffling and rambling for 800+ pages, with too many thin characters, plot holes, contrivances, deux-ex machinas, and lack of substance. Also, the total lack of humour or any moments of empathic levity really drained me. It took itself way too seriously, 100% of the time.
This book holds a very special place for me in that it was the first book I (successfully) read through after having a pretty serious concussion that hindered my ability to read/write. So I was a bit antsy going into this video, but I do agree with some of the issues brought up. It definitely should’ve been shorter, and some of the plot devices are… interesting (I think I mentally blocked out the embedded jewel bit lol). The geographical concerns are valid, though the physical book contains a map that helps greatly. Though the fact that you do have to consult it is indicative to the issues at hand.
But I still really enjoyed it, enough that even though it was genuinely difficult to get through (on my end/because of my injury though the dry parts of the plot didn’t help) I still had a great time with it.
I may be the opposite of the guy here; I have a HUGE tolerance for the content I consume.
Honestly, I'm not even sure what it takes for me to actively dislike a reading experience, because it's so easy for me to just sit back and absorb.
To actually start thinking critically, I need to really crank that switch on, and it feels like such a slow, mentally taxing process, I only really do it when beta reading for friends.
I actually enjoyed the first two thirds or so. But the final battle was sooo anticlimactic. It was like the nameless one was finally revealed and I was expecting him to destroy everything and cause so much devastation. But he just... stayed in the water... and they just stabbed him... and that was it. Made me drop my enjoyment of it so much
no literally they poked him and he died 😭😭😭
VINDICATION! This was harder to read than wizards first rule! At least Terry Goodkind wrights good smut.
That part with the jewel and the worm reminded me of Inuyasha when Kagome fights the centipede the first time
omg thats what i was thinking!!!!!
Oh my goodness this book was a pain, I got half way through with immense effort and then stopped because the only character I'd vaguely started to care about after 400 hundred pages died. I couldn't help feeling that if I could not tell anyone what the book was about or have care for any of the characters after the length of an average book has already passed then the book clearly wasn't for me. I had no sense of where the different places were supposed to be or what cultures were meant to be respeesented so I went according to the accents in the audiobook. Also I am from South Africa and that one character also sounded African to me so imagine my surprise to finding out that they werent supposed to be. Thanks for the great discussion as always guys.
the jewel being imbedded in a character since birth was a big plot point in inuyasha. samantha shannon might be a weeb
I personally think that Shannon approached this book as like a deconstruction of the chosen one trope with Sabran as protagonist and the four narrators simply being narrators. Because Sabran seemed to have the most active influence on the plot and 3 of the 4 narrators are specifically tied to her machinations. I'm not saying it was a successful deconstruction, though.
I liked the book in my first read, but on re-read I just skipped 90% of it and just read the Sabran parts because the rest was SOOO BORING.
Wow did you hit the nail on the head with this book! I just finished it, and in the end I was mostly satisfied with it, but the pacing was atrocious. The first third was so slow and you are so right about being completely lost with names and places that make no sense. The end was insanely rushed. Would I recommend the book to others, probably not. It was just middle of the road 'meh' if that makes sense.
I couldn't agree more. I got about 200 pages in and I got bored with it. I looked up a synopsis just to see how it ends and it went exactly where I was expecting it to go. Should have been a 300-400 page book instead of an 800 page chonker. Hardly anything interesting happens until the very end.
Also, it sounds like the author wanted diversity points, but without doing any real work to integrate the cultures into the story. This is why you don't get a real sense of the character's clothing or accents beyond surface-level things.
If all you can say is "something was stuck inside her" is interesting, that's not enough. Anime did that years ago
As much as I usually agree with your opinions, I really enjoyed watching this and finding your gripes only further enticing me to the whole mess of it. I think sometimes fantasy should just be about strange collections of slow atmospheric moments and fairytale premises and politics talked about in-depth... But also I do love how picky you two are! Keep up the good work.
Do a marathon of all these bad book reviews by UTT. Take a shot every time "a song of ice and fire" is mentioned. Guaranteed hospital trip.
BWAHAHAHAHAHA. Will, you are gonna put people in the hospital. - Maria
I regret nothing.
--Will
I like the *ideas* this book has and I think it incorporates some cool ideas but I really feel like this needed two. things. 1) Another draft or two to flesh out all the details. 2) It should've been broken into two or three separate books.
Oh my god thank you for saying it!! I also think this book is a fucking horse tranquilizer.. quite a shame cause the ratings sounded so promising… also I Love your Videos 😍
Awesome, it's exciting to see engagement on these videos. If you ever have any feedback you wanna share, throw it at us.
I too have a short attention span and my mind drifts everywhere while reading books. Plus I have a hard time remembering character names, their roles and the names of the places, hence I disliked GOT the series and other books that had too many characters. I came across the Priory of the orange tree and it caught my eye due to its beautiful cover and that it's available in hard cover and is thick book. I have always had a thing for lenghty books, even if they are not that interesting, so I'd just add them to my collection -- but no more. Now in the era of everything-digital and at the age of 38, I don't keep unnecessary bagage around and don't waste money on things I will not consume, and this review is what exactly i needed as I was about to order this book at an expensive price tag. I checked out first few pages of the book online to find out if it's interesting but it seemed to be pretty boring so I came looking for reviews.
Would you recommend a similar book but one that is actually interesting and worth a read? @Unresolved Textual Tension, and all the other readers/commenters.
Got you! The rising jewl’s been in my side the WHOLE time!
I just wanna say I love you guys and your channel's name sm
Please do The court of thorns and roses series. There is so much you could talk about with those books.
I don't know that Maria would survive.
--Will
Maybe I'm just more patient than most or I'm not as picky as some people, but I really enjoyed this book on the whole. I read it pretty fast (I finished the whole thing in less than 2 weeks) and I really enjoyed the world. Some parts were definitely disconnected and I think Saban would have made an awesome POV character, but again I definitely don't regret the read and I'd probably recommend it to someone who mind a book being longer than it has to be!
to be clear i don't think this was intentional, i don't think this is the message that samantha shannon wanted to send, i just don't think she thought about the implications, but it's really weird that priory of the orange tree ends on the note of "there is a correct religion that everyone should follow, you should feel bad for having followed the wrong religion, the newly converted queen is going to slowly but surely make sure everyone in her country converts to the correct religion because their faith is wrong and bad and needs to die out" like. hello??? it's especially :-/ when you consider how heavily each region is based on real-world cultures (despite shannon trying to claim in the author's note that all similarities to real cultures was purely accidental)
also the weird sympathy that ead had for kalyba at the end despite knowing what she'd done rubbed me the wrong way.
ahh I’ve tried to finish this book twice and DNFd both times at around 60%… when the jewels were introduced the story was no longer interesting, fetch quests are awful
Really enjoyed the discussion! I personally grew to love the book however, 100% agree with the first 300 pages being a slog. I read them and then switched to the audiobook which helped in pronouncing and remembering the names!
I didn’t mind the multiple POV’s personally, I loved Ead but I actually really enjoyed Tané’s arc. I hated Niclays (he was a good character but very dislikable!). Loth was okay, didn’t mind him either way.
I enjoyed the book for what it was, but agree 110% that two of the four POV Character sections could have been removed entirely and basically nothing would have changed. They add next to nothing to the story, and I did not really like the ending. It overall felt like this book was unnecessarily bloated to the point that the author did not know what to cut out, so sent in everything.
I liked a lot of the concepts, I enjoyed ideas, and as a queer woman myself, I enjoyed having the representation in the book. However, it was really weighted down by a lot of excess... junk for lack of a better word.
Overall, I enjoyed the Ead parts, more or less forgotten everything else, and I enjoyed the Ead parts. Everything else to me felt like extraneous bloat.
Ok, so what are some of Will's favorite books?
Long book. Nothing happened until the last 100 pages regarding the main plot point. It was alright.
This book was a total slog and I'm relieved I'm not the only one who thought so. I also cannot stand the whole, 'secret special bloodline' trope.
When you read a book and 2 of the main characters for the plot end up being equally boring and having no personality traits except the other one is gay and the other is not. I really wanted to love this one but sadly adding gender politics does not fade the fact that she cannot write memorable characters. Only character that had personality was Niclays. Just this 800 page book is about 300 pages filler. Goodreads score I might assume is only because of the rainbow ideology. Nothing to do about the story or the characters
Have you thought of doing Peace and Turmoil by Elliot Brooks?
I don't think Will or Maria has mentioned it, but I'll bring it to their attention.
Love this channel. The banter between you two is so entertaining.
That book was a DNF for me. Sooo boring.
The most annoying thing was that everyone was like “dragons! WAW!” AND THE DRAGONS ARE THE LEAST IMPORTANT PART. or at least they were one of the most boring plot point tbh
I didn't hate this book, but I had to dnf because it felt like after hours and hours of this story, it just wasn't really going anywhere. I wanted to like it. But it was essentially boring.
Also, if you are into girls with jewels inside them, you should check out the first three episodes of Inuyasha. 😆
I am with Will (for most part) on this one. I like her book The Bone Season (tho I know many people don't like it), but I did not like anything about Priory. This felt like a debut novel in many ways, like this was an experiment of an aspiring writer who just finished ASOIAF. The wordbuilding feels uninspiring and juvenile to me, like it was ripped from our history books in a very peculiar way so her world then feels artificial in the end. I see the intention behind it all, I see how the author picked just certain stuff from certain cultures and I don't like it. East is just our east, with eastern dragons, and west is just west, with the typical western dragons. It feels very "try hard", patting itself on the shoulder, idk how to describe the feeling this book gave me. I also missed some real (present) villain.
The cover art is gorgeous tho.
As of now I am on page 630 of the Priory. It’s good, as you guys have stated I too have NO IDEA how to summarize the book into a sentence or less, but I’m very much emotionally attached because of time spent *cough cough* (a month) reading this absolute behemoth.
As to the “characters having no emotional drive” I agree! It all sums up to “Hey, we all hate the nameless one, -everyone kinda knows he’s coming but are doing the bare minimum!- let’s go slay him.” I think Sabran would’ve made an interesting POV because of her internal torment but we get what we get ig. 🤠
So far 6/10/ I have no idea at all
I waited until I had fully read this brick of a book before watching this, and then of course the first thing y'all say is that you didn't fully finish it before recording, because of course
Anyway great stuff and I fully agree! The experience is so... so so so very mixed.
You had to read this for a book club? You poor soul. I read it because I prayed I would like it and finally at 700 pages I called it quits. It sucks.
I fucking HATED Ead so much. She's a Mary Sue, imo. She has all these ridiculous powers and there's zero dramatic stakes whenever she does anything because the author always has to let her win and refuses to humble her.
If you can read French I heard a children's book with a similar name is actually good: "The boy and the orange tree"
Ooo! Do you do book requests?
I love the series “A Court of Thorns and Roses” and thimk you should check them out! The first book might not be to good but the second is said to be the best. And the “Mercy Thompson” series is awesome!!!
14:10 Glou-chest-shure?! William!
It's Gloss-ter-shir
smh from Britain
Only a minute in and have to say real quick that Maria, your fit and makeup in this video are super pretty!
OMG THANK YOU! I’d never done pink eyeshadow before and I was REALLY feeling the vibe hahaha - Maria
Wasn't arteloth also black? which doesn't make much geographic sense.
The book Ivar:Blood and Steel is pretty good.😉
Maria you look pretty in this video! ( Not that you don't in order videos) but your make-up and pink top together 😻😻
Also I wasn't able to get through this book either. I tried so hard because everyone on RUclips loved it
I'm always impressed when people are willing to be wrong so loudly and so publicly.
YOU’VE READ (listened) TO JACQUELINE CAREY’S BOOKS?!!! 😍😍🥰🥰
I’ve gone through the first Kushiel trilogy and the 2nd one so far!! I’m gonna do some videos on them! - Maria
@@unresolvedtextualtension Can’t wait to see those videos! I have a hard time coming across people who’ve read them. Very excited to hear your guys’ opinion. (Also the next Hyperion video because just yes)
One of my other best friends recommended the first trilogy to me and because Katie and Will haven’t read them I’m actually going to do the review video with her! We both enjoyed the books but for different reasons so it should be interesting! - Maria
Many thing they called out as not being described or relayed to earlier in the book actually were. I feel like a lot of this review came from lazy reading and them missing lines/references. Plus neither had even finished the book at the time of the review.
I wanted to like this so badly. It was so awful.
It reads like a fanfic that’s strung together without a central plot line.
Nope this is a critically acclaimed book and y’all just use fanfic anytime something is not your taste. Done with it. Screw you. Give a real assessment or spare us the edgelord baby babble
I loved the Sapphic romance between the two main characters!!!
It's true the author could've speared us a lit of details about every component of every meal that was served in court and the whole east part of the story... but sabran and ead are great.
Please give us a nona the ninth review 🙏
IT is not boring. its all ypu
Let people have their own opinions
Perhaps as Americans you don't have the capacity to understand it? Also, you're pronouncing Ead's name wrong :)
are you serious? Let people have their own opinions