The Priory of the Orange Tree

I was hoping this would scratch my fantasy itch until the next Stormlight Archive book comes out. It didn't.

I think there's a reason this book has been so widely praised outside of fantasy circles, but inside barely caused a ripple. It wasn't bad, I'd just seen it all before and done much better. There's nothing wrong with re-treading well-known tropes but it was just done so blandly here. The characters were boring, and I found them relatively interchangeable. One aspect constantly praised is just how diverse this book is and on that front it's fantastic. It's refreshing. But unfortunately this feature alone does not necessarily make your story, or your characters, interesting. Maybe Shannon should have picked one or two point of view characters and developed them further, or kept them all and simply made this one novel a duology/trilogy. Maybe that way they would have felt a bit more dynamic, a bit less two-dimensional, and improved the pacing.

Nevertheless, I can see why people love it. Genuinely. But I rate books based on personal enjoyment and for better or worse I'm somewhat a fantasy snob at this point. It takes a lot of world-building and something new and truly spectacular to excite me. This didn't deliver that, and that's a shame. I really did want to love it.