PRIORY OF THE ORANGE TREE by Samantha Shannon

 

Where do I even begin with this one....

I started the book sometime in May, guestimating it would take me at least a month to get through it. And here it is, the beginning of September. Whelp.

Don't get me wrong. This book is breathtaking. And it is, without question, THE book to have broken my YEARS LONG reading slump. I literally can't wait to pick up another book.

But holy shit it's long.

I think we could've done without the first 2-300 pages of Ead at court. I suspect this was to try and build up the relationship between her and Sabran, but I don't feel that ever really got off the ground. I'm not really sure what they see in each other, but also... I don't really know who they are. Ead is essentially a warrior nun. Which is cool, but I just personally need more than that. Sabran generally comes across as cold and unrelenting (though she becomes abruptly progressive at the end of the book—not that I minded that, but I'm not sure I saw much evidence for this sudden change of heart?). We're sometimes told that she can be easily depressed or gloomy, but I don't feel like we got to see this in her.

But that's okay, honestly. I could easily brush aside their romance and just enjoy the dangerous world of politics and magic that surrounded them both. There were many minor characters surrounding them that were also very interesting; Meg, for instance, or Chassar. 

Tané is next. It took a bit for her personality and story to get off the ground, true. For about 400 pages or so, she was "the girl who fights hard to be the best." Once she experiences her great heartache/fall (I'll try not to give spoilers here), she really starts to grow. But it does take some time. In the end, her bond with Nayimathun is quite sweet, and I loved Nayimathun's gentle confidence in her. Towards the end of the book, I think she starts to see dragons as companions instead of gods, and that's true growth.

Loth is, frankly, a precious bean. I found him to be the second most likable major character (though Tané isn't far behind). In a strange way, he doesn't experience much growth; he's still the same gentle-hearted, earnest guy at the end of the story as he was at its beginning. But there's just something about that earnestness of his that really tugged at my heartstrings. I loved his friendship with Sabran and Ead, but it was the sort of thing that we saw without really feeling. I think this is because he is separated from them before the book even begins, so we don't get to actually experience their deep love for one another. When they finally meet after, what, 4, 500 pages? and embrace, it feels just a wee a bit hollow. Still, that's hardly Loth's fault. For a long portion of the text, I thought he was hinted at as being asexual/aromantic, but every now and then he would, out of nowhere, think about the Donmata Marosa, and I wasn't sure if this fascination/concern of his was supposed to be romantic or not.

And finally... Niclays Roos. Man, what can I really say about this guy? I DEFINITELY have a new favorite character. Forget the other characters. His personality consistently leapt right off the page (and into my heart). Dr. Roos... outcast by a relentlessly proud queen and quietly grieving over the loss of a man he wasn't even allowed to fully be with... he absolutely broke my heart. The world consistently spit on Niclays Roos, and he had to just stand there and take it. This man multiple times throughout the narrative contemplated death, then bitterly called himself a coward for not being able to seek it. If that's not relatable... 

Since he's a major character (and POV character) I always knew another chapter of his was just around the corner, and it often helped me race through some of those early chapters. I also felt the end of his story was handled with compassion and dignity, and I was just... really grateful for that.

Characters aside... it just felt great to read an epic fantasy that wasn't cishet white male-centric. I haven't dabbled in the sub-genre since my high school days, when it was dominated by dudes like Robert Jordan and George R. R. Martin (names that frankly still dominate it... some things never change, I guess 🙄).

All I can say is, when's the HBO show? When's the Amazon show. The Netflix show. This needs to happen. I won't get on a soapbox here, but for the love of the Mother, let's be done with these old white dudes and their crusty, misogynistic stories. 

I'm ready for a change. 😤

TIMEKEEPER by Tara Sim

 

I finished TIMEKEEPER in a frenzy, brushing past words and jumping quickly to new paragraphs to see what would happen next. 

I guess you would expect a book about time to be well-paced. Some books shuffle a bit at the beginning—or worse, grab you for the first ten or twenty pages, the let you drift aimlessly for the next hundred or so. This one didn't. We're tossed right into Danny Hart's world, and we meet his love interest, Colton, pretty quickly, too. There's a cute little twist right at the beginning, and I'm embarrassed to admit I fell for it. Me and Danny, we're a coupla dopes, I guess.

The romance is soft and sweet, and skips along like the fairytales Danny brings for Colton to read. The first kiss was, in a word, precious. Our young heroes do seem to go from "I like you" to "I'd die for you" in a matter of weeks—or months? okay probably months, but it might be that the fast pace sometimes pushed the romance a little to the side so the mystery could shine.

And boy did it. As we got closer and closer to the end, time seemed to speed up accordingly. The revelation of the person (persons?) responsible for it all surprised me as much as it did Danny. It could be, however, that, like the romance, there simply wasn't as much time spent on friendships and professional relationships for us to truly feel the sting—but that's likely the difference between a YA and an adult novel.

That said, I think this could have been an equally good adult book, and, me being an adult 🤣 I probably would have appreciated it a bit more. But I have little doubt young readers will find Danny's relationships with his mother, friends, and boyfriend very relatable. You do tend to burn fast and hot at his age.

This is my first gaslamp fantasy!! and I have to say I thoroughly enjoyed it. (There may be hints of steampunk here, as there are automated workers here and there, but I think this is definitely a precursor novel to gaslamp fantasy.) More fantasy books should take place in this sort of fictional 1800s (and not just England). I'd also love to see more secondary fantasy worlds that are more gaslamp-adjacent. 

Special shoutout to my favorite character, Daphne: I actually would love a story from her POV!

UPROOTED by Naomi Novik

 

I stopped reading years ago.

I don't know why. The last book I read was BITTERBLUE by Kristin Cashore. I enjoyed it. The previous book in that series, FIRE, is still one of my favorite books I've ever read. Nothing about BITTERBLUE made me stop reading. I just did.

I read a lot of fanfiction. When I'm sad or anxious, fanfiction gives me what I want. I click the characters, relationships, genre, and tags I'm looking for, and there it is: the perfect story. Maybe fanfiction spoiled me. Books didn't have tags. Books were mysterious. Books were scary.

I tried to start reading again. I discarded book after book. I'd stop after the first or second chapter. A character would say or do something that annoyed me; the pacing would be off and I'd get bored. 

UPROOTED is the book that broke the cycle.

What is it about this book in particular that made it possible for me to hold on until the end? It wasn't easy. The second I got annoyed or frustrated, I'd set it aside. But then the next day, I'd doggedly return to it. 

At first it was the magic. 

The magic of UPROOTED is unlike anything I've read before. It's chanting, whispering, singing strange, italicized words that may or may not be a real language. Words that are sharp and clear on the tongue of Agnieszka's love interest, Sarkon, but soft and fluid on her own. She tries to speak his magic and fails; he's utterly baffled by hers. There is a hazy masculine and feminine divide between these two magics that only the wizard Alosha seems to stand in opposition to. Sometimes that made me uncomfortable; sometimes it fascinated me.

Next is the Wood.

The Wood is every dark and foreboding forest that dwells at the heart of a fairytale. That makes it imminently recognizable and imminently terrifying. The horrors that occur within the Wood had me skipping frantically over sentences, too anxious to linger over details and only eager to see who would make it back out into the light alive—and still themselves.

And then there was Sarkon, and Kasia, and Solya, and all the others. I didn't always connect with Agnieszka, but I loved the people who loved her. Kasia is worthy of her own story. They all are. The death of a villain towards the end broke my heart in a way I wouldn't have anticipated. And by the end of the book, there were no villains left, if only because there had never been any in the first place.

I'm not saying I'm completely cured (no more than anyone is in this book, I suppose). For a while, I forced myself to read a chapter a day. By the end, I was reading three at once, and only stopping because my head had become too full of this story.

I suspect I would have adored this book had I been able to get my hands on it when I was a kid. It reminds me of Robin McKinley's DEERSKIN in so many ways. I think it's also a wonderful example of an adult fantasy book with a teenaged protagonist. 

I recommend it to anyone who loves fairy tale retellings, feminist fantasy, and new, unexplored settings in fantasy (in this case, a sort of fantasy Poland).