The Priory of the Orange Tree

I finished it! Yay me! I enjoyed the middle 300 pages. But the first 300 pages took forever to get going. And the last 300 pages were a rushed mess. This book would have been considerably improved by being edited down to half the length and then a bit more story inserted to result in three 200 page novels.

The good part is a fun, long story about women in various pseudo-feudal societies making their way through political machinations, swordplay, and some occasional magic. When this story is cooking along it does really well, it's just frustrating that it doesn't maintain that level of quality consistently.

The other good part is it's a nice queer story. A strong FF romance in the middle. Also a gay man as a side character who is interesting. Although argh! His major plot twists: a heel turn, then a turn back to the side of good, are very poorly explained. Particularly his decision to help the good team afterall. What a waste of a good setup.

The bad part is the writing is just so undisciplined. And long. I almost wish the author would return to this exact same story after 10 or 20 years as a professional writer. There's a lot of good ideas here and they just need better writing.