I think your comment about Shannon not being interested in character work crystallizes for me why I (a) stopped reading Priory a couple hundred pages in and then (b) didn't put any effort into picking it up again. And, like, I enjoy epic fantasy! Dragons and cool women should've gotten me into this book, and yet... it just didn't captivate me.

I wonder if it would've worked better if we'd only gotten one of the threads? Like, I really enjoyed Ead's storyline, and Tane's storyline had promise, and what's-his-name, the knight, was maaaaaybe starting to do something interesting when I fell off, but... each storyline took far too long to get set up, and so it just didn't work, because I'd forget details about each storyline while off in the others. (Despite being a long-time fantasy reader who's actually quite good at remembering obscure details most of the time.)

So, yeah, your perspective sounds about right to me, even though I didn't finish the novel.