Book Review: The Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon

 

Goodreads Summary: A world divided.A queendom without an heir. An ancient enemy awakens.

The House of Berethnet has ruled Inys for a thousand years. Still unwed, Queen Sabran the Ninth must conceive a daughter to protect her realm from destruction--but assassins are getting closer to her door.

Ead Duryan is an outsider at court. Though she has risen to the position of lady-in-waiting, she is loyal to a hidden society of mages. Ead keeps a watchful eye on Sabran, secretly protecting her with forbidden magic.

Across the dark sea, Tané has trained all her life to be a dragon rider but is forced to make a choice that could see her life unravel.

Meanwhile, the divided East and West refuse to parley, and forces of chaos are rising from their sleep.

Goodreads Ratings: 4.23 stars with over 156,110 

Genre Listing: Fantasy, LGBT Fiction, Queer Fiction, Romance, Adult, Dragons, High Fantasy, Magic

Goodreads Challenge: 33/30 

2023 Reading Challenge: #4 Read a book by an author whose name is Samantha, Sam, or a variant (Find the whole challenge here)

Book Review: 

Hello, Readers. I hope everyone is doing well on this July afternoon. I just finished up The Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon. Honestly, I'm glad to be done with this one. It's really long, and even though I knew that going in, I wasn't mentally prepared for it. The book follows four main characters and their stories - Ead, Tane, Loth, and Niclays as they try to defeat The Nameless One. 

I liked Ead and Tane's stories the best. They were the most interesting of the characters. With Niclays and Loth, I don't know if their stories were interesting enough to warrant parts being told from their point of view. Especially considering that all four characters read the same way. I didn't get much of a different tone between the characters; they all felt flat in personality. 

The world-building was interesting, and I liked how the world's main faiths in The Priory of the Orange Tree were shown in a different light. Each area had its own version of the lore and what happened. The idea of having Patron Saints of Virtues was creative, and I liked how all the different versions of the myths came together in the end. I liked how there were also other variants of dragons in this world, and they were more elemental-based. A prequel has been recently released. I may give it a shot to see if it gets more into the dragon lore.

Overall, I thought the story was interesting, and I think from a representation perspective, it's excellent that LGBT couples were at the forefront of the romance portion of the story. There are both W/W and M/M couples represented. They were also all main characters, not just a random secondary character. Wheel of Time Fans would really like this book. It has a similar theme regarding events from previous ages rehappening. It lost me because of how long it was and the multiple perspectives written in similar tones. I enjoyed it but also was ready for it to end.