Review - The Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon

The Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon

Published 26th February 2019 by Bloomsbury Publishing

Star Rating - *****

Goodreads Challenge - 28/50

Synopsis (from Goodreads)

'The new Game of Thrones' Stylist 'Puts Samantha Shannon in the same league as Robin Hobb and George R. R. Martin. Shannon is a master of dragons' Starburst An enthralling, epic fantasy about a world on the brink of war with dragons - an the women who must lead the fight to save it. 

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, Tane has trained to be a dragonrider since she was a child, 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.

My Thoughts

So I finally finished this beast of a book and my god what a brilliant beast it was! It took me a long time to read this one, nearly 3 weeks, and that's a long time for me, even for an 800 page book. That being said I savoured the time I spent with this story. I didn't want to rush it as I didn't want to miss anything. Not once did I find myself getting bored or wanting to pick up something else and, considering how long it took me to read, that's an achievement in itself. 

I'm not going to even try to explain the plot of this one as it's so complex, I just don't think I would be able to do it justice but there's a lot of buzz words associated with this story including myth, magic, dragons, court politics, queendom, f/f romance and I loved each and every part of it. The author did a fantastic job of building such a complex world and story within this one standalone novel. We follow two main perspectives throughout, one from the West and one from the East, with lots of other characters interspersed in between and I loved the way everything came together and was brought to an epic conclusion. I've seen a few reviews that have said that the first 200 pages are quite heavy with information about the setting and I do agree with that however, I really enjoyed learning about this setting that the author has crafted, I felt completely immersed in everything. Everything was so well thought out and everything that was mentioned played a part in the overarching story. I didn't feel like there was anything that could have been left out. 

I really enjoyed our cast of characters too. My favourite perspective was definitely the West. I loved following Ead, Sabran and Loth. All of the court politics and religious virtues were so well thought out. Their story was compelling and enticing and I sped through these chapters. That doesn't mean that I didn't enjoy the Eastern perspective following Tane and Niklays but I didn't feel this story line was as flashed out as the others, especially in the beginning. As we moved towards the conclusion and our characters paths began to cross then this obviously changed but, if I have to be a bit critical, I would of liked a little bit more from Tane and her story, especially about the Eastern dragons. 

Overall I absolutely loved this book. I loved the myth, magic and court politics, everything was so well thought out. I also loved how fleshed out the characters were, Ead and Sabran were especially well developed. The world building was also amazing. I think the author did an absolutely brilliant job of building this amazing world and story in one stand alone novel. I would definitely recommend this one.

Overall Rating