Synopsis:
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 dragonrider, 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.
Rating: 🌟🌟🌟
3.5 stars. I really enjoyed this, but I'm not obsessed with it like I expected it to be.
The biggest draw of The Priory of the Orange Tree for me was it's world-building. It's stunning. It took me the longest to get through the first 200 pages of the book, just trying to get situated in the world. This world is so dense and organic, with so many different cultures and places to explore. Unlike other fantasy novels, which corral the reader in a tiny corner of a massive world, Samantha Shannon takes the reader all over the place. You get a glimpse of just about every place on the map included in the novel. While some places are better fleshed out than others - I personally thought Shannon was more thorough with her Western-inspired settings than Asian- and Middle Eastern-inspired - all of the cultures in this novel are rich with detail.
You follow four POV characters in this book: Ead, a handmaiden to Queen Sabran; Loth, a courtier and best friend of Sabran; Tané, a young woman who has trained to be a dragon rider since she was young; and Niclays, an alchemist living out his exile in the East. Two out of the four POV characters are canonically LGBT+, and three are people of color (though I also suspected that Loth was asexual).
Because of the absolutely wonderful diversity, I expected to adore every single one of these characters. But by the book's close, I didn't really love any of them. Ead and Niclays were my favorite of the POV characters, but even so, I only just liked them more than anything. Don't get me wrong, all of these characters are very well-written and complex, but I never felt especially attached to them. I tend to prefer plot-driven books over character-driven books, but it was still really disappointing to feel lukewarm at best toward all the characters in this novel. It definitely dampened my enjoyment of the f/f relationship, which I was really looking forward to, as a bisexual woman myself. I'll still recommend the hell out of this book to basically everyone because of the f/f romance and diversity, but I was really looking forward to this becoming my new obsession.
Massive shout out to Kalyba, though. I LOVED HER. She was such a interesting, subversive take on the witch stereotype in English literature. She was undoubtedly my favorite character in the novel, and I wish she had gotten way more screen time on the page.
As much as I loved the beginning and the middle of the novel, at around the 600 page mark, everything started to go downhill for me. I still wasn't in love with any of the characters, the plot was veering into generic, and I just enjoyed it less and less as it kept going. The novel had built me up for this masssive, epic ending, but it felt like everything fell into place really easily and quickly at the end. The final battle ended pretty fast, which didn't give it enough weight for the conclusion to feel satisfying. The majority of the novel is relatively slow-paced, so such a quick ending made all the build-up feel unnecessary. I felt very "so what?" after the final battle and so by the time I turned the final page, all I felt was disappointment.
Between the f/f relationship, female author, and diverse cast of characters, I expected The Priory of the Orange Tree to be a new all-time favorite of mine. But while I found it a very enjoyable read for the majority of the novel, I didn't love it. I still HIGHLY recommend checking it out, however, due to its overall subversive nature of the fantasy genre.
The biggest draw of The Priory of the Orange Tree for me was it's world-building. It's stunning. It took me the longest to get through the first 200 pages of the book, just trying to get situated in the world. This world is so dense and organic, with so many different cultures and places to explore. Unlike other fantasy novels, which corral the reader in a tiny corner of a massive world, Samantha Shannon takes the reader all over the place. You get a glimpse of just about every place on the map included in the novel. While some places are better fleshed out than others - I personally thought Shannon was more thorough with her Western-inspired settings than Asian- and Middle Eastern-inspired - all of the cultures in this novel are rich with detail.
You follow four POV characters in this book: Ead, a handmaiden to Queen Sabran; Loth, a courtier and best friend of Sabran; Tané, a young woman who has trained to be a dragon rider since she was young; and Niclays, an alchemist living out his exile in the East. Two out of the four POV characters are canonically LGBT+, and three are people of color (though I also suspected that Loth was asexual).
Because of the absolutely wonderful diversity, I expected to adore every single one of these characters. But by the book's close, I didn't really love any of them. Ead and Niclays were my favorite of the POV characters, but even so, I only just liked them more than anything. Don't get me wrong, all of these characters are very well-written and complex, but I never felt especially attached to them. I tend to prefer plot-driven books over character-driven books, but it was still really disappointing to feel lukewarm at best toward all the characters in this novel. It definitely dampened my enjoyment of the f/f relationship, which I was really looking forward to, as a bisexual woman myself. I'll still recommend the hell out of this book to basically everyone because of the f/f romance and diversity, but I was really looking forward to this becoming my new obsession.
Massive shout out to Kalyba, though. I LOVED HER. She was such a interesting, subversive take on the witch stereotype in English literature. She was undoubtedly my favorite character in the novel, and I wish she had gotten way more screen time on the page.
As much as I loved the beginning and the middle of the novel, at around the 600 page mark, everything started to go downhill for me. I still wasn't in love with any of the characters, the plot was veering into generic, and I just enjoyed it less and less as it kept going. The novel had built me up for this masssive, epic ending, but it felt like everything fell into place really easily and quickly at the end. The final battle ended pretty fast, which didn't give it enough weight for the conclusion to feel satisfying. The majority of the novel is relatively slow-paced, so such a quick ending made all the build-up feel unnecessary. I felt very "so what?" after the final battle and so by the time I turned the final page, all I felt was disappointment.
Between the f/f relationship, female author, and diverse cast of characters, I expected The Priory of the Orange Tree to be a new all-time favorite of mine. But while I found it a very enjoyable read for the majority of the novel, I didn't love it. I still HIGHLY recommend checking it out, however, due to its overall subversive nature of the fantasy genre.
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