The Priory of the Orange Tree
Ratings455
Average rating4.1
A slightly slow start, but boy is it worth it! Amazing page turning read, loved it.
This book was...not good. And I'm gonna rant about it.
The sense of scale that the author is trying to build doesn't hold up to the slightest critical thought.
What should be huge cultural, political, and intellectual shifts in the world get glossed over, explained away with one or two sentences. (holy shit did I really wanna be in the room when Sabran spends - what was it - 2 weeks right? - convincing the council to break their MILLENNIA LONG embargo with another nation!!! Why didn't we get to see any of that??? Why do people say this is a political fantasy book but we rarely get to see any of the actual politics being made?) Shannon ignores valuable opportunities to meaningfully build the world and the culture - they get hand-waved in favor of spending time describing architecture and clothing with constant use of archaic 18th century language from England (it's worth noting here that only the “Western Europe” analog in this world gets this treatment. If the author had used archaic Chinese or Japanese words for her “Asia” stand-in, or, like, Arabic words for her “Africa” stand-in I wouldn't be nearly as critical, but of course she didn't :) The Euro-centricity is....uh, glaring)
Other people have gotten into this next point much more coherently than I will so I'll just say: It's very obvious that Shannon has strong opinions about motherhood, and they are probably universally bad takes. This book is feminist in that very specific “choice feminism” way that ignores history and context and intersectionality.
If you strip away names and places, 3 of the POV characters' inner monologues are indistinguishable (the only exception is Niclays, who is the only stand out character imho, and the only POV I regularly looked forward to getting back to. Love a coward POV <3)
There are multiple points where a literally earth-shattering truth is dropped on a character. One that destroys the very basis of their religion or political power. And a majority of the time they just kind of....shrug? Accept very quickly and move on b/c the plot has to keep moving, no time to wait up for a character to have an existential crisis or be in denial or grieve. When this /is/ addressed, it's all very “tell not show”. We'll get a line that says “[character x] is grappling with this new idea” or “[character y] is grieving for their friend” and then like, nothing else. Sabran specifically gets snapped out of what we're told is a multi week depressive episode by being talked to sternly for 3 minutes. Cue eye roll.
The magic also has no internal logic. This isn't always a bad thing, but there seems to be no rhyme or reason as to who has power and why. Dragons are powerful gods of the sea....except when they're kidnapped by pirates and then they're no more intimidating than a large caged predator. Magic done by humans seems to have very few limits with very few consequences, even for beginners.
This book managed to be dense without being even a little complex. Such a shame.
I was hoping this would scratch my fantasy itch until the next Stormlight Archive book comes out. It didn't.
I think there's a reason this book has been so widely praised outside of fantasy circles, but inside barely caused a ripple. It wasn't bad, I'd just seen it all before and done much better. There's nothing wrong with re-treading well-known tropes but it was just done so blandly here. The characters were boring, and I found them relatively interchangeable. One aspect constantly praised is just how diverse this book is and on that front it's fantastic. It's refreshing. But unfortunately this feature alone does not necessarily make your story, or your characters, interesting. Maybe Shannon should have picked one or two point of view characters and developed them further, or kept them all and simply made this one novel a duology/trilogy. Maybe that way they would have felt a bit more dynamic, a bit less two-dimensional, and improved the pacing.
Nevertheless, I can see why people love it. Genuinely. But I rate books based on personal enjoyment and for better or worse I'm somewhat a fantasy snob at this point. It takes a lot of world-building and something new and truly spectacular to excite me. This didn't deliver that, and that's a shame. I really did want to love it.
Enjoyed reading the book, particularly the character development. However, I did not enjoy the manner in which the the author ended the book. The solution was abrupt and felt hurried.
Initial Thoughts: Despite taking a month to read I really enjoyed this and I know I'm always going to be a sucker for Samantha Shannon's writing!
I had been putting this book off for a while because of just how long it was. It's an intimidating size! But I figured with this weird world we're in now and having so much time on my hands, there would be no better time.
I'm glad I did! This was a really good book! The writing style was immersive and it really painted clear pictures of scenes, people, places, and action. I thought it was reading a little flowery in the beginning, but actually it seemed to work really well and was well thought out. The characters were also mostly well fleshed out, and I liked the moral dilemmas that cropped up occasionally about religion and duty.
The negatives keeping me from giving this a full 5 stars are probably mostly personal hangups. I didn't really like the character of Niclays Roos, who didn't really have a clear picture in the story except as a plot vehicle in my opinion. I also thought the beginning was a little slow and confusing, with the author throwing people, places, and concepts at you so quickly. Finally, I felt like the pacing of the ending was a little off, especially compared with how methodical the buildup had been up to that point. Suddenly we're rushing through action and plot threads like mad, and I wished we had spent a little more time at least at resolving them. Perhaps the book would have benefited from being split into two smaller books, which would have given the author more time to devote to a better paced ending.
Still, this made my favorites shelf for 2020, and that says something. Highly recommend.
For a book this long, It's important that book should engage you the whole time, makes you wanna finish it and doesn't disappoint you in the end.
Well, I finished it on time and not disappointed that I chose to read this book. That's HUGE for me.
If you have time and Mystery, Magic and dragon interests you(there is more to it, no doubt), give this book a try.
Enjoyable, though the last 1/4 of the book felt rush as everything came together and to a climax. Finale and epilogues could have done with some more substance
5 stars Wow. I was intimidated at first and I wasn't sure if I would ever be able to finish it, but it's just SO good, I couldn't stop reading. I fucking love epic fantasy with great world building and politics. Talking dragons were a bonus.
4.5 stars
I loved this book! The only reason I gave it 4.5 instead of 5 is because I wanted more world building. Other than that, I thought it was great. I'm actually sad that it's a standalone. I would definitely read more about these characters. Loved them.
This was absolutely amazing. Story, characters, dragons, epic fantasy... you name it, this book has it. I could wish it had the highflown style usually associated with fantasy, but not enough to knock it a star or keep me from running out to get the other books by this author, so on balance not much of a complaint
Meh.
I enjoyed the feminist version of fantasy literature, certainly better than most previous attempts that I've read. The world building is very strong. I love the way the empire is set up around the knightly virtues, but not always good.
My problem is that with the exception of Roos, I wasn't really a fan of any of the characters. Nothing specifically wrong with any of them, just that none of them really ever interested me or grabbed my attention. The book was worth finishing, but I don't know that I'll continue the series.
probably more like 4.5 “Veins turning to gold. As quickly as it quenched one fire, it sparked another, a fire that torched through her whole being. And the heat cracked her open, like the clay she was, and made her body cry out to the world. All around her, the world answered.”this book wat such a breath of fresh air. it's been literal years since i last read a proper high fantasy epic and getting back into it with this book was both a great and a horribly stupid decision, because while i absolutely loved it, it's also set the bar way too high for what's to come. first of all, the world building is just so cool. i love the world, it's so vast and huge and strange. it unfolds over the course of the story but it always feels like there is more to explore and more to see. i really liked the dragons, the idea of there being different types of them and how those different types were also regarded in various ways by people across the world, and how those views become more nuanced as the story progresses. kind of in line with that, the red thread of belief and ideology, the way that one origin story being able to sprout multiple different religions or beliefs was explicated. i'm all here for characters forcing themselves to look past the boundaries their society has put up for them. second of all, it has to be said: there's women everywhere in this book, and it's almost stupid that that had to be such a revelation (i say almost because actually, it's not stupid at all, it's a very reasonable surprise that follows from personal experience with reading epic fantasy in the past). the thing with this book, though, is not just that there are a multitude of great, complex, fascinating women driving the story, it's that there are so many women around them as well, and the multitude of women around also gives way to so many different women. at no point do any of them feel like token characters and that's just really fucking great. kind of as an extension to that as well - i loved the relationships between characters. i loved that there were so many friendships. there are so many great, valuable friendships between women, bonds that actually carry a lot of weight and importance. and there are also a lot of great friendships between men and women that (gasp) do not secretly rely on them wanting to get it on. loth's friendship with both ead and sabran, as well as some great sibling banter he had with meg was everything to me, i love him so much. also, tan??'s relationship with her dragon was the best, i love the focus on the equality of their bond, how much it was based on mutual respect and care for each other and the world around them. how tan?? had to do away with seeing her dragon only as a god, and seeing herself as inherently unworthy. then ead and sabran... the slow burn was HARROWING but in the best possible way, i gasped whenever hands grazed, whenever eyes met for the first like. 500 pages??? ridiculous. they had me whipped. i loved the way we got to see their relationship develop (bit of good lowkey enemies to lovers never hurt anyone). i loved getting to see ead's view of sabran change over time, slowly but steadily. i loved that theirs was the main romance and it was important to them, their development and relationship, but also helped to really give more insight into both their distinct personalities. the reason this isn't a five star read is mostly because of the kind of rough start - it's fair but there are a lot of characters introduced & there's a lot of world building happening in the first 100 or so pages. it's quite overwhelming and took me quite a while to really get a good grip on the world and its politics. also, in line with some of the other reviews i've seen here: the final battle was a little... underwhelming? maybe underwhelming isn't even the right word, i don't think i was even annoyed about it, mostly i was surprised by how quickly it was over. but i'm not gonna lie, it didn't keep me up at night: there was so much about this story and these characters that i loved that even the fact that it didn't 100% stick the landing didn't bother me that much.
“Margret,” he said, “you are my child. I forgave you all your sins on the first day of your life.”
This book has been lauded for a lot of things – supporting feminism, its share of LGBT characters, its absolutely gorgeous cover and I'm sure it would heal the Draconic plague as well were the latter real.
The problem is, though: This book is way too long. The entire first third of the book basically consists only of (court) politics and scheming. There is no real storyline to follow yet; it's basically all just building up slowly to the real story which is all the more sad as behind all the convoluted, long-winded, stilted writing hides a decent (albeit not very original) story:
After a thousand years of imprisonment by our heroes' ancestors, the “Nameless One” – a dragon – is going to return and wreak havoc all over the world. Few people know this secret and even fewer are prepared and willing to actually do something about it.
Tané, a young lowly-born orphan, wants to become a dragon rider of “the East's” sea guard but hides many a secret herself, harbours self-doubt beyond any reason and is one of those glorious few who rise to the challenge and act.
Sabran is the queen of Inys, a part of “Virtudom”, a political and religious alliance based on chivalric virtues, both pretty much the religious and secular leader and – by religious doctrine – the final bulwark against the Nameless One's return.
Ead is a spy from the eponymous Priory of the Orange Tree at Sabran's court and the latter's confidant. She's a capable combatant, honourable and virtuous (in more than just name) and fairly ambitious, aspiring to rise (out of her murdered mother's shadow to beat!) from her respected but lowly position to much more exalted positions in the priory, meanwhile protecting and counselling Sabran, battling the Nameless One and pretty much anything else that threatens her or her charge.
And Ead is pretty much the boulder upon which this book precariously rests – and remains standing albeit an avalanche of issues. In short: Ead rocks!
So, to quickly summarise: We have a time-proven (formulaic) plot of good versus evil, we have three young women who will have to rise and shine beyond anything they ever expected, we have chivalric values codified into religion which complicates an already complex court and we still have about 70% of the book ahead of us...
And I must not forget to introduce the last two narrators:
Niclays Roos, an aging alchemist, on the other hand is a scoundrel, a villain from the books (sic!), an opportunist of the worst kind. Having tried to find the formula for a potion for eternal life his whole life long, he has been banished from Virtudom because Sabran lost her misplaced belief in Roos. He's willing to blackmail himself out of any situation and would pretty much sell his grandmother or his own soul if it gave him an advantage.
Last but not (quite) least, there's Loth: Sir Arteloth “Loth” Beck is the proverbial knight in shining armour – good-natured, honourable, an embodiment almost of the chivalric virtues but, alas, pretty much hapless and forgettable. He's a nice-to-have-but-expendable sidekick, reliable and more lucky than competent.
That concludes the story and the most important dramatis personae but don't despair if you're into complex settings – after all there are about (wait for it...) 130 characters in total you'll read about.
The long-winded, stilted narration in the beginning and the complexity are in fact the most important issues that drag this book down. Yes, the plot is formulaic, yes, the characters are “somewhat” archetypical as well but – and this is why “Priory” still gets three stars from me – when Shannon overcomes her own inhibition to go beyond what she seems to feel are the limitations of her genre, you feel the raw potential of an author who needs refinement, who needs someone to encourage her to break free from convention.
Shannon already does this fairly nicely when it comes to her heroines: First of all, almost all major characters (and lots of minor ones) are female. Not the helpless “damsel in distress” kind either but the strong and independent kind. I like that. What I like even more about it is, that it is – mostly! –unobtrusive – I didn't even really notice this until I actually thought about it analytically. Of course, I knew Ead (did I mention she rocks?) and Tané are young women but I didn't really care at all – why shouldn't women be heroic and protagonists in fantasy?
So, yes, Priory can be read as feministic but in the way I personally prefer – not artificially trying to make a political statement or to throw it in the reader's face but to simply “organically” make the point.
Similarly, the LGBT aspect works well for me: The LGB (T is missing) relationships are mostly well-written and believable – at least the female perspective (which, naturally, eludes me to some extent) reads well and is intrinsically plausible. I'm not quite as convinced about the male perspective: We only get to witness Roos's and Jannart's (Roos's dead nobly-born lover) relationship post-factum as Jannart has died years before the book even starts. To me, a bisexual man, while not outright wrong, the remembered interactions do feel a bit “off” but that could be me.
As well as with feminism, tolerance/acceptance/open-mindedness/you-name-it towards LGBT (which is one of two major topics in my life) isn't asked for or forced upon anyone. On the contrary: The relationship between Ead and her lover develops believably (again, from a male point of view at least) and organically which I appreciate greatly.
And, still, “The Priory of the Orange Tree” is, sadly, not a great book albeit written by an author who has the potential for greatness.
Whereas other authors simply try to bite off too much for their own good and overexert their limited talents, Shannon does have the talent required to write a great tale but lacks in experience. Thus, she makes a lot of mistakes even beyond the length of her novel, like killing off characters without it making much of a difference to anyone:
“Forgive me,” he said thickly. “Forgive me, [...].”
... says one of our protagonists after one such needless death and that's pretty much it. The victim does get a few “honourable mentions” but his death changes nothing. Do not kill off characters without a good reason and without an important impact on either the story or another character. The death here does nothing of the kind.
At other points in the story, Shannon is needlessly gory in her story-telling, e. g.:
“A musket fired and blew her guts across the cobblestones.”
This is simply not warranted and often annoys me and turns me away from a book.
Similarly, in contrast to her afore-mentioned subtlety and sensitivity Shannon sometimes has a tendency to be too explicit or in-your-face-ish:
“Something was changing in her. A feeling, small as a rosebud, was opening its petals.”
At the point in the story this occurs, any even slightly sensitive reader will long have envisioned said rosebud themselves. We've just been witness to the change we're explicitly being told about here so it would better have been left unsaid.
Another even more poignant example comes towards the end of the book where Shannon thinks she has to really spell it out:
“A woman is more than a womb to be seeded.”
Yes, any sane person knows that and – I'm sorry – those who don't are beyond redemption anyway.
Anyway, before I fall prey to overstaying my own welcome, let me summarise: “The Priory of the Orange Tree” is definitely overly long – only after almost two thirds of the book things really do start to happen.
There's also way too much religious stuff around for my taste (“Virtudom”, “Dukes Spiritual”, I don't need any of that) and, yes, some of the characters are formulaic and some sentences make me cringe (“Abandoning all hope of Halgalant [paradise], Loth waded after the murderous wyrm-lover.”)
Behind all that verbosity, formulas and some cringeyness hides a story that's worth telling, characters worth knowing (Ead!) and an author that I'm going to keep an eye on.
Well, I expected something ... more. Too many good reviews and I feel obliged to like this book. And I liked it quite enough, but not loved.
Maybe it was just too many characters for such if quite long, but still just a stand-alone book. Too many things happening at once and some parts of the story were just long along the way. I do understand the open finales in some books, but this one left me with more questions than answers in the end.
I really didn't think I would read this book. I'm still not sure why I did. I guess I was trying to challenge myself because the words that come to mind when I look at this book are ambitious and intimidating. Another reason was that I recently realized it's a standalone, and it's so rare to find epic fantasies which are not trilogies (atleast among the books I usually read). I didn't have much expectations from the book but right from the beginning, it felt very different.
This could have easily been a duology or trilogy, but the author decided to give us one book and she deftly manages to build a fully realized world. We get multiple kingdoms - each with their own rulers, beliefs, histories. The book can come across as info dumpy initially because we are given so much information about places and characters, I thought about writing down notes (I never do that folks!!!). But once we get a basic idea, I fell in love with this world. The whole idea of these different kingdoms having a shared history and a common enemy, but still fighting each other because they each have come to believe in different versions of the history is very fascinating. It also plays into what's happening in our real world - isolationism only exacerbates the feeling of “otherness” and creates more differences and limits any chances of getting to know each other better. The dragons in this world are also quite different, both good and bad, and the author takes inspiration from both Western and Eastern myths which makes for an interesting duality and is the basis for the various kinds of relationships that the kingdoms have with the dragons. This world feels very real and expansive and I think the author does a great job giving us enough details that we don't get lost, but are also able to weave our own imaginations.
The writing is just so easy to read and accessible, I loved it. That's one reason I felt much less intimidated after I started reading. The descriptions are vivid and lush - of both the environment and the various creatures - and I didn't feel the need to skim anywhere despite the length. The characters are also very interesting and memorable and don't play into the common tropes that we encounter in fantasy. I loved that all of them have strong beliefs but still question what they have been taught, want to decide their own destinies and are always open to accepting differences. This book is full of political intrigue and how each character navigates the court is a lesson in itself. The relationships between the characters are a treat and I thoroughly enjoyed the friendships as well as the extremely well written f/f romance. I also appreciate the author for not feeling the need to give romantic interests to every character and giving us some amazing platonic friendships. One thing that really affected me was how feminist some of the main characters were and the way they stressed that women had a lot to contribute than just being able to carry an heir. There is steady build up that the author marvelously creates for the ominous threat to the world and I enjoyed how high the stakes felt. There are also a couple of action packed scenes in between which got my heart racing. But after all of this wonderful creation of the world, it's history and characters, I felt letdown by the ending. I guess I'm used to a lot of action towards the end and while there was a bit here, it just didn't feel enough.
If you like your fantasies with great world building, interesting characters and lots of court intrigue plus dragons, you should definitely check this book out. But mind you that this is a story that steadily builds up and is not full of elaborate action sequences. While it didn't make me feel overly emotional, it left me feeling content for having read a solidly done ambitious book.
A truly wonderful epic.....I had a hard time putting it down. The world and characters of The Priory are rich and complex. I absolutely love this book.
Holy COW, you guys. I keep saying “I haven't read much epic fantasy lately” and “I don't have time to read such long books/series” but I made an exception for Priory, and I'm SO glad I did. Just WOW.
So the basic premise of this world is that The Nameless One (some gigantic evil dragon) was locked away a thousand years ago, and all his minions with him. The exact details of how and who did it have been mostly lost to history. It's said that as long as the House of Berethnet rules Inys, he'll never rise again, and Berethnet queens always have one child, a daughter. The current queen, however, is unwed, and minions of The Nameless One have begun rising, and in fact have conquered a few neighboring nations. We have three main factions of countries; The East, who have dragon riders, but make a distinction between their dragons, who are aquatic and identify with the stars, and the evil minions of The Nameless One, who are full of fire. Then we have Virtudom, which is headed by Inys, and is a coalition of countries who have made a religion of the Knightly Virtues. This is the West, and they make no distinction between the draconic servants of The Nameless One and the water dragons of the East. This has forced a split between the West and the East, because Virtudom won't have anything to do with countries that have anything to do with dragons, because most of what they see is the third faction – the Draconic countries. These are countries conquered by minions of the Nameless One, and they are full of chaos, fire, evil, and plague.
This is the world the book opens on. Most of our main characters – Queen Sabran, her handmaiden Ead, the dragonrider Tané – are women, but we also have Doctor Niclays Roos, an alchemist, and Lord Arteloth Beck, a friend of the Queen. In this world, women are just as capable as men, and are treated as such. There are female knights, and same-sex relationships are just as ordinary as opposite-sex ones. There is a bit too much moral emphasis placed on monogamy/sex within the bounds of marriage, but I guess that's “Knightly Virtue” for you. Skin color is only mentioned a couple of times, but I seem to remember Lord Arteloth being described as very dark-skinned, and Ead as golden-brown. Rather nice to see a fantasy NOT all caught up in racial and gender differences. Not to say there isn't a fair amount of bigotry, but in this book it's based pretty much solely on nationality and religion. And when the biggest sticking point is “do you like evil dragons or not” that kind of makes sense!
I think the only thing I didn't like about this book was its size. It's unwieldy to read, at over 800 pages! I'm not sure why they didn't break it into a duology. Regardless, if you have the choice, I'd read it on Kindle. It would be far easier to handle. I'm not complaining about the amount of text, mind you. Just the sheer physical size. I can't imagine the story being told in less time. There's So. Much. Here.
This book goes from Queen Sabran's court to the dragonrider academy in the East, to the draconic kingdom of Yscalin, to the Abyss where the Nameless One sleeps. We see glittering courts, hidden islands, sweltering tunnels through volcanic mountains, and deep valleys with secret magic trees. We battle wyrms and cockatrices, swim through endless seas with dragonriders, sail through storms with pirate crews, and navigate the trickiest of diplomatic matters with courtiers. The Priory of the Orange Tree paints an elaborate, incredibly complex world and I am absolutely here for it.
Okay, so one tiny quibble – while I liked the romance, I feel like it started kind of oddly. I didn't see any reason for the initial spark. From there, it progressed perfectly, but I just didn't get the beginning.
This book has multiple queer couples! There's at least one same-sex couple mentioned as attending a party; Doctor Roos spends a lot of time mourning his dead lover, and there's the lesbian romance between a couple of main characters. And one character has at least strong affection for a man before falling in love with a woman; I think she was in love with both. No trans or ace rep, but plenty of gay, lesbian, and bi!
This is hands-down the best book I've read so far this year. It took me three days – it's a big book – but it is absolutely fantastic.
You can find all my reviews at Goddess in the Stacks.