The Priory of the Orange Tree

The Priory of the Orange Tree

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 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.

The Priory of the Orange Tree, where do I start? I read this book around July, and it was not only the perfect summer read, but it was also the perfect read in general. The suspense, the action, the world-building, the characters, and just general, storytelling blew me away.

I was recommended this book by my mum and it took me 2 years to even think about reading the blurb, let alone the actual book. On top of that, I was gifted the book for Christmas and it sat collecting dust on my shelf for a year before I finally read the book. I’ll be the first to admit its size, and length did play a part in how long it took me to finally start reading the book. Even just the idea of starting it was daunting and the lingering thought of how long it was made it a little hard to get into when I picked it up. But boy am I glad I pushed through and committed to it because now I can’t stop recommending this book to people enough, especially if they love fantasy.

The Priory of the Orange Tree (POTOT) integrates multiple points of view that, in the beginning, don’t feel like they intertwine all that much, so first getting into it can be a little confusing and was a reason it was a harder book to get into for me. Just when I was starting to understand one of the cultures, or characters, I was immediately pulled into the next parallel story and that took some adjusting. So, I do recommend this book but only if you’ve got time to spare or don’t mind losing sleep because I promise that this book becomes almost impossible to put down.

The book follows Ead Duryan on her journey to protect Sabran Berethnet, the ruler of the queendom of Inys, from an ancient force that threatens to destroy the world they know. At the same time, we follow the story of Tané and her life in the Eastern continents as she manoeuvres through becoming a dragon rider while keeping a secret that could drastically affect the course of her life. These two characters are so beautifully written and so easy to root for. I love Ead and her devotion to her beliefs and her mission really made me love her so much more. Tané’s drive and passion she felt towards being a dragon rider, despite anything really makes you root for her regardless of many of her actions to achieve this. Despite their flaws and some of their questionable choices or motives, you want them to succeed. 

Unlike most other multiple-points-of-view books, Shannon does a great job of keeping you hooked despite the constantly changing narrative and setting. I know I found it difficult at first to adjust between the constantly changing settings but because both parallel stories were so gripping, it made putting the book down harder. I needed to keep reading to find out what happened next in each story. Samantha Shannon left chapters on cliffhangers or just before tensions truly rose, which creates the urgent atmosphere that the characters feel and ending each chapter how she did really helps you feel how Ead and Tané feel but additionally helps the readability of it because as a reader you don’t really wanna sit in the anticipation of what’s coming next. 

Shannon does a great job creating characters that feel fleshed out and don’t feel like they’re only there to move the plot along. The pacing of the story and the characters’ evolution and growth feel authentic and like Shannon crafted this with care and paid real attention to the impact of characters’ actions and decisions on the overall plot. Even characters who seem like background players are given a story and motivations outside the grander plot that truly make her fantasy world feel real. Sabran’s arc is fleshed out and it feels as though we read from her point-of-view when we only see her growth and evolution through the eyes of other characters. 

I’ll be honest there were some characters that I really didn’t like and typically that would be enough for me to put the book down or at least slow me down. However, that didn’t happen this time. The way the story was written and how all the storylines do connect truly keep you hooked and invested. Despite disliking characters and their actions I still cared about what happened to them and how their story was going to end. I think that’s one of the reasons that made this book great for me because, unlike other multiple-point-of-view stories, one character usually ruined the book for me and I had to put it in my “did not finish” pile, regardless of how good the story otherwise was. 

The book does have a slow start, but it’s mostly due to the world-building that Shannon needs to establish for you to understand somewhat what’s happening. Especially since the main villain of the book is an ancient evil, as readers Shannon needs to give us some background and exposition so the story does leave the impact that she wants. The religions and history of POTOT do revolve around dragons and wyrms, and it’s incredibly important that Shannon makes a distinction between them because they both play important roles between the different sides. This is especially important for us to understand as readers, because not only is one of the main plots at the beginning of Tané’s journey to being a dragon-rider. One of the main tensions between East and West is the West’s inability or unwillingness to see the dragons of the East as more or less benevolent, albeit powerful allies, and not as the same villainous wyverns and wyrms of the Nameless One. 

You’ll hear a lot about Priory of the Orange Tree being a sapphic novel and while that’s true it’s not crucial to the plot. On top of that, the romance doesn’t start until a long way into the book but it is built in a way that feels so natural and organic that it feels so important to us, just like it does to the characters. 

POTOT is a very feminist book as well, out of the four main characters two are women who are established and strong. Throughout the story, women are treated as equal to their male counterparts and if there is any discrimination against them, it comes mostly from a classist perspective as opposed to a sexist one. Shannon treats all the characters roughly the same throughout the book, they all feel like they develop and grow with the circumstances they’ve been placed in as opposed to solely giving the main characters any growth or any obstacles to overcome. I found it so much easier to get lost in the book again after I put it down to go to sleep or make food, which was so nice, just being able to put the book down for as long as I needed and then be able to get fully re-immersed in the world with no warming up period, because it was written so beautifully and the characters enhance the story in such a way that they are a fully integrated part of the story and not just there as plot markers or movers.

All in all, I loved this book. This is one of my favourite reads of my life so far. If I could forget the whole book so I could read it for the first time again, I would. I love the way Shannon writes, I loved how she tied everything together in the end. It wrapped up the main conflict so well but left so much openness for the characters' journeys to continue whichever way you want them to.