The Priory Of The Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon // Book Review

Title: The Priory Of The Orange Tree

Author: Samantha Shannon

Genre(s): Fantasy, Adult

Page Count: 827

Purchase: Amazon ~ Kindle ~ Book Depository
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Synopsis:

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 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.
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~Things I Liked~
  • I’m just going to go ahead an gush about the dragons. I love the dragons. The Nameless One, Fyredel, and Nayimathun. Granted, two of them were bad dragons. I still really enjoyed their parts in this book. 
  • The LGBTQ+ representation! There is male + male AND female +female. I was living for it. I was dying with anticipation for the f+f relationship to get started. I was shipping them from the freaking beginning! 
  • I listened to this book through audiobook. It was basically my “doing chores” or “I’m driving” book. Which is why it took me forever and day to finish it. There were some points where I had to pause the book and laugh. Liyah Summers did different voices for each character. The voice she did for Kalyba had me dying. I know it was because of Kalyba’s character and the way she is, but OMG. I felt like I was going to pass out from laughing.
  • Ead has to be my favorite character. Her love for her *love interest* (this is me trying not to give spoilers, yay me) is just so beautiful. She protects her love interest with everything she has in her. I just love Ead. I love her story and I love how she was written. She’s also a bad ass.
  • Tane` is my second favorite. I mean, anyone who loves dragons as much as Tane` should be anyone’s favorite. She’s another bad ass character in this book. Her friendship with Nayimathun is just beautiful. The love she has for the dragon is just UGH. Like, I would go through hell if I had a dragon too. 
~Things I Didn’t Like~
  • As much as I enjoyed this book, I wish it was a tad bit shorter. It took me about a month to read this entire book. It took me about 150 pages in to actually start understanding this world, so I understand why it was so long. I’m just being a whiny bitch.
  • That fight scene at the end. I mean, come on. I went through hundreds of pages for this fight scene to be limited to like two fucking chapters. Seriously? How can this oh big and bad dragon be destroyed in two chapters. I’m not happy about this. I thought I was going to get the biggest war scene ever in this book. That’s the main reason this book didn’t get five stars. 
~Overall Thoughts~
I definitely enjoyed this book. I don’t recommend it for being the first time reading through adult fantasy. I struggled a lot at times. That’s what I get for thinking the first book I dipped my toes in to adult fantasy was 800+ pages. After I finally started understanding this world that Samantha Shannon made, I fell in love with this story. Worlds divided and coming together is just a beautiful concept for me. I just feel like this is just something the real world can learn from. 
I recommend this book to those who enjoy adult fantasy. Like I stated before, this is not a good first-time adult fantasy book. If you want to go into it, I recommend reading the book while listening to the audiobook. I feel like that really helped me get through this book.
I’ll most likely pick up more books by Samantha Shannon in the future. I know she has a previous book or series that everyone has already read and loved, I’m just behind. She’s a great story writer and I’m excited to see more of what she does.
Also, I need updates on this book. I need a book two. I know it’s not a series but come on. You can’t leave it like that. I need more.

4/5 Stars

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