“My heart knows your song, as yours knows mine. And I will always come back to you.”
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
The Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon was an intimidating book to approach. It’s a pretty sizable book at nearly 850 pages, and after going through a string of swift rom-coms, I admit it took me a little while to dive into. But when I did, I was hooked.
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 is an epic fantasy that weaves a familiar heavy battle of good vs. evil within several intricacies that act as the heartbeat of this book—fate, duty, love, and dragons… can’t forget dragons—while highlighting some magnificient characters, a few of them some of my favorites in any book series (Ead and Sabran).
Because this is a standalone book, and it follows four POVs, I did get a bit overwhelmed at times. Like many epic fantasies, there are a lot of names, locations, and histories that get tossed at you, but I found that these details became easier to recognize as the story progresses.
It’s fascinating to see how the storylines of the main characters slowly become tied to each other, but because of the size and scope, it was sometimes hard to truly connect to them. In some instances, I found myself almost skimming some chapters just to get back to the characters and the action I felt more emotionally attached to.
With that being said, Ead and Sabran are excellent, and their relationship is what made this beast of a book something even more special. I’d personally love to see more storylines focused specifically on them, but I’m a bit biased (just give me allllll the sapphic love).
The Priory of the Orange Tree has all the ingredients of a riveting epic fantasy, and it’s one that I look forward to revisiting in the future! Despite its size and complexity, I can see this becoming a source of comfort when I need a heavy dose of escapism.