848 pages
English language
Published Nov. 9, 2018 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc.
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.
It felt like it started slow, in part from switching from four character perspectives. Three of those are key, two are important, and one feels most like the main character.
I enjoyed the mix of dragons and duality at play in the story, and characters forced to consider their view of the world. Pacing is a little weird a times.
But I liked it and I recommend it.
The Priory of the Orange Tree has lesbians, dragons, and magic in an epic mix which crosses nations and seas to stop an evil 1000 years in the making. The political intrigue and religious clashes drive the actions of individuals and the fate of nations.
Reading this in the spring of 2020, it requires a content warning for plague and a country-wide quarantine, but while mentions of the plague are frequent, depictions of it occur sparsely and can easily be skipped without distorting the story. Please take care of yourselves.
I love doorstoppers, especially fantasy doorstoppers with dragons, thousand-year cycles, curses, betrayal, intrigue, murder, and magic. What I didn't expect, because I haven't been taught to expect it, was queer romance and complex intimacy a fantasy novel. There's a breadth of queerness too; lost loves, forbidden loves, and as close to a canon asexual character as you can get without …
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 …
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.
An engaging and well-written story with rich worldbuilding and believably flawed characters. Visual descriptions were especially stunning, and I was impressed with the amount of thought given to diverse cultures, religions, and folklore. My significant complaints are that the plot was frequently too pat, with people conveniently being where they need to be or finding things/leads at precisely the right time, and the action scenes felt stilted and rushed.
A tale of two books. The first half is an entertaining story of palace intrigue and magic, focusing in detail on two characters. Then, as if the author realized they needed to return to a different series and needed to wrap it up, the book has a whirlwind finish with a rather rushed conclusion.
I really liked this book, and if you are an open minded fantasy lover, I'm sure you would too. The start of it made me a little apprehensive. It's a bit heavy on the "tell, don't show", it takes a while to get going, with dramatic opening page events sort of going on the back burner, and I just worried it might go bad at any moment. But instead I got used to the style, became interested in the main characters, and enjoyed that it is a really long single volume.
It has a nice mix of standard epic fantasy tropes well executed, good world building and unusual twists. You should give it a try!
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
Didn't capture my imagination. It seemed both too ambitious and trope filled in the first 5 hours and I lost interest.
Hay cosas que me han gustado mucho, pero no ha terminado de convencerme. No ha hecho "click". Creo que lo que más se me ha resentido ha sido el ritmo.
Con esto no quiero decir que no me haya gustado. Simplemente que no me ha convencido.
Me da un poco de rabia porque vi ideas muy interesantes pero la ejecución mmne, y por otro lado quería recordarme un poco a Seraphina en ciertos aspectos)
Nice, intricate plotting and good dragon mythology.
