The Priory of the Orange Tree

We may be small, and we may be young, but we will shake the world for our beliefs

I normally start off my reviews with just one quote but this book is filled with so many that I may indulge in a few more within the rest of my review. Priory of the orange tree is an epic fantasy, something I think a lot of readers fail to realise when picking up this book causing them to expect something it is not. But for me, it was exactly what I expected it to be. I fell in love with long plotted high fantasy books as a kid and this book did not fail to meet those expectations.

When history fails to shed light on the truth, myth creates its own.

Love and fear do strange things to our soul

I do not sleep because I am not only afraid of the monsters at my door, but also of the monsters my own mind can conjure. The ones that live within

No woman should be made to fear that she was not enough

Be silent and learn something

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.

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.

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

I absolutely loved and adored this book. I will admit, I was intimidated by the size of it, but I don't think there's a single part of this book that should be removed, if anything - I want more.

The world building was fantastic. I was enamored by the size of the world and details in this book.

This book has everything I could ask for! •Fantastic characters that you will love, hate, root, cry and mourn for.
•Representation through LGBTQ+ relationships that are supported.
•Feminism through Queendoms and Women-lead organizations.
•Pirates, Dragons, and Magic.

The way that the author wrote this is beautiful. The imagery she creates from the smallest details to the largest was probably my favorite thing about this book. The entire thing played like a movie in my head with smooth transitions from one set of characters to the other.

All in all, I loved this book. My only negative would be that the ending was wrapped up very quickly. However, I honestly cant think of a way to make it any better either.

Read this book, it's intimidating as is the world building but persevere, because it's so worth it and an absolute treat.

I enjoyed this story. The world and mythology draws readers in. As an avid epic fantasy reader, I wanted so.much.more. This book should be at least 4 books that allow for deeper exploration of the interesting cultural and religious divides that the author has given the people. Because there is so much ground to cover, we end up slightly shorted - the author has to cut down or ignore paths and keep the characters somewhat simple.
I am hoping that she will revisit this world, perhaps in an earlier time, and draw it out more.

If you like epic fantasy - with dragons and magic - with castles and witches - you may like this book. It even has political intrigue and family drama. Go in being aware that it is an entire fantasy in one book. There are some romantic scenes, but they are mostly PG - nothing too graphic. Violence is also fairly PG.

4.25/5 stars

My new biggest reading flex is that I read this in one day (in 8 hours, 24 minutes, and 47 seconds to be exact, spread across 11 hours of on-and-off reading). I'm gonna brag about this accomplishment forever. I hope it is written in my obituary one day.

But court politics and dragons are a weakness of mine and this was so, so good.

I really enjoyed this book. The world building is excellent and I thoroughly loved how we learned about it from different angles, people, and cultures to slowly paint a cohesive picture.
The characters feel alive and while I can only claim to like very few of them, I was intrigued by all of them.
The book changes points of view regularly and spans across continents. I was continuously invested in every strand of the story and eager to watch it weave together.
A thoroughly enjoyable read. Also, I liked the dragons :)

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.

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.

Much better than I was expecting. I was prepared to lump this under stolid fantasy, but it actually proved to be involving and surprisingly fast-paced for such a large book. The largely female-driven plot also made a welcome change. Granted there were a few more “fortunate coincidences” than I feel entirely comfortable with, but I am willing to write these off as the hand of an intentional deus ex machina. In any event, the final confrontation was genuinely blistering, which went a long way to removing any reservations. Highly recommended.

 I really dithered between 2 and 3 stars here (I like the GR guide rating, 2 means it was ok).

This is a big book full a diverse cast and massive worldbuilding, and I think it's aiming for too much in a single volume. The biggest criticism I've read is that the Epic Life Or Death Showdown (not a spoiler if you've ever read a book) is over in mere minutes, which I agree, but also I enjoyed because I find epic battle scenes tedious to read.

There are a lot of cast members, none of whom get enough screen time, and maybe I would have preferred a trilogy here (although let's be honest, I probably would only read the first one anyway). The big concepts and worldbuilding tackled in a YA breadth, not depth, style; of course this is fine, but felt hollow to me here. A deep dive into each of the cultures we met would have been awesome.

By 75% I was extremely ready for the book to be over, having read enough Fine, not Great story for 200 pages, and still having another 200 pages ahead of me. It's a perfectly ok story, and you'll likely enjoy it because you're not a book curmudgeon like me.

I was looking for a great standalone epic fantasy novel, and I found it! But by the end, I wished it had honestly been a series - the pacing felt very rushed in the last quarter of the book, and I wish I had gotten to see more of Tane' in general. I also didn't particularly care for Roos and found his redemption arc to feel kind of sudden? But I really loved the world, and the story, and the romance! I especially loved that Ead and Sabran didn't abandon their callings in life for each other in the end; it was bittersweet, but it felt right.

most anticlimactic final fight ive ever read. i did enjoy it though even if the pacing REALLY starts to suffer towards the end. i feel like it would have been better to split this into a trilogy or something. also people are NOT lying about the first 100 or so pages being a slog... once you get past that it's a lot more enjoyable to read in my opinion.

favourite character/POV was ead & her POV was definitely the author's favourite too LOL. the other narrators don't get as much attention as they should have, especially tané. can't help but feel that niclays was unneeded. loth is fine.

worldbuilding is cool, but the east feels a little caricature-y at times. for the west, i like the whole ‘religion founded upon a questionable myth' thing. the concept of the priory is really cool too.

overall it's a pretty good book even though i have my gripes with it. may or may not read the prequel