Samantha Shannon studied English Language and Literature at St. Anne's College, Oxford. The Bone Season, the first in a seven-book series, was a New York Times bestseller and the inaugural Today Book Club selection. The Mime Order followed in 2015 and The Song Rising in 2017. Her work has been translated into twenty-six languages. She lives in London. You can find her @say_shannon or on her website at www.samanthashannon.co.uk.
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 greatest thing The Priory of the Orange Tree succeeds at is its ability to center the female narratives at its core—Ead's, Sabran's, and Tané's stories are the ones that drive the action of the novel. Despite the whole host of secondary and tertiary characters (there are so many, there's even a cast of characters list at the end of the novel!), Shannon and readers never lose sight of the fact that it is three women who rule this story, and women who run this world. And it is women who are the center of the myths of this world, and who are at the center of the religious systems of this world. It is incredibly powerful to read this novel and to track the action in this way—not often enough are there narratives of women running the world, and after reading this one, I can wholeheartedly say women should run all worlds! How much better a place the world would be, if it were true. Shannon does leave us with that hope and the knowledge that women absolutely should go take what they want out of their lives, especially leadership.
One of the big draws to me throughout the story was the way the religious systems of the East and the West were revealed as the different characters faced their trials. Ead, Sabran, and Tané all have different religious systems based on what they believe to be the truth of their shared history. The way the truth was concealed, and then turned into these different religious systems, is what allows all the different sides of this world to be so divided. It must have taken a feat for Shannon to weave these all together, and to keep track of these moving parts in two roles: as the author (who must know all) and as a reader (to make sure the experience is not tainted by anything confusing). In the midst of this creation, Shannon is also able to weave the storylines of how these different people can come together despite religious differences, and in some cases remain the closest of friends despite deep-seated religious differences. This is the stuff of fantasy that gives me hope for our own world, and that reminds readers that there is always someone out there who will understand you, even if they are different from you.
Because of its length, pacing is incredibly important to note. I was worried that perhaps some elements of the story—especially once I hit the middle—would start to sag, but in fact quite the opposite occurred. Never once was I bored, or confused. Shannon knew exactly when to reveal information, especially at the beginning, and which characters to bounce the story between. Whenever I thought to myself "We haven't heard from this character in a while," I would flip the page over twice more to find the next chapter switched to that storyline. Yes, this book is incredibly long—but not once was I bored, confused, lost, or hindered by its length due to the incredible work surrounding its pacing. Even at the end, I wanted more, even if that made the novel 100 pages longer, and 20x harder to carry.
The importance of story within the story is not hard to guess at, especially after you read the acknowledgements and author's disclaimer surrounding the cultures of our world. The Priory of the Orange Tree is inspired by many different cultures and by many different histories of all over the world. While this fact is not always obvious because the East and the West do feel like places very far from our own, it is the relevance of the story that reminds us of how the novel can be and was inspired by our own world. More than anything, this relevance for me was triggered by the telling of myths across cultures. The people of the East had their own myths about creatures of the dark and icons of history to be revered, as did the people of the West. The use of mythology and the creation of history and mythology alongside of the religious practices strengthened Priory's relevance to our own world, and is a large part for me as to why this story was so compelling, and hard to put down.
You can find Samantha Shannon @say_shannon or on her website at www.samanthashannon.co.uk.
*This review can also be found on my Goodreads page*
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