The priory of the orange tree!

Title: The priory of the orange tree.

Author: Samantha Shannon.

Format: Ebook.

Publisher:  Bloomsbury.

Page count: 853.

Release day: February 26^th 2019.

Genre: Adult, fantasy.

Rating: 4.5 stars.

What is it about? (Summary from GoodReads)

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, Tane 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.

My thoughts:

I just read a review for this book, and it explains my thoughts very well, so I recommend you to check it out! It was written by Justine @I should read that!

But I will do my best to explain it myself as well!

First of all this book is really really good! It is just not as amazing as a lot of reviews make it sound. Which does not mean at all that it isn’t amazing!

I absolutely loved the world building! It was so well described, and you could see how different parts were inspired by the real world. All the different parts of the world were so well worked out, it really felt like a real world.

The dragons were amazing! I love books with dragons, but most of the time they are only present in the last part of the book. But in this one they are present from the beginning and keep coming back! I also like that there were different kinds of dragons, they were not all good or bad. It depended on were they came from!

The mythology and the magic in this book were also really well done. The magic was really original, it did take me a little bit to understand it, but I guess that’s what you get from complex systems! And the mythology was so well woven into the story, it was really well used as basis for the different beliefs and religions!

And another important part of the book, the characters! This book is written from 4 POV’s and of course some you will like more than others. My personal favourite POV was from Ead! I just like her story best! Loth’s perspective was also enjoyable, I loved following him on his travels and learn more from the world. I think I just liked the story taking place in the West better then the East. That could also be coming from me not really liking Tané that much, her character just did not appeal to me at all.. But her story was important for the final story of course! Niclays part was just.. interesting?! I guess haha, didn’t like him in the beginning either, and didn’t really see the point of him being there. But I started to like him better near the end. He is still a questionable character haha.

This part I did not include in my rating, but I like to mention it. Maybe reading this in Ebook format is not the best way to go. Yes it is easier to take with you and hold and not break your wrists. BUT you really do need the map and the character list to keep track of everything! And, at least on kobo, it is not that easy to go back and forth in an ebook.

I think I would have rated this book 5 starts, if I would have cared a bit more for the story taking place in the east!

It’s been a while since a wrote such a long review, hope you enjoyed!

Have you read this? What did you think?