Reviews with content warning for Misogyny - The Priory of the Orange Tree

well this is a masterpiece

i enjoyed every single moment of this book. which is pretty rare for me.

starting off with the characters: WHO MANAGES TO MAKE CHARACTERS THIS WELL?!? it’s been a while since i’ve read about characters this deep and well-constructed (looking at you niclays and kalyba).

but not only does she wow us with a complex cast of characters, there’s amazing plot. shannon is obviously immune to the “either plot or characters” curse. she ties the narrator’s stories together at just the right time and in just the right way. oml i’m not going to get over this story.

i think shannon broke into my mind and stole everything that i wanted in a book - sapphic, high fantasy, royalty, freaking dragons - and put it into her book.

something that really hit me hard was the religious turmoil. as someone who goes to an opus dei catholic school, i see intolerance like this all the time, though in very different ways. shannon, in my mind, accurately portrayed how passionate and small-minded people can be over topics like heresy and faith, and this part of “priory” really sunk in for me.

i have to nitpick this just because it was so amazing but i was expecting a better ending. with every other part of this book exceeding my very high expectations, i had even high expectations for the ending, and they were just met. not exceeded. i wasn’t wowed or awestruck, but i’m not mad or anything, and the rest of the book definitely makes up for anything else i needed.

and my favorite part about this little (big) piece of perfection is the world building. i’ll admit, getting to know the world in like 50 pages before real plot started was daunting. but by the end, i feel like this could actually exist. the rivalries, the cultures, the religions, the monarchies, everything about these many nations was stunning. i will honestly never get over how well thought-out and how fitting they were.

i came into this expecting a feminist high fantasy, and boy did i get one. women’s stories have never taken center stage in any fantasy like this i’ve read so far, so thank you samantha shannon for giving us what we all deserved.

there’s so many more feelings and thoughts, mostly regarding niclays and sabran askdjdjdjfdj, but this review is already too long, and if i went on i’d be going for years. i could talk about the writing style (immaculate), the romance (beautiful), the conflict between characters (so so deep), the emotions (seriously overwhelming) and just like everything else for years. this was a fully engaging and complex book that i will be thinking about for a while.

<3

Content Warnings