The Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon

Description 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, 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.

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My Review:

This book was a lot, however, it was still so good. I have no clue why I held off reading this book for so long. I am so happy I read it now. Especially, with the prequel coming out next year. I know I may be the odd one as I know a lot of people said this book didn't feel long to them. To me, it did due to the many moving parts and character points of view. I love that it alternated as I feel all the information was vital to the plot and storytelling.

Ead was my absolute favorite character. She was so open-minded and loved her people dearly. I love how witty she was in general, especially when it came to Sabran. I really thought their banter was great. I wasn't the biggest fan of Sabran. I did feel for her a lot as I understood a lot of where she was coming from, but while the author did her best to portray Sabran as having her own personality, it really did feel like she was malleable to everyone's suggestions even if she "threatened" them. She just did not do much for me as a character in general. While the romance between her and Ead wasn't bad, I just didn't think much of it in general.

I'd say the characters that annoyed me the most were Doctor Roos and Tané. I was really annoyed by Doctor Roos in a good way. I could not believe how selfish he was and how he could rationalize everything he did. Not once did he blame himself. It was always someone else's fault. Just the audacity this man had was fairly interesting. The author did a great job with him. I personally felt frustrated with Tané. She was selfish in a way similar to Doctor Roos, but nothing really justified it besides her dream to be a dragon rider. I felt like she had no personality outside this goal of hers and maybe that was exactly the point, but I quickly grew uninterested in her point of view and had to force myself to not skip through it.

I would literally be here forever if I talked about every character, but overall a lot of them were really good and fleshed out. When it comes to the plot while slaying a dragon is nothing new, I really loved the alchemy twist the story had to it and the layer upon layer of mythos and history steeped in it. I think it really did a good job of portraying how religions can twist people and be twisted by people. Not once did this book become dry. While I do wish it was broken up a bit instead of all in one book, it was just such a good read.

If you love high fantasy, dragons, and lesbian dragon slayers then this is definitely for you! I breezed through this in like 4 days. I am super excited to read the prequel. I will also say that the ending was great. I was a bit worried about how it would end in a way that was satisfying. The author left it open just enough to let the readers form their own opinion on what the characters did next, but closed enough to be satisfied with an answer. Definitely give this book a go if you haven't yet!