Week 10 Review: The Priory of the Orange Tree

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 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 Review:
Oh, wow, this book was really fantastic! It is really huge, as well, which was nice for me, just a long time to just spend reading. And once I really got into this book, I devoured it! It was a really fantastic read and a great word to describe it is epic!

This is a long book. And because it's a stand alone (as far as I know) and it's a fantasy, which means the world has to be set up for us readers. So the first part, that was setting the board, introducing us to the characters. Once I got to the 2nd part, yeah, that's when things really became interesting!

I loved this world. The idea that a guy would set up a religion based around his heroic actions-when it turned out those actions were those of his "wife" (whether she was his wife or not, mother of his child or not, was up to some debate) yeah, that is totally believable.

Then there was the magic system. There's the two sides, and there's balance, and there's the different ways to access the magic-the trees and the metal from the asteroid/comet/the one that would enter the atmosphere to leave behind bits of itself. And then the dragons. I wish we could've had more of the dragons, and the Eastern dragons vs. the Western lesser draconic creatures. The fact that the Eastern dragons were worshiped by gods in the East, and all dragons were despised in the West, yeah, really interesting to read about!

Characters are a big part of this book. There's a lot of them, but we get the core 4, who all have a part to play, regardless if they were really likable (like Niclays, sure life got him down, but some of his actions were pretty bad.) I didn't like Sabran at first, she was selfish and while part of it was because she's Queen, part because she doesn't know any better, but not all. I did enjoy watching her start to show her spine!

So makes a comment, that Tané's ancestor, the one that ate from her tree, was the one that caused the imbalance that caused the Nameless One to have balance. And given what we've been told, I'm wondering what is the story behind that, since that would be the opposite magic from the magic of the tree that we know she partook of. So I'm thinking there's a story behind that, and with this answer from the author, it might be something we'll have to read!

Loved reading this book, it was absolutely amazing, and yeah, wouldn't mind a sequel!

Author: Samantha Shannon
Read: March 2nd-3rd, 2019
Source: Ebook.bike
Reason Why: Sounded really good, and it's a SAC 2019 Book!
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: February 26th 2019

5/5 Hearts

5/5 Books

5/5 Stars