Among the Burning Flowers

I was excited to see a new release in the Roots of Chaos series by Samantha Shannon - but I think picking the audiobook for Among the Burning Flowers was probably a mistake. The Author's Note said you could read this as a starting point to the series, which I appreciated because I only remember the very broad strokes of Priory of the Orange Tree and A Day of Fallen Night - but it opened with an awful lot of names, places and history to get to grips with. I felt like my brain was sliding off the story (which is definitely an issue I've been having with audiobooks lately - likely no fault of the books) and I wasn't really connecting to it or to the characters, so I decided to quit while I was behind.