The Priory of the Orange Tree
May. 3rd, 2019 10:38 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alobearSamantha Shannon has a writing career I very much envy. She has a publisher for a series of seven novels, which have a lot of dedicated fans, and yet she managed to take three years out (after only three of the series had been published) to write the epic and marvellous Priory of the Orange Tree, an 800-page tome of huge scope and beauty.
I tried listening to the first in the Bone Season series and didn't get on with it at all. I remember there being a very unhealthy relationship between the teenage protagonist and an ageless being who had disturbing power over her.
But I was still intrigued by Priory and I'm very glad I decided to give it a try. It's a sprawling novel with maps and a very long list of dramatis personae, multiple conflicting realms, and a lot of names and places to get to grips with early on. But it's also very well constructed to allow the reader to follow the path of its story. And it has complex, sympathetic and layered characters on all sides of the conflict, which always makes for a compelling and nuanced read.
In the world of the book, the threat of the Nameless One looms over the various realms, which are divided by different religious ideologies. The book is a story of prejudice and intolerance, and people learning to come together despite their differences, to battle a common enemy. It has a ton of fantastic female characters, of diverse backgrounds and personalities. The societies are very against pairings across societal class, but entirely open to same-sex relationships, which is interesting.
There's a lot of great action, but also some inexplicable monologuing and quite a lot of characters recounting to other characters events the reader is already aware of. But the climax is very tense and exciting, and there's a satisfying amount of aftermath, to track the fates of the various main characters.
It's a chunky book, but I read it in just over a week, and really enjoyed it overall.
I tried listening to the first in the Bone Season series and didn't get on with it at all. I remember there being a very unhealthy relationship between the teenage protagonist and an ageless being who had disturbing power over her.
But I was still intrigued by Priory and I'm very glad I decided to give it a try. It's a sprawling novel with maps and a very long list of dramatis personae, multiple conflicting realms, and a lot of names and places to get to grips with early on. But it's also very well constructed to allow the reader to follow the path of its story. And it has complex, sympathetic and layered characters on all sides of the conflict, which always makes for a compelling and nuanced read.
In the world of the book, the threat of the Nameless One looms over the various realms, which are divided by different religious ideologies. The book is a story of prejudice and intolerance, and people learning to come together despite their differences, to battle a common enemy. It has a ton of fantastic female characters, of diverse backgrounds and personalities. The societies are very against pairings across societal class, but entirely open to same-sex relationships, which is interesting.
There's a lot of great action, but also some inexplicable monologuing and quite a lot of characters recounting to other characters events the reader is already aware of. But the climax is very tense and exciting, and there's a satisfying amount of aftermath, to track the fates of the various main characters.
It's a chunky book, but I read it in just over a week, and really enjoyed it overall.
