Review: The Priory of the Orange Tree
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5 stars. WELL THAT WAS A VERY TALL MOUNTAIN. I climbed The Priory of the Orange Tree and survived! Apologies to all the other books rotting away on my Kindle, had to take a little break from my two-books-a-week pace to tackle this. No regrets.
First things first - I enjoyed but did not love The Bone Season, and REALLY disliked its sequel, so I went into this with low expectations. Samantha Shannon seems like a talented, intelligent, delightful person, but I've reacted negatively to her writing style in the past (more on that later). I'm happy to say that her ability has grown and I give this, with no hesitation, a full five stars.
The book is long and there are a lot of characters, but the premise itself is fairly simple: a group of kingdoms (countries?) must prepare for the destructive awakening of an evil dragon. Rules must be cast aside, myths must be dusted off, and enemies must join together (etc. etc.) to ward off this threat and maintain the state of the world.
It sounds kind of cliche, maybe even a little too casual, but I promise it's very engaging. We have dragons, sorcery, secret societies, alchemy, pirates, monsters, and more. It's a good example of complex but accessible worldbuilding - accessibility being my #1 criteria for fantasy. I could actually remember where we left off with characters from three chapters ago, I didn't encounter impossible vocabulary terms, and I didn't have trouble grasping the intricate cultural details. So many authors try to show off their worlds, and Shannon isn't one of them. Mostly.
In fact, I can see this appealing to a huge audience - even those who aren't drawn to fantasy. The feminism is bright neon, and the central love story is queer as queer can be. It's a satisfying girl power book. The characters are easy to root for and the action sequences are really compelling. It isn't juvenile, in my opinion, as some have implied, although it doesn't get very nasty (I would've loved chapters from the POV of a [true] villain). It's similar to a TV show in which characters experience long arcs and slowly congregate towards each other, spiraling around the central threat.
Okay, now that I write this, maybe it is a little juvenile. There are a lot of blatant “lessons” about acceptance, tolerance and friendship (although these days it’s sadly necessary to hit people over the head with stuff). And at times I felt it was maybe even a little TOO simple. Shannon created an old and complex map here, complete with mythology and lore and traditions and religions and everything in-between, but it felt like the window was small, like everything important operated among a small circle of folks. Like I was reading about a place the size of Ohio, instead of the size of the world.
And it's a slow burn, for sure. It's enormous. The prose teeters on the edge of purple for me - something that was really irritating in The Mime Order (if she "crowned her bread with butter" one more time...) but appeared toned down in this book. Still, the descriptions of the food, plus sentences like "Its paths were honeyed by the sun, and the roses that trimmed its lawns held a soft blush" and "Dawn cracked like a heron's egg over Seiiki. Pale light prowled into the room" were jarring for me, and eye-rolly. The sex scenes were flowery to a fault. That might be a personal preference, though.
ALL THAT being said, I can’t give this anything but five stars. I'm probably just nitpicking because I spent SO MUCH TIME with this thing. It's clear that so. much. thought. and care and deliberation went into this book - it's an incredible accomplishment and deserves all the praise. It's a very long, very detailed collection of fairy tales, woven together in a beautiful tapestry. It's an epic adventure that WILL find it's place on the classics shelf. I can't wait to see the inevitable adaptation.