The Priory of the Orange Tree

By: Samantha Shannon

Narrated by: Liyah Summers

Length: 25 hrs and 52 mins

Publisher's summary

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.

©2017 Bloomsbury (P)2019 Audible, Ltd

Promising epic fantasy with need of an editor

The Priory of the Orange Tree was one of the most heralded recent fantasy releases. In many ways, it fulfills its promise, but it is undercut by the amateurish writing. The audible version is saved somewhat by Liyah Summers, who does a very good job narrating.

Overall, this book feels like Young-Adult (YA) fantasy striving to be more than it is. Its major problem is that it doesn't earn its narrative progress. The author spends little time building the physics of the world or fleshing out power structures that supposedly drive the plot of the story. Magic just suddenly appears, apparently relying on a physics that hasn't been fleshed out and doesn't mean much of anything at first. And the author is ham-fisted when delineating between 'good' and 'bad' characters. How do we know someone is bad? Because they're a classist jerk with no good redeeming qualities. It's lazy character building, and the editor should have caught it. Moreover, plot points just occur out of nowhere. There's rarely any major build-up.

Moreover, the prose is in need of serious help. The writing is not quite as bad as the purple prose of the Kingkiller Chronicles but comes close. Low-born characters wax philosophical during everyday conversations. Their dialogue shifts between formal and colloquial.

The narrator does a good job of dealing with mediocre material. Unfortunately, her characters are not quite distinct enough from one another. I actually think this is a function of the writing, but it's worth noting.

On the whole, I think Samantha Shannon has a lot of potential. After all, Brandon Sanderson's early works were rough, and he has come to dominate the field. I look forward to Shannon's continued efforts in fantasy, and hope that this is simply a freshman effort.

Good-ish

WOW! I finally finished. It only took me a couple weeks of listening every single day. There were times where I didn't think this moment would come.

The Priory of the Orange Tree is an epic fantasy. Although the characters are not teenagers, it still mostly fits the YA genre that can be read by older teens. There isn't any on page graphic sex. The few love scenes are written very tastefully, minimally, and fade to black. This book is told in third person POV for multiple characters.

This is the first book that I have read/listened to by this author. I would gladly try another of her books.

The beginning was a bit confusing and it took me a bit to catch on. I'm not sure if that was the book itself or due to the narration.

I definitely got sucked into the story. I wouldn't say that I loved it but I was certainly hooked and didn't want to turn it off. I couldn't wait to find out what would happen next pretty much the whole way through.

The writing kind of wavered for me and it was hit or miss at times. The author made great use of literary devices, however inconsistent. In many places I loved the imagery and I was able to visualize some parts well due to the vivid descriptions the author provided, but then there were other parts where the bare minimum was given and I couldn't picture exactly what the author intended. There were many great similes and some good metaphors, personification, and more. Some of the writing was quite beautiful and then other parts were choppy, disjointed, and confusing. More than anything, though, I loved the symbolism in this book. It gave me pause many times while I thought of the deeper meanings and what was happening and what certain characters stood for. The author really did a great job with that.

The character development was lacking. They all had elaborate back stories and relationships and such yet the characters are all mostly two dimensional. I found that I cared more about the actual story and what was happening than I did about any of the characters. Tane was probably the most developed character and I did find her somewhat relatable and I almost cared about her. Almost.

I'm a little disappointed because there were parts of the book that were not clear and I am still unsure what exactly happened and how it happened. There is one character that I am unsure if he died in battle or survived. A character said to his sister, "he is dead" but I wasn't sure if he meant the other character or if he was referring to the particular worm they just fought.

I was not a fan of the narration. I had to slow the narration speed down to 0.75 so I could understand the narrator. Her voices and accents were inconsistent and at times accidentally interchanged with other characters. She often sounded like she was speaking through a mouth full of marbles. Even though this book is 25 hours and 52 minutes long, the reduced speed extended the book to 34 hours and 29 minutes. There were times where I thought I would never get through it. I do applaud her taking on a book with such a wide array of characters and give her an A for effort. It just wasn't for me.

As much as I am on the fence overall and liked the book but at times kind of didn't like it, I am interested in actually reading this book to see if that will change my experience and how I view this story. I think that at times the narration did take away from my enjoyment.

Since I keep wavering and there were great parts and not so great parts, I am going right down the middle with 3 stars. Actually, I think I like it a bit more than 3 stars. Let's say 3.5-3.75 stars instead.

Great story with great narration

The Priory of the Orange Tree is high fantasy done very well. Woth a wealth of strong female protagonists and antagonists, and great action and intrigue, it never gets boring as you go through it all.

the narration was fantastic, she really made every effort to differentiate between the regional dialects, and it helped.

Best book about Dragons since Seraphina

Liyah Summers is an extremely talented person. I'm looking forward to any more audio books she may read. She's the only reader I've enjoyed besides James Marsters(The Dresden Files).
As for the book, it is now one of my top favorites and I can't wait to own a hard cover copy.

Good not great story

I loved the concept of the story, but the execution was a bit slow. If it wasn't for the narrator, I'm not sure I would have finished this one. Although I'm glad I did.

Excellent narration!

Excellent narration of a highly complex story with numerous characters and fantasy lands! I suggest that you alternate between listening and reading, however, as you will need to use the maps, Cast of Characters, Glossary, and timeline of events.

The intricacies of the story do not lend themselves well to a Kindle version. Hop back and forth between Audible and a good old-fashioned hardback copy. Paperback due out next year.

Enjoy!!!

Overwhelmingly meh

With all of the hype that preceded this book I was expecting a lot more than was here. There was no depth to this at all. almost felt like a really long YA book

Pretty good, but not a huge fan of the narrator

The book was very good. My only real problem with it was the narrator, whose accent started to annoy me over time and was also difficult to understand what she was saying at times. I did like the voice she gave Ead and some of the others, but it was the British accent that made things hard to understand.

Good, not amazing, but good.

I think the main issue I had with this book is how epic it COULD have been. Samantha built a truly amazing and original world, and then shoved everything into one book giving us no time to enjoy it. There could have been 3+ books dedicated to the dragon riders alone! I feel like someone just mowed down a 3000 year old forest for firewood. This book resolved too much too soon! The characters and plot were under developed CRIMINALLY. Of course it is worth a listen. I’m just deeply disappointed in how shallow it ultimately felt. The “nameless one” and all the “evil” doers were also flat, and hard to fear because of it. I have to wonder if the nameless one was a nickname for the publisher/editor that rushed the author into a finished product. Someone call Tor and get this woman the team she deserves!!

it's a courtly fantasy not my genre

I thought this was a different genre then it was. I am sure it is fine. just be aware going in that this is primarily a courtly drama before any other genre