W&W 2025 Day 19: Albatross: The Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon

The Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon is a cross-continental epic fantasy standalone. I chose it for the Wyrd and Wonder day 19 prompt, Albatross, because the story centers around a powerful dragon prophesied to emerge from his imprisonment under the sea to destroy the world.

Wyrd and Wonder is an annual month-long fantasy celebration held every May. This year’s hosts are Imyril with There’s Always Room for One More, Lisa with Dear Geek Place, Jorie with Jorie Loves a Story, Annemieke with A Dance with Books, and Ariana with The Book Nook.

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Blurb

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.

Review of The Priory of the Orange Tree

• Format: physical copy
• Pacing: slow (at first and then fast)
• Plot or character-driven: plot
• Multiple POVs: yes
• Representation: lesbian main character, f/f relationship

Length and Pacing

Let’s address the elephant in the room first. At 830 pages The Priory of the Orange Tree is a monster of a book. I finally got myself over the mental hurdle of starting it after I learned it was a standalone story by telling myself it was basically a 2-in-1 duology. While that mentality did help me get into the book and it is split into 6 parts that helped me gain a sense of progress, I will say that there is A LOT of exposition. Samantha Shannon wrote a very ambitious epic fantasy tale in one book, so a lot of time is spent getting to know the different characters, where they were at in the world and who surrounded them, and the intricate conflicts between the 8 different realms involved in the story.

The first half of the book felt slow, but not un-interesting. The Priory of the Orange Tree feels very immersive because of how much time is spent establishing the world and its people. I always found it easy to sink into the story. Around halfway through the book, the plot really picks up speed and it was much harder to put the book down. It took me a good chunk of time to finish The Priory of the Orange Tree, but in the end, the story felt very worthwhile and rewarding.

Worldbuilding

With 4 narrators from different areas of the world and A LOT of traveling, I got a good overall grasp of the world’s layout pretty early on in the story. I often found myself flipping back to the map to find all cities and landmarks the characters’ mentioned. I always love a book that forces me to use its map!

Shannon reveals most of details of the realms through the people’s belief systems and political conflicts, which made the world more interesting to me. The religious beliefs in The Priory of the Orange Tree all center around the mythical battle between humans and The Nameless One, so even though many characters are telling the story, there is still a cohesive narrative. I think having a very unified world made it easier to sink into the story.

The only part of the world that felt unrealistic was the travel. Some of this could be explained by time skips, but I swear characters were jumping between kingdoms during the second half of the book.

Characters

I loved (or loved to hate) all of the main characters. Each of them had a very distinct voice, and I always enjoy when narrators from different corners of the world are involved in the same overall plotline.

Ead was my favorite narrator with Tane being a close second. Ead is fierce and intelligent, and learning about how she navigated Inys politics to protect Queen Sabran was exciting from the start. She was an easy character to root for.

Tane is another character that I couldn’t help but fall in love with, but I felt that her story got neglected at times. In the first part of the book, she competes in trials for the honor of becoming a dragon rider. I always enjoy a good trial/magical school plotline, so I was disappointed when most of this part was skimmed over. We barely get to know Tane’s classmates and her rival was barely worth mentioning. At the same time, magical school plotlines are not hard to come by, so by keeping the focus away from it, I think Shannon put the spotlight on other areas that made The Priory of the Orange Tree unique. What I loved about Tane is that she was flawed in such a human way. She makes selfish decisions at the beginning of the story that change the trajectory of her life and destroy others. I couldn’t help but think I might make the same decisions in her shoes. I related to how much she would sacrifice to reach her dreams.

Loth was easy to love, but not nearly as much attention is paid to his character as Ead and Tane’s. The Priory of the Orange Tree is a women centered fantasy all the way through. The men took on peripheral roles, so Loth was mostly interesting through his relationship to Sabran and Ead. Having the men in The Priory of the Orange Tree on the sideline was interesting because those roles are typically served by women the majority of fantasy, which tends to center men. I liked that Shannon chose to center women and made that decision feel very deliberate throughout the story.

And finally, we have the infamous Niclays Roos, who was banished from the West for being a horrible human and continued to be a horrible human for most of the book. He was interesting. He probably didn’t deserve half of the things that happened to him. I did not like him. As a person, his chapters were interesting and added a lot to the story. It seems like every multi POV epic fantasy has to have the worst cockroach of a human that just won’t die no matter what powerful person they piss off. Niclays Roos is that character in The Priory of the Orange Tree.

I loved how well we get to know the side characters in addition to the main characters. I felt like I really understood each character’s relationship to those around them and their role in the overall story. There were too many people contributing to the plot to review each by name. I’m very impressed by how memorable so many of the characters were. The only characters I felt were underdeveloped and could have been trimmed out of the story were the people from The Empire of the Twelve Lakes. They felt crammed into the end of The Priory of the Orange Tree. I had trouble seeing why they were included.

Conclusion

The only flaws I noticed were the unrealistic travel timelines and the characters that got crammed into the plot near the end. For me, those flaws were minor. I enjoyed all of the time I spent immersed in The Priory of the Orange Tree. The characters and the world they lived in all felt very real. If you enjoy epic fantasy or are looking for women centered fantasy I highly recommend checking The Priory of the Orange Tree out!

You’ll Like This Book if You Enjoy…

• Multi POV epic fantasy with vast, immersive worldbuilding
• Women-centered stories
• Fantasy with a pinch of forbidden romance…

Where to find The Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon

Have you read The Priory of the Orange Tree? Let’s chat in the comments!