Review: The Priory of the Orange Tree (The Roots of Chaos) by Samantha Shannon
The New York Times bestselling epic feminist fantasy perfect for fans of Game of Thrones (Bustle).
NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY: AMAZON (Top 100 Editors Picks and Science Fiction and Fantasy) * CHICAGO PUBLIC LIBRARY * BOOKPAGE * AUTOSTRADDLE
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 all her life to be a dragonrider, 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:
Dear Samantha Shannon,
Your 830 pages book was the choice for my book club meeting. I was actually the one who suggested the book and while I was reading the first half of the book I regretted my suggestion a lot. I wanted to drop the book and never to come back to it. But I love being part of this book club and I soldiered on. Man did I soldier on. I read this book for ten days. Trust me when I tell you that this never happens when I like the book.
As a blogger whose review of this book I listened to on YouTube said, the entrance barrier in this book was very high for her. It was the same for me. This is an epic fantasy but it was not a complicated text to understand. I just a) could not figure out why should I care about these characters and b) just plain out did not like the world (this was obviously a me issue, not the book’s issue).
The ancient evil in this book are the fantasy creatures I never like thinking about as evil. I understand that the author made sure to give their non evil counter parts a wonderful heroic part in the narrative, but it still was not quite working for me.
Also nothing much was happening in the first part of the book. I mean I understand that the author was placing the pieces on the chessboard so to speak and was world building, but the book is 830 pages long on my kindle. I would have liked things to start happening earlier than they did.
I liked the women occupying important roles in the higher echelons of the power in this world as a matter of fact, so to speak. It was amusing how the person occupying a position at Inys court was called Knight of something and then we learn that women were occupying the positions and nothing was made out of it.
I liked multiple PsOV. Even though it is common in fantasy books, I often think that sometimes we have too many PsOV, but not here. I thought the author kept a good balance with four main sPOV in the book.
The most important thing that I liked was that the plot picks up *a lot* in the second half of the book and there is indeed a pay off happening for the world and for several main characters and by the time book ended I indeed cared a great deal for them and the romance storyline ended up being very satisfying for me too. But I have to warn again – a lot of patience was needed for me to get through the first half.
Great: B
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Such a lovely cover. Way too long a book at this point in my life.
I tried to read this a few years ago and had borrowed a hardcover copy from my library. It was way too big to hold comfortably, so it didn’t get a fair chance.
@Jayne: @Misti: I hear you both :), but to me as long as the book grabs me it is all good. For example I reviewed “Sword of Kagen” here relatively recently, it had 660 pages I believe and I really did not mind, because even though there were not much action in the beginning I really liked the characters and I rolled with it way better than with the first half of this book.