The Priory of the Orange Tree Audiobook By Samantha Shannon cover art

The Priory of the Orange Tree

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The Priory of the Orange Tree

By: Samantha Shannon
Narrated by: Liyah Summers
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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 Coming of Age Epic Epic Fantasy Fairy Tales Fantasy Fiction Genre Fiction LGBTQIA+ Creators Magic Feel-Good Suspenseful

Featured Article: Books Like Game of Thrones—Best Epic Fantasy Books & Series


It's time to branch out and find some new material to fill that dragon-shaped hole in your listening life. If you liked Game of Thrones, these epic fantasy books are your next best listen. Some are standalone novels, some are the start of a new series, and others are the first in a completed series. Oh, and they're all excellent. And as Tyrion Lannister said, "... a mind needs books as a sword needs a whetstone, if it is to keep its edge."

Featured Article Books Like Game of Thrones Best Epic Fantasy Books and Series

Editor's Pick

The balance of familiar and novel is the mark of a new favorite
"There is a wave of excitement around this book. Written by the author of The Bone Season trilogy, it’s a new and fully fleshed out fantasy world filled to the brim with dragons and complex characters. Shannon has outdone herself, and listeners will be pulled through the story inexorably as they fall deeper into lives of the three main characters. Personally, I’m here for this because it strikes that middle ground between familiar and new that, as a longtime fantasy listener, I’m always searching for. It’s both a classic epic fantasy and a breakout from the genre with its deep inclusion of diverse characters and an abundance of female perspectives. Plus a fresh new narrator in Liyah Summers! Let’s do this."
—Melissa B., Audible Editor

Rich Worldbuilding • Strong Female Characters • Natural Lgbtq+ Representation • Unique Dragon Lore

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If you thought Brandon Sanderson had a corner on standalone epic fantasy then you're in for a surprise with this one!

As usual, let me start with the narrator.
I've never listened to an audiobook read by Liyah Summers before, and after hearing this I can't understand why! She is absolutely one of the top talents in the business.

She has impressive vocal range, giving us a wonderful assortment of voices, and even her male voices are widely varied and sound amazing! Her skill with accents is likewise incredible.

She varies her pace to be a reflection of the events she's describing, which provides an excellent tempo throughout the book, and her vocal inflections are damn near perfect!


Now, as the story begins there is a bit of a learning curve as we're dropped right in the middle of several different characters in different places doing different things and it does take a bit of time to acclimate to the nuances of each character and location.

And I love it!

One of my biggest complaints about so many fantasy novels is the over explaining. I don't need twelve minutes of exposition to explain the context behind the events you're about to describe. Just describe them and let me draw my own conclusion.

Blessedly, there is very little to none of that in this book!

Samantha Shannon has built a wonderful world here with deep, rich history (not all of which is known or true), complicated political atmospheres, fascinating mythology, and some startling revelations.

At first, it seemed she had committed the (to my thinking) sin of making all dragons evil. But it turns out the world is a whole lot more complex than that.

There is a part of me that's tempted to compare this book to A Game of Thrones, as there are definite similarities (largely in that court intrigue is a massive part of the story). There is a problem with drawing that comparison, however.

In short, this book is better. Way better. In every way.

The pointless, senseless brutality, vulgarity, violence, and sexual assault are absent. What brutality and vulgarity there is always serves a purpose.

The storyline is way more concise, without the meandering and randomness.

And frankly, the writing is just better. Orders of magnitude better.

I can't say I'm entirely on board with the magic system, as I'm not overly fond of magic sources being external to the user (I have the same problem with GoT and many others). However, it is interesting.

Elsewise, the closest thing I have to a criticism is the profusion of matriarchal cultures/societies. So far as I can tell, the world seems to have numerous matriarchies but only one patriarchy. And none that treat both gender with equal merit.

Don't get me wrong, I don't think fantasy needs to be all about gender equality or anything, it just strikes me as a little odd that all these human societies are so strongly weighted toward female rule.

In the end, whatever excites you about epic fantasy, you'll find it here.

We have court intrigue galore, reversals, twists, secrets, and mysteries at every turn. We have deep, rich history, epic battles, phenomenal magical items, and genuinely heartfelt moments, both sweet and passionate.

In short, this is the single best standalone fantasy I have ever read. You can't go wrong with this one.

In a word, WOW

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What others have written is true: The narrator starts off reading at lost eight words at a time and has some pronunciations which the producer, laughably, has not helped her with. Heretic becomes 'herettic', ewer becomes 'ooer', thou becomes 'thoo', ensign becomes 'N-sine', briny becomes 'brinny'. The accents themselves are fine, just... of varying quality.

The story itself is so basic it could be the plot of a nineties high fantasy movie, but at least partially dodges the Chosen One trope. The world is a hard gender bend, so it's mostly female leads and significant characters, which is great. It's fantasy, I have no problem believing that there are as many powerful females as there are males. Or significantly more. My credulity is a bit stretched when there are as many female dragonriders and knights of the body as there are male ones. But in this world, women and men are of equal strength, and good going.
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So it's disappointing when two of the female characters just have to be together, in strict adherence to the outdated genre trope of romance being more important than friendship. Its great to read fantasy with more than one token queer romance, just sad that it takes 500 pages to feel like a 10 page fanfic.
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The cherry on top is when the underlying message is literally just spelled out: Maybe women are good for more than just having babies. YES. GOOD JOB. Does the author have any faith in us readers at all?

Weird pronunciations + disappointing story

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Long!!! I thought it was okay. At points the book moved along and at some points it dragged. I thought the author was throwing in too much stuff that at the climax, I wasn’t quite sure who has the sword.

The narrator was very good based on the materials she had to work with and the huge amount of characters too.

Will I want to read book #2? How long is it?? I pray it’s under 400 pages.

Long!!!

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I got this as a daily deal without knowing anything about the author. I was pleasantly surprised. An aspiring dragonrider with a secret. A foreigner with an important mission washing up on shore. A disgraced alchemist mourning his lost love and searching for the secret of immortality. A dragon who reacts to being worshipped with mostly amused detachment. A queen blissfully unaware that someone is trying to murder her. A lady-in-waiting using forbidden magic to kill the assassins. A worldwide conflict of politics, religion, and magic, with the chaos rising to the return of The Nameless One, monstrous lord of fire-breathing dragons. All woven together into an engrossing story of a fantasy world with its own ideas on gender roles and religion. The narrator has some trouble with male voices, to the point I'm still not sure if some lines were intended to sound sarcastic or not. But I can't mark her down too much for that considering how incredibly amusing the accent for The Unceasing Emperor turned out.

A very pleasant surprise

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Okay so the only reason I’m giving this less than 5 stars is because I really think it’s probably better consumed reading it rather than listening. I thought the plot, worldbuilding, characters, and writing of this book were impeccable… but there was SO much going on. I can generally follow an audiobook even if I space out once in a while, but I often found myself lost or confused about where I was in this book if/when I did space out. I also felt like it might have helped to make the voices more distinct between character perspectives shifting, since it did switch between 4 characters/storylines throughout. (This might be attributed to my ADHD, but I swear I listen to a lot of audiobooks and mostly retain what’s going on even when I do space out sometimes lol)

All in all though I found all of the characters compelling and I think this book has incredible representation of strong women, queer people, grief, the complexities of good/evil and religion across cultures. I think I’ll have to get a physical copy of this book and read it so I can fully soak in all of the characters and this incredible world.

AMAZING WORLDBUILDING… hard to follow

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