the priory of the orange tree by samantha shannon

Shannon describes the novel as a 'feminist retelling of Saint George and the Dragon.' The novel was published on 26 February 2019 by Bloomsbury Publishing. I can’t recommend it unless you have a lot of patience to reach a payoff that’s only middlingly well done.The Priory of the Orange Tree is a 2019 fantasy novel by writer Samantha Shannon. There are more human evils in The Priory of the Orange Tree, and when the novel allows them to move to the forefront-when it dwells on politics and personal ambition-it immediately becomes more compelling, more tense, and more interesting. it lets human evils off the hook too easily. I’m also out of charity with evil for evil’s sake. These simplified divisions tend to leave out the rich narrative and thematic possibilities that more complicated visions of inter- and intra-national politics offer. I must confess to being out of charity with novels (especially fantasy novels) that divide the world into East and West, North and South (always capitalised), and base the cultural markers very clearly on much-simplified elements from our own history. It’s only halfway through that matters become reasonably tense and compelling. Its eight-hundred-odd pages spend a long time establishing character and setting, with occasional diversions to recount the odd fable or two. The Priory of the Orange Tree does eventually get its legs underneath it for a satisfying endgame, it remains something of an unbalanced, unwieldy beast. Shannon has created fertile narrative ground, and the state of affairs at the end of this novel certainly leaves room for new stories that will make further use of the excellent setting. The Priory of the Orange Tree is a fascinating epic fantasy set in a rich, well-developed world. The disappointment this creates is, more than anything, a measure of how well-developed the first half is.

The first half develops its conflicts with rich detail, but after the midpoint things that could have formed entire complex subplots often get disposed of with a single straightforward effort.

The novel's main weakness comes in its second half, where the story begins to feel rushed. It's also noteworthy-though at this point it shouldn't be-that much of the key action is driven by women and characters of color (categories that often overlap in these pages). Shannon also avoids the usual trap of this type of story, in which a prophecy predicts what is going to happen, and turns out to be accurate in every respect.

Part of Shannon's great strength here is her worldbuilding, which draws recognizably on real-world countries (specifically England and Japan), but goes well beyond simply changing a few names, working in new elements that distinguish Shannon's world from actual history.

The priory of the orange tree by samantha shannon