The Priory of the Orange Tree (Unabridged)
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4.3 • 199 Ratings
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- $30.99
Publisher Description
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.
Customer Reviews
Great book but audio mixed up
I really enjoyed this book. The beginning felt a bit daunting at first as you tried to catch on to all the personalities and lore, but in the end it all ties together beautifully.
I listened to this on audiobook and the narrator did a great job. Again, took a bit getting used to the speed of her reading at first but after a while it all fell into place.
I had one problem with the Audible audio of this book, however. At some point during Part 1, a portion of Part 2 ended up spliced into the middle of Part 1. I really didn't realize it - it just seemed like the author was doing some kind of wild future-casting and then returning to the past. I didn't realize it was a mistake until the same misplaced portion was read once again during Part 2 word-for-word in the order of where it should have been featured. So, that did create some confusion for me for a bit, but it didn't ruin the book entirely, although it did give away a couple plot points. I hope Audible fixes the mistake in future releases.
Great fantasy story overall. The characters were deep and I felt attachments to them all. I do wish she'd spent some more time on the dragons and their lore. Maybe in another book. I look forward to more books from the author.
Writing is very bad
If you like fantasy, and have any standards… don’t waste your money. Criminally overrated.
A long book
I struggled multiple times to get into The Priory of the Orange Tree. It mixes two genres, one I love (fantasy) with one I really don’t like (politics and monarchies). This isn’t new, I know. While some of my favorite series like Lord of the Rings also mixes fantasy with kingdom politics, the story focuses on the former, with the later only truly being relevant to one character. But here, there are so many parts of the book dedicated to explaining, in great detail, how daughter of so-and-so is related to the son of such-and-such, who lived in the one-kingdom, but moved to two-kingdom when his mom, queen this-and-that, married king you-guessed-it, who was the cousin of and-so-it-goes-on. Not that any of that is bad, but it’s boring (to me).
I only got interested in the book after finding a full synopsis online. Once I knew where the story was going, allowing me to ignore most of the politics, I enjoyed it a lot more.
I really think this would have been a better book if it was cut in half, or more.