The Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha ShannonMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
Hooter: The Queer thing about love in the time of dragons
A thousand pages of dragons, queendoms, and quietly burning faith—and somehow, The Priory of the Orange Tree still feels surprisingly intimate. You’re dropped into Ead’s double life as a secret mage guarding a queen who doesn’t know she’s being protected, Tané risking everything on Choosing Day for a shot at riding a dragon, and an empire betting its survival on women who can’t afford to break.
This is not a breezy weekend read; it’s slow in places, occasionally indulgent, and you feel every extra subplot and POV. But if you give it time, the pay-off is rich: cursed seas, political assassination attempts, an end-of-the-world dragon stirring—and at the centre of all that noise, Ead and Sabran building a fragile, stubborn love story that shouldn’t survive court intrigue, but somehow does.
Come for the wyrms and queens, stay for the orange tree that refuses to bear patriarchal fruit. In this queendom, even the Nameless One has to face the fact that love is the real fireproofing.
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