REVIEW - THE PRIORY OF THE ORANGE TREE

I have this 'tier' of fantasy writing in my head called the 'Robin Hobb Tier'. Hobb is my favourite fantasy author. The wisdom, complexity and cleverness of her writing is exactly what I want other fantasy writing to aspire to.

Samantha Shannon's 'The Priory of the Orange Tree' is a Robin Hobb Tier novel.

In just one book, Shannon paints a world and tells a story of incredible breadth and depth. The 4 main characters and their differing home cultures are artfully brought to life as the plot evolves - instead of beside, before, or on top of it. One of the greatest challenges of writing good fantasy is evoking your world while not chucking a Tolkein and focusing so greatly on the world that the plot slows to a painful speed. Shannon masterfully rises to this challenge. The pacing of this novel is extraordinary.

Of the four main characters of this novel, half are queer, most are people of colour, and half are women. I find more and more modern fantasy novels feature diverse characters lately, but many authors fall into traps such as using the 'otherness' of diverse characters as a point of conflict or a plot device. Shannon avoids all those pitfalls, instead achieving that magical feat of writing an excellent fantasy story that just happens to be about minority characters!! It is masterful.

It's just a great fantasy adventure. It contains all the epic-ness of a ten-book fantasy series packed into a single, fantastic adventure that deserves a spot on your bookshelf.

5/5