"The Priory of the Orange Tree": small thoughts and review

This book was definitely quite the read, and I mean that in the best way possible. I heard someone once describe it as “feminist Lord of the Rings”, and I knew I would love it. But even that description does not even begin to describe my feelings for the world, the cultures, the creatures, the magic system, the plot and the people this story introduced me to. It is by no means small, sitting at a whopping 830 pages. I read this book over the course of a month during downtime at my job. So, armed with a pen and colored tabs for annotating and keeping track of characters (something I heard I might need), I plunged into this book.

By gods did I get sucked in. I was not emotionally invested until about 100 pages into the story, but considering the overall length of the book, I would say it’s pretty well-paced. The world is immensely complex, with different cultures, religions, viewpoints, contradicting histories for the same events, all of which are parallel to modern day religions and real-world historical events (there’s a disclaimer at the beginning of the book in case anyone doubts that claim).

While I did track my progress, I did not keep virtual track of my notes and highlights since it was a paper copy. However, I plan to re-read this book again, and will do so digitally in hopes of allowing for my real time notes and thoughts to be made available.

I would love to be able to conduct an in-depth analysis of this book, but I fear I will need another read, knowing the premise of the plot and major events that happen so I can delve deeper into the meat of the tale. Considering Shannon’s history and knowledge on literature, I am sure there is evidence of subtle foreshadowing and symbolism that I was not aware of on my first read.

I would definitely recommend this book if you are someone who enjoys big books, fantasy epics and queer romance. The characters are diverse, complex and likeable. The writing is flowery and a bit confusing at times, but if you’re willing to take the extra few seconds and think of the context, you should be able to decipher the meaning pretty easily, but I understand that would be a turn off for some folks.

My goal is to read a digital version of the book on Kindle, and sync my notes and highlights with my Goodreads so you call can see my thoughts as I go, then conduct a more in-depth, essay-style analysis on it. I probably should have done this on my first read, but I spend most of the time enjoying the action, plot points and learning the characters and seeing the world rather than focusing on the symbolism and literary details, of which I'm sure there are a lot of.