Amazing book!

I was sick and couldn't read for a couple of weeks. Somehow, I managed to download audible, and The Priory of the Orange Tree and I was blown away by this brilliantly constructed tale of adventure, magic, love and growth. I admit it took me a few chapters to get used to all the characters and places, but the captivating story soon took me over.

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Absolutely stunning

The best book I've ever listened to / read. Beautiful prose with an expansive world and plot. Narrator is fantastic and the story brilliant.

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Great narration, engaging story

The narrator made it easy to feel immersed in the world of the book -- the different voices/accents for different characters were effective, particularly for the main characters.

The story delivered what I wanted, which was a sort of classic fantasy world to sink into and enjoy, written from a more modern/feminist lens. There were some moments where certain thematic points were expressed in an on-the-nose way, but overall I felt engaged in the story and found it easy to suspend my disbelief. I'd recommend it to someone looking for an enjoyable contemporary fantasy read

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long story

it got a bit confusing at the beginning with the world building and trying to understand everything but it all came together at the end.

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Epic Fantasy - Dragons, Pirates, Queens, Intrique

Slow starting epic fantasy. I do wonder if it would have worked better split into two (or even three) books. This book is a bit confusing at first, with all the names and situations, locales, etc but it does pick up. I stayed up until 3am to finish the last 4 hours - the battles were so well written, so easy to visualise, it just galloped along at the end (but I was disatisfied with the ending, I thought it could have been a bit more fleshed out).

So much to love in this book - Ead's love story (a love between two complicated women, in a complex situation) and Tana's struggles to be a dragon rider. There is a lot of political intrigue (and religious intrigue) which is my catnip so I thoroughly enjoyed that.

I did like the narrator and the bold accent choices - which ranged from accents that sounded like they were South East States, Carribean, African, etc to differentiate where they originally hailed from.

I really appreciated this being a standalone novel

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Very good

A very good high fantasy novel. The other reviews regarding the complexity of the names and characters in the world building as challenging to follow are correct but it’s honestly worth pushing through that as once you get to know them it’s an amazing story. The narration was also great in my opinion

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A slow burn for a story with this many dragons

Let’s start Positive:

Elements of the story are quite progressive for the fantasy genre. There are 4 point of view characters: 2 women and 2 men. One of the characters is a lesbian, another is a gay man. The warriors/heroes of the story are the two women. There are strong messages in the book. I’m reminded specifically of 3 quotes, one which is about the term “barren” and how it is applied to both fields and women. Another quote was “No woman should be made to fear that she was not enough.” The final quote I’m remembering was about women being more than a womb in need of seeding. These are important messages but the delivery of each one felt a little too much on the nose.

The examination of religion and the history of different religions was interesting as well.

Now the Negative:

One of the four point of view characters, the straight man, was incredibly boring. All of his chapters except a handful were very dry!

Another negative deals with the plot. The plot is very traditional and not progressive, which was surprising given the progressive elements discussed above. Essentially, there is a big bad guy, well actually a dragon, who terrorized the world 1000 years ago and he is going to come back. This big baddie is ominously referred to as The Nameless One. In order to stop him the heroes must go on heroes’ quests to collect magic stones and a magic sword. Only the male characters ever seemed to be at risk of dying, I never once thought the female characters wouldn’t make it to the end of the book. It was very obviously they would play a key role in the climax.

Some people have said the book was long enough to make a trilogy, but I cannot agree with that. The first half of the book is very slow, and even boring at times. There was nowhere to break it up. If it was a trilogy the first book would have bored nearly everyone and there would have likely been few sales of the second book.

The book does pick up at the halfway point, but it never becomes a fantastic read. Essentially, the book was good, but it is not the be all, end all that some people have been making it out to be.

Narration:

The narrator, Liyah Summers, may one day be great, but she still needs practice. She was very understandable when doing the credits at the end of the book, but when narrating she put on an accent that was difficult to follow,. For the first quarter of the book I would mishear/misunderstand at least one word in 300, it was very frustrating. I had to get a physical copy from the library to sometimes check what had been said. For example, there is a character in the book named Sabran, but Summers said her name like “Ser Bronn,” and I kept wondering what a Song of Ice and Fire character was doing in this book. Sabran is a Queen, but hearing "Sir Bronn" kept making me thing of her as a knight, not a queen.

Another example is of a line that read “The Red Damsels elected Mita Yedanya” but I kept hearing “The Red Damsels elected me to the Danya” and I had no idea what was going on. By the halfway point I had learned to understand Summers.

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5 les gens ont trouvé cela utile

fantastical

struggled a bit at the beginning as the reader wasn't easy to listen too, persevered and got used to her....the tale was worth it!

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BUY THIS BOOK

An amazing tale which feels like 3 books in one. I was hung on for over 24 hours listening to this. Amazing, attention gripping and steamy 😉

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great story, well read. hated some of the voices.

The story itself was great it lived up to the hype I've been hearing. A lot like game of thrones in a way but with more dragons and magic and more world to it.

I really struggled to identify who characters were for the first 10 hours of the book but that's normal for me. Some of the voices just really took me away from the story. They were supposed to sound giant and powerful or menacing but they just sounded silly to me and I struggled to take it seriously.

Overall way more good things than bad things. highly recommend.

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