Samantha Shannon

Reviewed on 17th January 2026

This prequel to the first book in the series gives some extra background to how the situation at the start came about. This confusingly makes it chronologically the middle book of the series, but as far as I can tell they can be read in any order and still work.

However my memory of the first book, after just two years, is too hazy to really understand all the context and how it fits in - whether there are overlapping characters or settings, or whether it's just serving to set the scene for the world.

As a standalone, I think it struggles a bit. Part of the beauty of the main books of the series is the depth and the detail and the amount of slow steady worldbuilding that can happen, and deep relationships that the reader can develop with the characters over the course of a thousand pages. This skips all that and feels shallow by comparison.

This book is split into two halves called Before and After. Which makes sense from the perspective of most of the plot. But one thread only appears in the Before half and isn't followed up on in the After, which felt very weird and like a forgotten or pointless bit of plot. Perhaps had I better memory of the original novel it would fit more comfortably, but as I read it came across as a mistake.

Ultimately I suppose I'm mostly disapointed that this wasn't a big main book in the series, and didn't deliver the level of enjoyment I was hoping for.

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Reviewed on 22nd February 2024

The prequel to Shannon’s “The Priory of the Orange Tree” is possibly even better than the first novel. I picked it for a holiday as the length meant I wouldn’t need multiple books, but still it took me a good two weeks to race through the 850 pages of narrative.

Set hundreds of years earlier, we see a different political landscape across the world, with new cultures, new characters, and new beliefs. It’s an amazing piece of world building to set up something that so clearly can develop towards what we knew from the first book.

The characters are fascinating to follow, and the interaction or not between them makes for a really interested evolving dynamic as the story progresses. Several years pass over the course of the story, and Shannon does well to show the passage of time passing in a way that you feel in the tale.

I've found myself reflecting several times since finishing about the diversity of characters. There's a strong LGBT majority amongst the characters, and it's notable that this is an entire world where thats just the default. The conflict between the humans in the story doesn't stem from such petty interpersonal differences as in the real world, but is focussed on differences of opinion about how to face an external threat to the whole - and how those differences shape and are shaped by hundreds of years of society.

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Reviewed on 28th October 2023

It took me years to get to and weeks to read, but I’ve finally finished and really enjoyed this 800 page brick.

The opening chapters throw you into a world of two halves - an east and a west separated by religion and attitude toward dragons. I found it a little hard to keep track of which was which at first, particularly because I’m not good at east and west in my head - so it took a while to get into and remember from chapter to chapter who was who.

Once that was over with though the plot progressed at a solid pace, with a range of relatable characters. One in particular stood out to me as a favourite. It’s a world where gender and sexuality are almost always treated with equality, and that’s a lovely setting to be in, and really highlights the occasions where there are reasons this is lacking.

I raced through the final third over the course of a weekend, having really enjoyed the read, and am looking forward to picking up more books by Shannon. Although definitely time for something shorter next from my pile.

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