The Priory of the Orange Tree
Samantha Shannon, 2019
A standalone epic of dragonriders, an embattled queen and a divided world forced to reckon with the same ancient enemy.
Feels like awe and dread. About faith, power and freedom.
A page from the book
What it means to be told your blood is the sea.
To be kin to a dragon, you must not only have a soul of water. You must have the blood of the sea, and the sea is not always pure. It is not any one thing. There is darkness in it, and danger, and cruelty. It can raze great cities with its rage. Its depths are unknowable; they do not see the touch of the sun. To be a Miduchi is not to be pure, Tané. It is to be the living sea. That is why I chose you. You have a dragon’s heart. Samantha Shannon.Priory reworks the Saint George legend: in Shannon's world the dragon-slaying saint is a founding myth of the West, and the dragons are not simply monsters.
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Questions readers ask
- What is The Priory of the Orange Tree like?
- Feels like awe and dread. About faith, power and freedom.
- What should I read after The Priory of the Orange Tree?
- If you liked The Priory of the Orange Tree, try The Dragon Reborn (Robert Jordan), Parable of the Sower (Octavia E. Butler) and The Queen of Nothing (Holly Black).
A taste of the feed
The oldest trick in politics: invent a monster, then volunteer to kill it.
Do you know how to unite the people behind you, Child Carridin? The quickest way? Loose a lion - a rabid lion - in the streets. And when panic grips the people, once it has turned their bowels to water, calmly tell them you will deal with it. Then you kill it, and order them to hang the carcass up where everyone can see. Before they have time to think, you give another order, and it will be obeyed. And if you continue to give orders, they will continue to obey, for you will be the one who saved them, and who better to lead?
The Dragon Reborn · Robert Jordan
The quiet radicalism of admitting you don’t know enough.
I realize I don’t know very much. None of us knows very much. But we can all learn more. Then we can teach one another. We can stop denying reality or hoping it will go away by magic.
Parable of the Sower · Octavia E. Butler
A plea that would rather have a fight than silence.
Come home and shout at me. Come home and fight with me. Come home and break my heart, if you must.
The Queen of Nothing · Holly Black
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