Where are all the women?
Epic fantasy has always been a sausage fest. So thank the Writing Gods for Samantha Shannon. Women! Women everywhere. And all of them complicated, difficult, loving, ambitious, secretive, courageous; so much more than the sum of their physical parts.
Unapologetic female ambition. Female friendship. A f/f love story that doesn’t fetishise female sexuality. Complicated feelings about motherhood. Female warriors. A pirate Empress. A female primal scream echoes from all 800 pages.
“No woman should be made to fear she was not enough”
But before all that there is simply a book, standing in front of a girl, asking to sweep her away.
“‘Reading’ Ead said lightly. ‘A dangerous pastime.’”
If what you want from a book is the feeling that time has begun to exist only for other people. If your aim is to rise from the last page, blinking, flushed and with no idea what day it is. Run, don’t walk, to your nearest independent bookstore.
Epic fantasy is the ultimate act of escapism. And Priory of the Orange Tree is a masterpiece of an enchanted doorway to another world. The scope is grand, the world building is intricate, the characters have secrets deeper than The Abyss.
A fiery dragon’s roar of a recommend.
