"𝜤 𝒘𝒐𝒖𝒍𝒅 𝒍𝒊𝒗𝒆 𝒂𝒍𝒐𝒏𝒆 𝒇𝒐𝒓 𝒇𝒊𝒇𝒕𝒚 𝒚𝒆𝒂𝒓𝒔 𝒕𝒐 𝒉𝒂𝒗𝒆 𝒐𝒏𝒆 𝒅𝒂𝒚 𝒘𝒊𝒕𝒉 𝒚𝒐𝒖"


"𝑾𝒆 𝒎𝒂𝒚 𝒃𝒆 𝒔𝒎𝒂𝒍𝒍, 𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝒘𝒆 𝒎𝒂𝒚 𝒃𝒆 𝒚𝒐𝒖𝒏𝒈, 𝒃𝒖𝒕 𝒘𝒆 𝒘𝒊𝒍𝒍 𝒔𝒉𝒂𝒌𝒆 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒘𝒐𝒓𝒍𝒅 𝒇𝒐𝒓 𝒐𝒖𝒓 𝒃𝒆𝒍𝒊𝒆𝒇𝒔."

__________________________

The Priory of the Orange Tree has me torn!!

I adored this story. The world building is complex and intricate, peppered with myth and legend. 

The characters were complex and nuanced, they made me cross and confused and dismayed and elated in equal measure. 

The writing was glorious, the prose was endlessly quotable.

But, I felt the weighting of the story was off at times. This is a hefty tome and the ending was *so* rushed. I really loved the pacing of this until close to the end, and seeing how all these characters were being drawn together was intriguing. But the end was over very quickly. I felt it impacted on certain arcs. 

I also wanted *more* dragon. The elements with the dragons were excellent but they didn't feature heavily, despite being central to the story. I wanted more destruction, more fighting, more gods being cool.

I had an absolute blast reading this, and I became very attacked to certain characters and very invested in the story. I thought the world building was beautiful and complex and the politics and overall world was really enjoyable and could definitely be part of something bigger. I'll be picking up the prequel for sure.