Synopsis: The House of Berethnet has ruled Inys for a thousand years. Still unwed, Queen Sabran the Ninth must conceive a daughter to protect her realm from destruction—but assassins are getting closer to her door.
Ead Duryan is an outsider at court. Though she has risen to the position of lady-in-waiting, she is loyal to a hidden society of mages. Ead keeps a watchful eye on Sabran, secretly protecting her with forbidden magic.
Across the dark sea, Tané has trained all her life to be a dragonrider, but is forced to make a choice that could see her life unravel.
Meanwhile, the divided East and West refuse to parley, and forces of chaos are rising from their sleep.
Review: I want to go on record and say this is my first Samantha Shannon book, and I initially had little interest in it. I was sold when I was told it would be a standalone fantasy. At first, I enjoyed many of the characters we meet in Priory. Unfortunately, some of that interest waned a bit by the end. Ead is definitely my favorite. Her story was far more interesting than the others, and I just liked her character. Tané had an interesting story at the start but, as the dragons started to get involved, her story got surprisingly boring. Those are the characters that stood out the most to me, and even they felt underwhelming after a bit.
A part of why people were excited for Priory was because it was supposed to be a queer story with dragons. Sadly, neither of these things were a major part of the actual story. Tané is working to become a dragonrider, but she's the only character have an actual relationship with dragons and their interactions are patchy at best. I did like how there was a difference between water dragons, like the one Tané had, and fire dragons, like the ones in traditional fantasy stories. As for the queer aspects of Priory, it felt very small compared to the rest of the events. That wouldn't bother me so much, except this was clearly a character driven book versus a plot driven one. When it was clear that Sabran ran a queendom, I wanted there to be conversations about conception and the expectation of women, but there really wasn't. More than anything, Priory felt like it didn't know what kind of book it was supposed to be. There wasn't enough world building and plot, but there also wasn't enough character development. I did listen to the audiobook and, while the narration was great, that isn't my preferred way to read any book for the first time. Especially dense fantasy novels. I might have enjoyed this more if I had a physical copy, and I could keep referring back to things.
Worth checking out if you want a standalone fantasy but, overall, a disappointment.
3 howls
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