My 1st book of the decade (whoa! what a weird new year this is!) was a fucking doozy, my friends! It might be the 2nd biggest book I’ve read and I am completely in love with it.
Samantha Shannon builds a world vast and brimming with rich history and lore in this sprawling epic fantasy.
Thousand year old dynasties! Enchanted swords! Mages and witches! Pirates and prophecies! Dragonsriders and slayers galore!
This book is simply incredible. Gripping and heartfelt, enriched with detailed world building and epic mythology. It’s hard to know what to praise first, Shannon’s story, her world, or the characters she populated it with.
I was pleasantly surprised by this book, which I honestly picked up by accident on Kindle, thinking it much smaller than it’s intimidating 800+ pages. But those pages are worth every engulfing moment and by the end I found myself desperate for more.
This is a tale of (like many in the fantasy genre) slaying a fire-breathing dragon. Sounds simple enough. But I can say beyond a shadow of a doubt this is unlike anything else I’ve read. A tale that puts female heroism at the forefront and strives to show us how the truth of things such as myth or religion can often be lost or muddled by time and the tongues of storytellers. The characters in Priory all hold certain beliefs shaped by history as they’ve come to understand it, and throughout the story each of them and their entire world will have to learn that while the stories that shape our lives are important we must always be willing to think for ourselves and face our own reality with the courage of an open mind. I love it, truly.
If you you’re looking for a sweeping standalone epic fantasy with a cast of complex and varied characters in a strange and dazzling world of dragons and magic, please look no further. This book as it all, and beautifully done at that. (There’s even some not insignificant LGBTQ+ elements to the story)
