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The Priory of the Orange Tree
- Narrated by: Liyah Summers
- Length: 25 hrs and 52 mins
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Tunuva Melim is a sister of the Priory. For fifty years, she has trained to slay wyrms – but none have appeared since the Nameless One, and the younger generation is starting to question the Priory's purpose. To the north, in the Queendom of Inys, Sabran the Ambitious has married the new King of Hróth, narrowly saving both realms from ruin. Their daughter, Glorian, trails in their shadow – exactly where she wants to be. The dragons of the East have slept for centuries. Dumai has spent her life in a Seiikinese mountain temple, trying to wake the gods from their long slumber.
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An overall fantastic listen
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Tought start, worth pushing through
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Very good book, hated the narration. Bought physical copy instead.
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An overall fantastic listen
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Tought start, worth pushing through
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Publisher's Summary
A world divided.
A queendom without an heir.
An ancient enemy awakens.
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 to be a dragonrider since she was a child 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.
Featured Article: 10 Books Like The Game of Thrones
George R.R. Martin’s epic series A Song of Ice and Fire was already a big name in the fantasy world prior to its television adaptation, after which it became a worldwide phenomenon and one of the most-watched shows in history. The TV series inspired a new wave of interest and love for the original works, but with the show well and truly finished and just two titles left to release in the series, fantasy fans are asking: What’s next? Whether you’re a longtime fan of A Song of Ice and Fire or a newcomer to the fantasy genre who fell in love with its HBO adaptation, these books like Game of Thrones are sure to enthrall, thrill, and delight.
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What listeners say about The Priory of the Orange Tree
Average Customer RatingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Trillium25
- 2019-04-07
Underwhelming
This story had me so excited... a Queendom on the brink of war, dragons and mages, pirates and assassins! But I was just so bored and confused. I couldn't keep the names of characters or places straight and struggled to understand what was going on for a lot of the story.
I kept wanting to give up on it, but convinced myself it would get better. I can't say it did, unfortunately. This is now the second book by this author that I have read, and I didn't enjoy the other one either. I don't think this authors story telling is my cup of tea....
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10 people found this helpful
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- Erin M. Naef
- 2022-09-25
Almost didn't buy this because of negative reviews
Ignore them. A feminist tale: complex, beautiful, well-written. About storytelling, bucking expectations. Wonderful narration.
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5 people found this helpful
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- J
- 2020-01-05
A slow burn for a story with this many dragons
Let’s start Positive:
Elements of the story are quite progressive for the fantasy genre. There are 4 point of view characters: 2 women and 2 men. One of the characters is a lesbian, another is a gay man. The warriors/heroes of the story are the two women. There are strong messages in the book. I’m reminded specifically of 3 quotes, one which is about the term “barren” and how it is applied to both fields and women. Another quote was “No woman should be made to fear that she was not enough.” The final quote I’m remembering was about women being more than a womb in need of seeding. These are important messages but the delivery of each one felt a little too much on the nose.
The examination of religion and the history of different religions was interesting as well.
Now the Negative:
One of the four point of view characters, the straight man, was incredibly boring. All of his chapters except a handful were very dry!
Another negative deals with the plot. The plot is very traditional and not progressive, which was surprising given the progressive elements discussed above. Essentially, there is a big bad guy, well actually a dragon, who terrorized the world 1000 years ago and he is going to come back. This big baddie is ominously referred to as The Nameless One. In order to stop him the heroes must go on heroes’ quests to collect magic stones and a magic sword. Only the male characters ever seemed to be at risk of dying, I never once thought the female characters wouldn’t make it to the end of the book. It was very obviously they would play a key role in the climax.
Some people have said the book was long enough to make a trilogy, but I cannot agree with that. The first half of the book is very slow, and even boring at times. There was nowhere to break it up. If it was a trilogy the first book would have bored nearly everyone and there would have likely been few sales of the second book.
The book does pick up at the halfway point, but it never becomes a fantastic read. Essentially, the book was good, but it is not the be all, end all that some people have been making it out to be.
Narration:
The narrator, Liyah Summers, may one day be great, but she still needs practice. She was very understandable when doing the credits at the end of the book, but when narrating she put on an accent that was difficult to follow,. For the first quarter of the book I would mishear/misunderstand at least one word in 300, it was very frustrating. I had to get a physical copy from the library to sometimes check what had been said. For example, there is a character in the book named Sabran, but Summers said her name like “Ser Bronn,” and I kept wondering what a Song of Ice and Fire character was doing in this book. Sabran is a Queen, but hearing "Sir Bronn" kept making me thing of her as a knight, not a queen.
Another example is of a line that read “The Red Damsels elected Mita Yedanya” but I kept hearing “The Red Damsels elected me to the Danya” and I had no idea what was going on. By the halfway point I had learned to understand Summers.
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5 people found this helpful
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- Joey
- 2021-08-23
Loved it
A wonderfully well-woven story and excellently narrated. Liyah Summers gives each character and nation their own unique accent and voice, making them instantly recognizable.
The story has a bit of everything: court intrigue, adventure, heists while blending everything together seamlessly. It also feels modern, with a diverse cast of characters of different ethnicities and sexual orientations and strong female characters.
I cannot recommend this audiobook enough.
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4 people found this helpful
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- Tyne
- 2021-05-20
Hella gay, exactly what I want in a book.
This book had it all. Plot. Character. ✨ Gayness ✨. I would totally sacrifice a little plot and character in the next book for even more gayness but that's just me :)
Alphabet mafia for the win!!!
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4 people found this helpful
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- Lilindigo
- 2022-08-08
DNF
I really wanted to like this book. But 60 some odd chapters in and I still didn’t feel an emotional connection to any of the characters. The writing is good, the author is clearly smart and their use of language is impressive but unfortunately that’s not enough to sell me on a book.
I don’t shy away from heavy world building and I love an epic fantasy but for me my heart just wasn’t in this one… I think it maybe could’ve been condensed into a shorter novel and then I could’ve forgiven the lack of emotion and character development. I don’t think the pacing did this book anh favours.
At the end of the day it just wasn’t for me.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Snows ghost
- 2023-05-28
disappointed and a waste
i tried to like this book but cant get past how slow it is i kept falling asleep. i bought it on sale so i cant even return it for a credit
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1 person found this helpful
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- Kyle
- 2023-05-22
not worth the time investment
I found this book to be overly long, full of uninteresting politics. The dragons are mentioned more than they are part of the story. The ending happens quickly after 700 pages of build-up. skip this book
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- Anonymous User
- 2023-03-01
Some Good Ideas
Really fun world-building. However, the main character is extremely flat and hyper-competent with no flaws. The other characters are likewise.
This is a clever early effort by a young writer, but severely under-cooked
Reader has four accents: Yorkshire, American, Jamaican, and African. She uses these for characters who unquestionably should not have these accents. No accents would be preferable.
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- Amazon Customer
- 2022-12-29
Excessive
This book could have easily been cut by 1/3, by removing all unnecessary details that make the story confusing. After that, this book should have been cut into two. The author got so caught up in their world building that they don't give you a chance to connect to any one place or any one character before jumping to the next. Instead of figuring out how to interwine them better, the author just kept introducing more and more characters that no one cares about. You spend half the book confusing two characters cause their names sound too similar, and you've been introduced to so many people all at once that you can't keep a single person straight. The idea is fun. It's just poorly executed and makes for an excruciatingly long read instead of a delightfully long one.
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- Kevin Potter
- 2019-03-09
In a word, WOW
If you thought Brandon Sanderson had a corner on standalone epic fantasy then you're in for a surprise with this one!
As usual, let me start with the narrator.
I've never listened to an audiobook read by Liyah Summers before, and after hearing this I can't understand why! She is absolutely one of the top talents in the business.
She has impressive vocal range, giving us a wonderful assortment of voices, and even her male voices are widely varied and sound amazing! Her skill with accents is likewise incredible.
She varies her pace to be a reflection of the events she's describing, which provides an excellent tempo throughout the book, and her vocal inflections are damn near perfect!
Now, as the story begins there is a bit of a learning curve as we're dropped right in the middle of several different characters in different places doing different things and it does take a bit of time to acclimate to the nuances of each character and location.
And I love it!
One of my biggest complaints about so many fantasy novels is the over explaining. I don't need twelve minutes of exposition to explain the context behind the events you're about to describe. Just describe them and let me draw my own conclusion.
Blessedly, there is very little to none of that in this book!
Samantha Shannon has built a wonderful world here with deep, rich history (not all of which is known or true), complicated political atmospheres, fascinating mythology, and some startling revelations.
At first, it seemed she had committed the (to my thinking) sin of making all dragons evil. But it turns out the world is a whole lot more complex than that.
There is a part of me that's tempted to compare this book to A Game of Thrones, as there are definite similarities (largely in that court intrigue is a massive part of the story). There is a problem with drawing that comparison, however.
In short, this book is better. Way better. In every way.
The pointless, senseless brutality, vulgarity, violence, and sexual assault are absent. What brutality and vulgarity there is always serves a purpose.
The storyline is way more concise, without the meandering and randomness.
And frankly, the writing is just better. Orders of magnitude better.
I can't say I'm entirely on board with the magic system, as I'm not overly fond of magic sources being external to the user (I have the same problem with GoT and many others). However, it is interesting.
Elsewise, the closest thing I have to a criticism is the profusion of matriarchal cultures/societies. So far as I can tell, the world seems to have numerous matriarchies but only one patriarchy. And none that treat both gender with equal merit.
Don't get me wrong, I don't think fantasy needs to be all about gender equality or anything, it just strikes me as a little odd that all these human societies are so strongly weighted toward female rule.
In the end, whatever excites you about epic fantasy, you'll find it here.
We have court intrigue galore, reversals, twists, secrets, and mysteries at every turn. We have deep, rich history, epic battles, phenomenal magical items, and genuinely heartfelt moments, both sweet and passionate.
In short, this is the single best standalone fantasy I have ever read. You can't go wrong with this one.
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321 people found this helpful
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- Kim U
- 2019-04-04
Okay story, really poor narration
I combined listening to the audiobook of this with reading the ebook to get through it. I don't know why this monster of a book (25+ hours in audiobook form!) was narrated by someone who appears to be a first-time audiobook narrator, but it was a poor choice. At first, the narration issues seemed to mainly be related to narration pacing, which seemed really off-tempo compared to most other audiobooks that I've listened to - fast at points, slow at points, very inconsistent. But as the book continued, the accent choices became rather bizarre - inconsistent across characters from the same regions, and eventually inconsistent even for the same characters. Overall, the story was okay, although really in need of some substantial editing. There were so many storylines, and although the author tried to weave them together as the book progressed, it just came out a bit jumbled. The first half of the book was incredibly strong (other than the narration), but it really dragged on. I feel like my experience of this book is negatively influenced by the audiobook narration.
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163 people found this helpful
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- NCKitkat
- 2019-03-23
Read, don’t listen
The narrator uses accents and voices; one voice was particularly grating; and fake Southern accents and Scottish accents just don’t belong in this story. The story is ok, but I like her other books much better.
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- Eric Suchyta
- 2019-03-05
Rich world evincing present-day issues
Samantha Shannon masterfully constructs a fantasy world underscoring many of the same issues important today -- feminism, religion and the dangers of fanaticism, distrust of outsiders, etc. Notably, the story takes place in a sophisticated, complex political climate, where there are not simple answers to everyone working together in harmony, ringing true to the globe today. Personal identity themes are also embedded throughout -- homosexuality, religion/skepticism, and the value of friendship to name a few. It's intriguing how much of society is matriarchal, allowing Shannon to explore a world where misogyny has not abounded for centuries. The story itself is very well interwoven between many characters and lands, and I found myself completely engrossed. You might feel a little confused and overwhelmed at the beginning because there are a lot of names and places to digest, but as you keep reading it all builds, connects, and becomes interwoven.
While I agree the narrator is not my favorite ever, I don't agree she's the worst ever. Some characters do sound similar, but not all. It took me a little time to get used to her delivery, but some subtleties grew on me as I listened more. I think she does a reasonable job getting across certain personality traits and drawing my attention to them, such as Ead's growing willingness to stand up to authority and Roos' disgruntled state in his perceived failures.
I listen to a lot of fantasy, and would recommend this one as worth your time.
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- Kindle Customer
- 2019-03-22
Can't stand the narrator
Her accents and voices are inconsistent and all over the place. Her pacing is terrible. The performance is so bad that it's distracting me from the story. Looks like I'll be reading this one only.
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- Amazon Customer
- 2019-03-12
Narrator lacks any vocal modulation.
The narrator has a lovely deep voice but she makes no attempt to vovally differentiation between characters, scenes, or emotion. The recording's editor compounded the problem by failing to make a pause to designate transition between the scenes The result is a soporific syrup of words that fails on every level to enliven Shannon's narrative.
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- Dan
- 2019-03-06
Terrible performance
Couldn’t handle more than 10 minutes... the reader ruined it for me. Thank god for Audible’s return policy!!
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- B. Butler
- 2019-03-03
Horrible narrator
I have listened to hundreds of audiobooks and this is the first time I’ve ever had to return one because the narrator ruined the story. She overacted and rushed through, her accents were awful and it was hard to tell her character voices apart. So amateurish and distracting. I ended up buying the kindle version, just so I could read through and find out what was going on. The book itself came highly recommended and I’ll finished reading it but never again will I listen to anything from this narrator.
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- Sharon
- 2019-03-28
Extremely disappointed
I love Samantha Shannon, but this was not her best. It could have been the narrator making it worse than it really was, sometimes narrators can change a perspective in a book. I did not like the narrator as you can probably figure out, and I am saddened by this, perhaps the book would’ve been made better with a different voice. I love Audible‘s attention to the selectionnarration of books. It is not often when this happens where a narrator does not bring out the best in a book. Thanks to Audible‘s return policy a gift they have given to their long time and new subscribers alike, I was able to recover and perhaps save this credit for a better book.
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- Anonymous User
- 2019-03-14
Strong start, weak finish
First half was pretty decent, with believable characters and a believable world, even if the "politics" were weak. Unfortunately halfway through the author realized she wanted to only write a single book after which proceeds a chain of events just happening to come together perfectly where an alliance between nations was coordinated in a week or so. The other flaw is her idea of character development is the character staying exactly the same until some event happens, after which their personality instantly changes, but then goes back sometimes. The narrator caught too much flak in other reviews. Although she was bad, it was bearably so (for the most part. Some voices didn't fit the characters whatsoever.
Overall, don't waste your credit, you'll just be disappointed from hour 15 onward.
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- al
- 2020-07-01
Great story but horrid accent
I really enjoyed the story. I especially liked that the author relied on strong female leads and gay/lesbian characters. There is no violence against women as there is in other fantasy books. However the listening part was horrid. The accent is absolutely awful and really damages the story. I would recommend you read this story rather than listen to it.
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- J M
- 2023-05-29
I loved it !
It is a great story read by a great voice actor, I absolutely recommend it !
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- Rachel W.
- 2022-12-08
great tale and best voice actress I've ever heard
I had no idea how long this book was when I bought it. I worried I'd never finish it, but instead I was quickly obsessed and can't wait to re-listen.
Please, I'm begging you, give me more fabulous fantasy narrated by Liyah Summers.
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- Mina L.
- 2022-10-27
Reader not good
The story seems suite all right but the reader is awful. At only 40 minutes of hearing I am questioning myself if I will continue or stop listening. All the characters seems the same and she gives practically no intonation. I am very sad because I bought the book and the story seems quite alright but I don’t think I will continue listening to it.
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- Amazon Customer
- 2022-07-27
Enjoyable dragon quest
Great performance and really enjoyed the characters. Some new ideas amongst a well trodden quest type book. Recommended for lovers of fantasy.
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- andreas
- 2022-06-05
A beautiful queer story ✨
I read this first when it came out and had the joy to reread it already two times and each time is better.
I absolutely loved reading it with a physical book but the audiobook added another dimension that I loved.
The narrator does a great job on this and I’m really glad I reread this on audible rather than with the physical book.
As for the story, it’s absolutely beautiful. I loved the characters and the world so much. Every character has something interesting to add to the story. I for one can’t wait for anything else written in this world because I definitely need more.
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- Client d'Amazon
- 2021-10-05
New favourite story
Amazing story, excellent reader. I might buy the book, but listening to it has been an amazing experience all on its own. Definitely one of my favourite books ever.
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- cécile b.
- 2021-10-01
Magistral
Quelle histoire!
Il y avait bien longtemps que je ne m’étais pas sentie si impliquée, si transportée!
La narratrice fait un travail admirable pour donner vie à chaque personnage, son travail est aussi impressionnant que celui de l’autrice, félicitations à toutes les deux, je relirai et ré écouterai ce livre bien des fois
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