First Impression Friday: The Priory of the Orange Tree

First Impression Friday is a meme created by J.W. Martin, where you give a few impressions of a book you have recently started, and predict what you will think at the end. It’s cool because you get to look back after finishing the book to see what you were thinking at the beginning!

This is one brick of a book! Really, not only is it 804 pages, but it’s also a bit bigger than what I consider to be the “average” book size.

You can read about it on Goodreads here, but basically, it’s an epic fantasy with a very medieval feel told with multiple POVs from characters around the fictional world as “an ancient enemy awakens”. And there are dragons! These dragons have already made an appearance early in the book, and I’m excited to learn more about them.

Currently I’m finding the book a bit daunting because there is a lot of important history in this world that is being introduced. I’m at that point where I don’t know all the pieces yet, so it’s a bit overwhelming to sort everything out. I think the key to reading this is just to relax, though. There are a lot of names and terms being thrown out, which personally worries me because I don’t know what I need to remember for later, but I’m finding that if I wait a bit I’ll get a better idea of its importance and role in the story.

I can definitely see why it’s been compared to Game of Thrones. This book has that same feeling of vastness as the viewpoints are not limited to one area (there are things happening across the world), and you have all these complex stories weaving in together. I’d say, so far, though, that it’s less gritty than Game of Thrones, but I haven’t read much yet.

I think I’m going to predict… five stars for this book?? I don’t want to get my hopes up too high, but on the other hand I am getting a good vibe from this book!