Books like The Priory of the Orange Tree
What should you read after Samantha Shannon’s novel? It depends on what you loved most about it.
- Samantha Shannon
- 2019
- Epic fantasy
What did you love about it?
Choosing one reorders everything below.
Best books to read after The Priory of the Orange Tree
Ranked overall. Pick what you loved above to re-rank them.
Best overall matchA Court of Thorns and Roses
Sarah J. Maas
Where most Priory readers go next: a human woman pulled into faerie courts, with a romance given the same central weight Shannon gives Ead and Sabran.
- A sapphic romance at the centre
- A queen who must produce an heir
- Dragons on both sides of the argument
- Explicit content from book two
Best for the same authorThe Bone Season
Samantha Shannon
Shannon's other series, urban and paranoid where Priory is courtly. Same appetite for enormous invented systems explained without apology.
- Eight hundred slow-building pages
- Religions that flatly contradict each other
- A seven-book commitment
Best for the plot engineMistborn: The Final Empire
Brandon Sanderson
If Priory's slow build tested you, Sanderson gives you the same scale with a heist to hang it on and a magic system that clicks like machinery.
- Eight hundred slow-building pages
- A standalone epic that actually ends
- Prose is plain
Worth a look — with a warningThe Name of the Wind
Patrick Rothfuss
Beautiful sentences, deep world, enormous page count — everything except a finish. Wonderful reading, and the series has been unfinished for over a decade.
- Eight hundred slow-building pages
- Four viewpoints across a split world
- Series is famously unfinished
Best for a standalone that endsUprooted
Naomi Novik
One volume, one village, one wood that wants everyone in it. Novik gives you the satisfaction of a complete fantasy in a quarter of Priory's length.
- A standalone epic that actually ends
- A secret order run by women
- Much smaller in scale
Best for the ambitionThe Fifth Season
N.K. Jemisin
The most impressive fantasy of the last decade: three narrative strands, a world that keeps ending, and a structural trick you will not see coming.
- Four viewpoints across a split world
- Religions that flatly contradict each other
- A standalone epic that actually ends
- Second-person narration in one strand
Great matchThe Goblin Emperor
Katherine Addison
Court politics as the entire plot: an unwanted heir dropped onto a throne he was never trained for, surviving by being decent. Priory's palace chapters, expanded.
- A queen who must produce an heir
- A standalone epic that actually ends
- Very little action
Great matchThe Lies of Locke Lamora
Scott Lynch
For readers who wanted more pace: a con in a canal city, brilliantly plotted, wickedly funny, with the same pleasure in an invented society's inner workings.
- Four viewpoints across a split world
- Eight hundred slow-building pages
- Constant profanity throughout
Great matchChildren of Blood and Bone
Tomi Adeyemi
A world where the gods were killed and the magic went with them, and a girl trying to bring both back. Shares Priory's interest in suppressed faith.
- Religions that flatly contradict each other
- Dragons on both sides of the argument
- YA voice and pacing
Worth a look — with a warningShadow and Bone
Leigh Bardugo
A quick way into a big world, with a saint-making religion and a court full of knives. Considerably lighter than what you just finished.
- Religions that flatly contradict each other
- A queen who must produce an heir
- YA scope and stakes
Best for the sheer scaleThe Way of Kings
Brandon Sanderson
A thousand pages, four viewpoints, and a world with its own ecology and scripture. The only book here that out-builds Priory.
- Eight hundred slow-building pages
- Four viewpoints across a split world
- Religions that flatly contradict each other
- 1,000-plus pages, ten-book plan
Great matchQueen of the Tearling
Erika Johansen
A young queen taking a throne she was hidden from, and immediately discovering how little power a crown confers. Sabran's problem from the other side.
- A queen who must produce an heir
- A secret order run by women
- Odd science-fiction underlayer
Great matchBlack Sun
Rebecca Roanhorse
Pre-Columbian-inspired epic with converging viewpoints, celestial prophecy and a priesthood at war with itself. Structurally the closest thing to Priory published since.
- Four viewpoints across a split world
- Religions that flatly contradict each other
- A sapphic romance at the centre
- First of an ongoing series
What should you read after The Priory of the Orange Tree?
The Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon works on several levels at once, and which book you should read next depends on which of those levels got you. For most readers the closest match is A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maas — where most Priory readers go next: a human woman pulled into faerie courts, with a romance given the same central weight Shannon gives Ead and Sabran.
If what stayed with you was eight hundred slow-building pages, read The Bone Season by Samantha Shannon instead: shannon's other series, urban and paranoid where Priory is courtly. Same appetite for enormous invented systems explained without apology. Mistborn: The Final Empire by Brandon Sanderson is the other strong option — if Priory's slow build tested you, Sanderson gives you the same scale with a heist to hang it on and a magic system that clicks like machinery.
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