Books like The Priory of the Orange Tree

The Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon reads as epic, immersive. These 12 books share its genome — matched by how they actually read, not just their shelf label.

What The Priory of the Orange Tree is like to read

A sprawling, multi-continent epic with dragons, queens, and hidden mages — patient, worldbuilding-heavy, and rewarding for readers who want a doorstopper they can live inside. The romance simmers under political and mythic stakes rather than driving them. Best for: readers wanting a standalone feminist epic fantasy with dragons, queer romance, and Sanderson-scale worldbuilding.

The Way of Kings

Brandon Sanderson · 2010

A vast, methodically built epic that rewards patience: interlaced POVs, a hard magic system revealed by inches, and a slave-turned-leader arc that hits with real emotional force by the climax.

mildly eerie

Fourth Wing

Rebecca Yarros · 2023

A propulsive, trial-by-fire academy fantasy where lethal dragon-bonding trials braid into a slow-burn enemies-to-lovers arc with a smart-mouthed underdog narrator.

happy-for-nowhigh heatcreepy, not gory

Babel

R.F. Kuang · 2022

An erudite, footnoted historical fantasy that reads like a lecture-hall polemic wrapped around a coming-of-age tragedy — slow-building, morally furious, and unflinching about empire's costs.

mildly eeriecomplete story

Fire & Blood

George R.R. Martin · 2018

A faux-scholarly chronicle of three centuries of Targaryen rule, delivered in the register of a competing-sources historian rather than a novel — dragons, incest, civil war, and dynasty told at panoramic remove.

mildly eerie

Dune

Frank Herbert · 1965

A dense, deliberately paced epic where ecology, religion, and imperial politics braid into a messianic coming-of-age.

mildly eeriecomplete story

The Lord of the Rings

J. R. R. Tolkien · 1954

A vast, unhurried quest across an invented world whose depth of language, landscape, and lore is the point — sorrow and grandeur braided together, with fellowship as its beating heart.

creepy, not gory

A Memory Called Empire

Arkady Martine · 2019

A political-intrigue SF novel of court maneuvering and cultural seduction, where an outsider ambassador must solve a murder while carrying a dangerous technological secret.

deep cut

League of Dragons

Naomi Novik · 2016

A sweeping political and military fantasy in which dragon rider Laurence and his dragon Temeraire navigate revolution and reshape geopolitical order through war, loyalty, and moral conviction.

deep cut