Books Like The Priory of the Orange Tree: 13 Sapphic Epic Fantasy Reads (2026)
Books like The Priory of the Orange Tree are hard to find because Samantha Shannon’s 2019 doorstop does three things at once: it’s an 880-page epic fantasy with a split world and a thousand years of false history, it’s a dragon book where the dragons are both gods and monsters, and it’s a queer love story between a queen and the spy sworn to protect her. The world keeps growing. A Day of Fallen Night, the prequel, came out in 2023, Among the Burning Flowers followed in September 2025, and the next Roots of Chaos novel, a true sequel to Priory, is in the works with no title or date yet. This list covers the rest of Shannon’s shelf, then the sapphic epic fantasy that shares Priory’s queens, empires and slow-burn romance, with a heat rating on every pick and four Inferno-heat sapphic paranormal romances from our own shelf at the end.
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What Makes The Priory of the Orange Tree Work
Shannon calls it a feminist retelling of Saint George and the Dragon. A thousand years ago the wyrm called the Nameless One was defeated, and the House of Berethnet has ruled Inys ever since on the claim that its bloodline keeps him chained. Queen Sabran IX has no heir, which means her throne, and supposedly the world, is in danger. Ead Duryan is the outsider from the South serving as her lady-in-waiting, secretly a mage of the Priory, a society with a very different version of the story. In the East, Tané trains to ride the water dragons her people revere as gods; in the West, dragons are feared and hated. Four viewpoints, two halves of a world that forgot each other and a romance between a queen and her protector that the whole plot eventually turns on. Readers who loved it want the same scale, the same politics, and women in charge who are allowed to love each other.
More From the Roots of Chaos
A Day of Fallen Night by Samantha Shannon
The standalone prequel, set centuries before Priory, when the wyrms rise for the first time. Four new viewpoints: Glorian Berethnet, the teenage heir to Inys under pressure to produce an heir of her own; Wulfert Glenn, a foundling housecarl haunted by rumors of witchcraft; Tunuva Melim, a warrior of the Priory who leaves its sanctuary to chase a runaway; and Dumai, raised in a mountaintop temple until she learns she is the Emperor of Seiiki’s firstborn. Another 880 pages, a queernorm world and the history Priory keeps hinting at. You can read it first or second.
Heat: 🌶️ Closed door
See A Day of Fallen Night on Amazon →
Among the Burning Flowers by Samantha Shannon
A short novel, published in September 2025 and set about two years before Priory opens, behind enemy lines in Yscalin, the first kingdom to fall to the Draconic Army. Princess Marosa Vetalda is a prisoner in her own home under her cold father, King Sigoso, while her betrothed, Aubrecht Lievelyn, rules Mentendon in all but name; across the mountains, the hunter Estina Melaugo tracks the beasts as the great wyrm Fýredel stirs. A fast way back into the world, and a decent entry point if 880 pages scares you.
Heat: 🌶️ Closed door
See Among the Burning Flowers on Amazon →
Books Like Priory: Sapphic Queens and Empires
The Jasmine Throne by Tasha Suri
The closest thing to Priory published since. Princess Malini has been exiled by her tyrant brother to the Hirana, a crumbling cliffside temple that was once the source of magical deathless waters. Priya is the maidservant who cleans her chambers and hides what she really is. When Malini finds out, a ruthless princess who wants a throne and a priestess who wants to save her people become the most dangerous alliance in the empire. A queen-in-waiting and the woman who serves her, a slow burn that runs across a whole trilogy and real political stakes. It won the World Fantasy Award, and The Oleander Sword and The Lotus Empire complete the Burning Kingdoms.
Heat: 🌶️🌶️ Mild
See The Jasmine Throne on Amazon →
The Unbroken by C.L. Clark
Touraine was taken from Qazāl as a child and raised as a soldier of the Balladairan Empire that conquered it. Princess Luca is the Balladairan heir, sent to the restless colony to prove she can rule. When Touraine is pushed out of the army and into Luca’s service, a soldier who belongs nowhere and a princess who needs a throne end up negotiating with each other, and with a rebellion. A complex, high-stakes romance in an empire on the edge of collapse, and a Nebula finalist. The Faithless continues the Magic of the Lost trilogy.
Heat: 🌶️🌶️🌶️ Open door
See The Unbroken on Amazon →
She Who Became the Sun by Shelley Parker-Chan
Fourteenth-century China under the Mongol Yuan dynasty. A peasant girl whose brother was destined for greatness takes his name, Zhu Chongba, when he dies, and steals his fate: first a monastery, then the Red Turban rebellion, then a run at the throne. Her opposite number is Ouyang, a eunuch general serving the Mongol prince he loves. Zhu marries Ma Xiuying, who loves her and is horrified by what Zhu will do for power. Priory’s queens fight for a throne; Zhu takes one. Hugo finalist, British Fantasy Award winner and the first of the Radiant Emperor duology, finished by He Who Drowned the World.
Heat: 🌶️🌶️🌶️ Open door
See She Who Became the Sun on Amazon →
The Traitor Baru Cormorant by Seth Dickinson
Baru Cormorant’s island home of Taranoke was swallowed by the Masquerade, the Imperial Republic of Falcrest. She is educated in its schools and sent as Imperial Accountant to Aurdwynn, a province of thirteen duchies that rebels constantly, with a plan to rise high enough to destroy the empire from inside. Then she falls for Tain Hu, the rebel duchess she was sent to crush. Priory’s court politics with the fantasy stripped down to ledgers and betrayals, and the most devastating sapphic romance in the genre. Two sequels follow.
Heat: 🌶️🌶️ Mild
See The Traitor Baru Cormorant on Amazon →
The Isle in the Silver Sea by Tasha Suri
An England where stories shape reality. Simran is a witch of the woods; Vina is a knight of the Queen’s court. The story they’re trapped in says they will fall in love and destroy each other, and they have, over hundreds of lifetimes. This time they try to break the pattern while an assassin hunts stories like theirs. A New York Times best romance of 2025, an Aldiss Award nominee and, for Priory readers, the knight-and-witch half of Saint George turned into a love story. The paperback arrived in September 2026.
Heat: 🌶️🌶️ Mild
See The Isle in the Silver Sea on Amazon →
Princesses, Curses and Forbidden Love
Malice by Heather Walter
A sapphic Sleeping Beauty told from the villain’s side. Alyce is half-Vila, the last of a people wiped out in a war with the fae, and she serves the kingdom of Briar as its Dark Grace, selling hexes from her green blood. Briar’s queen is cursed: her daughters must find true love before twenty-one or die, and the curse has already taken two. Princess Aurora has one year left, refuses to marry a prince and recruits the one person everyone fears to help her break it. Dark, angsty and heavy with prejudice and politics, like Priory’s Inys from the outside.
Heat: 🌶️ Closed door
See Malice on Amazon →
Girls of Paper and Fire by Natasha Ngan
In Ikhara, the lowest caste is fully human, and every year eight Paper Girls are taken to serve the bull-demon king as concubines. Lei is seventeen, golden-eyed and chosen as the ninth. At the Women’s Court, where Paper Girls are forbidden lovers, she falls for Wren, another chosen girl who is hiding a great deal. A YA fantasy, and a hard one, about a palace that owns women and two of them deciding it won’t own them. The first of a trilogy.
Heat: 🌶️🌶️ Mild
See Girls of Paper and Fire on Amazon →
Girl, Serpent, Thorn by Melissa Bashardoust
Soraya has poison in her skin and has spent eighteen years hidden in the palace so she can’t endanger her twin brother, the shah. When a div called Parvaneh, one of the Destroyer’s demons, is captured, Soraya finds the only person who might understand her, and a soldier named Azad offers another kind of escape. Built from the Shahnameh, Zoroastrian myth and European fairy tale: a princess, a monster and a court that would rather she didn’t exist.
Heat: 🌶️ Closed door
See Girl, Serpent, Thorn on Amazon →
Sapphic Necromancers, Bodyguards and Dragon Country
Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir
Gideon Nav is eighteen, an indentured swordswoman of the Ninth House, a death cult guarding a tomb at the end of the universe, and she is on her 87th escape attempt when Harrowhark Nonagesimus, the heir she hates most in the galaxy, blocks it. The Emperor has summoned the heirs of the Nine Houses and their cavaliers to Canaan House to compete to become Lyctors, immortal necromancers. Harrow needs a cavalier. Gideon needs out. Science fantasy instead of high fantasy, but the same bodyguard-and-her-charge bond as Ead and Sabran, with far more swearing. Hugo and Nebula finalist.
Heat: 🌶️ Closed door
See Gideon the Ninth on Amazon →
Can’t Spell Treason Without Tea by Rebecca Thorne
The palate cleanser. Reyna is the top bodyguard to a vindictive queen; Kianthe is the most powerful mage alive. Instead of staying in their old lives, they run away to Tawney, a snowy town in dragon country, to open a bookshop that serves excellent tea. Dragons, strange incidents and the queen’s rage follow them. If you finished Priory wanting Ead to quit and take Sabran somewhere quiet, this is that book.
Heat: 🌶️🌶️ Mild
See Can’t Spell Treason Without Tea on Amazon →
Legends & Lattes by Travis Baldree
Viv, an orc barbarian, hangs up her sword to open a coffee shop, and the slow-blooming romance with a sharp-witted succubus named Tandri is the quiet heart of the book. Nothing world-ending happens, which is exactly the point after 880 pages of wyrms. Our full list of books like Legends & Lattes has more cozy fantasy.
Heat: 🌶️ Closed door
See Legends & Lattes on Amazon →
If it’s the dragons more than the queens you’re after, our books like Fourth Wing list covers dragon-rider romantasy.
Read Next: Hotter Picks From Fractal Enigma
Priory keeps its love scenes off the page. Our sapphic paranormal shelf doesn’t. Maeve Hollow writes immortal women, witches and cursed houses, with a mortal heroine who has to decide whether to trust the most powerful woman in the room, and every book is Inferno heat with a guaranteed happy ending.
The Witch in the West Wing — Maeve Hollow
Conservator Elspeth Ward believes old books are only dangerous when they are moldy, misfiled or held together with nineteenth-century glue. Then the west wing of Ravenscroft Library opens at midnight and she finds a witch imprisoned there. Seven wards hold her; seven surrenders will set her free. An immortal woman bound by old magic and the mortal sceptic who has to decide whether to free her: Ead and Sabran’s trust problem, in a haunted library.
Heat: Inferno 🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️
Tropes: Immortal Witch × Mortal Skeptic, Gothic, Haunted Library, Dark Academia, Ice Queen Comes Undone, Magic with a Price, Power Exchange
Start reading The Witch in the West Wing →
The Coven’s Last Human — Maeve Hollow
Every thirty years, the town keeps one woman. This year it chose Anya Serrano, an investigative reporter hunting a missing friend in a Vermont town that is far too kind. The witch at the center of it is 390 years older than she is, and she always asks first. A mortal outsider walking into a secret society with its own version of history: the Priory, if Ead had been the one investigated.
Heat: Inferno 🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️
Tropes: Witch × Reporter, Immortal × Mortal, Age Gap, Ice Queen, Small-Town Secrets, Gothic, She Always Asks First, Power Exchange
Start reading The Coven’s Last Human →
The Moonlit Bride — Maeve Hollow
Wedding planner Rowan Ellis has handled runaway grooms and a bride who set her own veil on fire. She has never been hired to finish a ceremony abandoned in 1815, with a wedding party that died waiting for it. There’s a curse, a fake engagement, only one bed and a contract written on skin, and the house can tell when a kiss stops being pretend. A marriage that holds a world together, Inferno edition.
Heat: Inferno 🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️
Tropes: Cursed Bride, Fake Engagement, Only One Bed, Forced Proximity, Immortal × Mortal, Haunted Manor, Gothic, Contract Written on Her Skin
Start reading The Moonlit Bride →
The Vampire’s Private Detective — Maeve Hollow
Private detective Sloane Barrett has three rules for clients: no lies, no touching, no wanting them. Lucasta Vale, who owns Vesper, the most exclusive sapphic club in Saint Orison, breaks all three before she sits down. She wants Sloane to solve a murder. Hers. In 1798. A protector and a dangerous, immortal woman who is used to being obeyed: Ead and Sabran, if Sabran had fangs.
Heat: Inferno 🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️
Tropes: Vampire × Private Detective, Noir Mystery, Cold Case, Immortal × Mortal, Ice Queen, Butch × Femme, Explicit Feeding, Power Exchange
Start reading The Vampire’s Private Detective →
For the whole haunted shelf, see the Maeve Hollow author page.
FAQ: Books Like The Priory of the Orange Tree
Do you need to read the Roots of Chaos books in order?
No. The Priory of the Orange Tree (2019) stands alone, and A Day of Fallen Night (2023) and Among the Burning Flowers (2025) are prequels that work in either order. Most readers start with Priory; Among the Burning Flowers is the shortest way in.
Is there a sequel to The Priory of the Orange Tree?
One is coming. Shannon signed for another Roots of Chaos novel that follows Priory, but as of October 2026 it has no title or publication date. No film or TV adaptation has been announced.
How spicy is The Priory of the Orange Tree?
Very mild. The romance matters to the plot, but intimacy stays off the page. On this list, The Unbroken and She Who Became the Sun go furthest; for Inferno heat, start with The Witch in the West Wing. Our romance spice levels guide explains the chili scale used above.
What should I read first after Priory?
A Day of Fallen Night if you want more of the same world, The Jasmine Throne if you want the same queen-and-protector romance somewhere new, Gideon the Ninth if you want something completely different with the same bodyguard energy.
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