Prequel Among the Burning Flowers Is a History Lesson For Priory of the Orange Tree Fans

Publishing loves a known quantity. (As does the entertainment world in general, if we’re honest.) Prequels, sequels, reimaginings, and even former fanfics with names and details changed to protect the innocent are all the rage right now. But just because a story features a world or characters that readers know, that’s not necessarily a guarantee of its quality. Unless, of course, you’re talking about Samantha Shannon’s Roots of Chaos series. The sprawling, old-school epic fantasy saga about dragons and magic and secret sisterhoods of powerful sorceresses, which began with The Priory of the Orange Tree, is not just beautifully written, but meticulously plotted. Mixing complex political intrigue, rich historical lore, and an apocalyptic threat with more human stories of family and connection, it’s the sort of rich world that offers endless opportunities for expansion. And this is precisely what Shannon has done with its latest installment, Among the Burning Flowers. 

A prequel that aims to both tell its own story and continue to fill in gaps from the series’ first installment, Among the Burning Flowers is one part character study and one part history lesson. A much more streamlined and straightforward story—that clocks in at only a quarter of the size of the other books in this series—it follows three characters who play important roles in the later novel, and lays plenty of groundwork for the dramatic events to come. Set two years before the events of Priory, Flowers takes place in the kingdom of Yscalin. Though its residents have been raised on stories of the devastating period known as the Grief of Ages and the monstrous dragon-like wryms that brought destruction and plague to the world, it and the other kingdoms of Virtudom have lived in peace for centuries and, as a result, are wildly unprepared when the draconic threat seems poised to return.

Marosa Vetalda, Princess of Yscalin, has spent most of her life imprisoned in her overprotective father’s castle at the center of the volcanic city of Cárscaro. Her engagement to Aubrecht, a prince of Mentendon, is her only hope of freedom and a chance at a life outside her father’s control—and away from the shadow of her mother’s death. Elsewhere, former smuggler Estina Melaugo is on the run, forced to make a living as a culler, a sort of vigilante-esque figure who must make a living slaying the various draconic creatures like wyverns and cocatrices that are slowly beginning to wake around the kingdom. And Aubrecht, on the other side of Virtuedom, is anxiously hopeful that he and Marossa will be able to make important changes in his kingdom once he claims his granduncle’s throne. But when Fyredel, an ancient High Western dragon of legend and one of the most powerful servants of the horrifying creature known only as the Nameless One, awakens from a thousand-year sleep, the dreams of all three, quite literally, go up in smoke. 

Unlike Shannon’s other Roots of Chaos prequel, A Day of Fallen Night, Among the Burning Flowers doesn’t entirely stand on its own. It’s certainly an unflinching look at the terror of the Yscali people in the face of Fyredel’s return, and, set so close to the events of Priory, it does a fair job of fleshing out the immediate events leading up to that story. Marosa and Melaguo are fan favorites from Priory, and readers of Shannon’s larger series will delight in learning more about the histories of both characters. But much of the emotional heft of Flowers relies on readers knowing what happens next. In fact, if you don’t have a firm grasp of some of the secondary characters from Priory, you may find yourself reading this one with a wiki entry open beside you, trying to figure out why anything that isn’t directly connected to Marosa’s story matters. (The fact that Melaguo’s POV, in particular, disappears from the story halfway through, is especially irksome.)