Samantha Shannon

Samantha Shannon is a British fantasy writer, born in west London in 1991. She studied English Language and Literature at St Anne’s College, Oxford, and published her debut, The Bone Season, in 2013. That novel began a projected seven-book saga set in a near-future society where clairvoyance is criminalised.

Her other major body of work is the Roots of Chaos cycle. Shannon builds large secondary worlds shaped by competing histories, faiths and forms of magic. Women hold political, martial and religious power in these stories, while dragons may be enemies, allies or objects of cultural misunderstanding. She has described her prose as becoming more fluid and lyrical after writing The Priory of the Orange Tree.

Published in 2019, The Priory of the Orange Tree reworks traditions surrounding Saint George and the dragon. Shannon recasts details from less familiar versions of the legend, including the princess Sabra, the magician Kalyb and the protective orange tree, within a story told across divided regions. A Day of Fallen Night later returned to the same world, five centuries earlier. Both novels are designed as self-contained adventures.

The Priory of the Orange Tree is the natural starting point. It introduces Shannon’s most widely known fantasy setting through court intrigue, secret guardians, rival accounts of the past and two radically different kinds of dragon. Readers who prefer a dystopian future and a continuing central heroine can begin instead with The Bone Season.