A Day of Fallen Night

Samantha Shannon helped rekindle my love for fantasy with The Priory of the Orange Tree that I finally managed to finish by midnight of last year. I was fortunate enough to be so late to getting back to my fantasy roots that A Day of Fallen Night was going to be released in two months from finishing Priory. I don't know what I would have done if I had to wait years for another chapter of this legend of a story.

Another tome, one that I know I will have to reread, once I reread Priory because it's definitely a must. I'm sure I missed small details, and some things in Priory make more sense now having read ADOFN.

If you love history and mythology, you'll love this story. If you love badass women, you'll love this story. If you love well developed characters weaving together their own story, you will love this. The author has a way of taking such care with every single word she puts onto paper, and you will find yourself holding your breath to see what comes with her very next line. We are truly lucky that ADOFN was released in one volume. What a ride. You literally have women from all directions on a map creating the foundation for all that is to come.

I don't want to give anything away. But just know that if you loved Priory as much as I do, you will not be disappointed. And I do hope that there is another installment in The Roots of Chaos Series. I could live in this world of high fantasy, dragons, women who love women, and so much lore.

Thank you to NetGalley and Bloomsbury for sharing this ARC with me in exchange for an honest review.

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Happy publication day to Samantha Shannon!

I would like to thank Bloomsburry and NetGalley for the opportunity to read the ARC in exchange for an honest review, I'm truly honoured.

This book is a prequel to The Priory if the Orange Tree, set 500 years before the events of that book. I must say I have not read the Priory but this did not affect at all my enjoyment of the story. Samantha's clarified on her Goodreads that reading the Priory before may help understanding the world, as the Prequel is slightly longer and politically more complex. As I tend to prefer reading events on chronological order, I chose to start on A Day of Fallen Night and do not regret it.

The book follows different POV across different regions - Glorian (East), Dumai (West) and Tunuva (South), and Wulf (initially in the North but across other regions as well). Samantha did a terrific job building the characters stories, personalities, and arc, slowly building our connection and curiosity about them.

I loved the beautiful writing and the worldbuilding, with rich and diverse characters. I was more partial to Dumai and Wulf because I loved their backstories and personalities, and there was slightly more action in most of their chapters and less religious background.

My only (small) complaint is that the first half felt a bit too slow. I know Shannon was setting up the story, but I have felt that every time something was going to happen, we would switch POV, and return when the events already happened. However, I loved how the story evolved and everything was tied up on the second half of the book.

I could not recommend Samantha Shannon work more. She is definitely a name to follow and remember regarding High Fantasy.

4.5☆
Loved it but my brain needs the serotonin of finishing a book

This is a phenomenal book. I already loved Priory, so I just assumed I'd loved this one too—its definitely faster paced and more action oriented than Priory (so if you thought Priory was boring, you're in luck!).

I loved the characters, loved the plot, enjoyed watching it all develop and come together. A minor frustration in how long it took anybody to figure out that Canthe was sketchy. It was kinda nice to see the world building get added on. 

I'd love to see more in this universe. Maybe a pre-prequel with the Nameless One and Saint/Mother. 

I have never read a more incredible duology. Meticulous world building, intrinsic characters were fully fleshed out and surprising, every chapter a compelling progression. I would be surprised if any book beats this in my esteem. Not for a long while.

 general non spoilery thoughts: honestly, i like priory better than this lol. genuinely shannon needa lay off the pregnancy horror cause this is worse than all the actual horror books i read. i hope if she writes more books in this world, there wont be so much lol i like the world but all that shit just makes me want to die

spoilers for whole book in this review. MEGA CONTENT WARNING: pregnancy horror to the fucking max in this book ! read at ur own risk if you have any sort of phobia. i wanted to kms at some points in this book my guy
first and foremost , Siyu is literally the most useless character i have ever read in a book. holy shit. i wish she fucking died. absolutely useless and unfortunately lives( you have no idea how excited it was when i thought she died near the end bruh). there couldve been better ways to get tunava to see dreadmount erupt and (second time, SECOND, that siyu runs away) bond with canthe. if i had 3 wishes, one of them would be to rewrite this book without that shit head siyu in it :)  

second, sometimes i lowkey hate medieval fiction. the law states that glorian cant offically be queen until 18, but apparently they are okay with her being married and having a child at 16. “hurry up and have children useless woman” head ass book  

  third , atleast with the pregnancy horror in priory we dont have to see though sabrans pov and shes actually like 29 years old. in this book, its literally throughout the entire book and two of the charas that get pregnant are fucking 16 and one of them you read the pov of. yardy know i skip the birthing scene. kill me.   

last, like priory, i feel like the last battle was extremely lack luster and thats sad. i enjoyed most of the relationships, but why the fuck did she kill off dumai bruh   

The epic high fantasy tale I was expecting.

Prequels aren't usually my jam. More often than not I find them to over eager to remind you of the stories that came before, and neglecting to forge a personality of their own. Needless to say, I was thrilled when not only did A Day of Fallen Night manage to be an amazing book in it's own right, but eclipse Priory entirely.

This book answered every single issue that I had with Priory, and then elevated itself even further in my eyes. The plot is stellar, which is really impressive, considering anyone who read Priory, knew how this was going to go, almost beat for beat, yet Shannon manages to weave the story in such a way that you're kept guessing on the finer details all the way up until to the end.

Every single character jumps off the page, and if I was to sit here and gush about each of them, I'd probably end up hitting the character limit on Goodreads. So, I'll just gush about each of the PoVs for a bit, because they all slap. One takes a little bit to get going, but when it got going, it was one of the first to become a consistent page turner for me.
First, you have Gloria. Gloria is the Berethnet heir, and is reluctant to do the duty that her line has, to bear an heir, and keep the Nameless One at bay. The daughter of the first good Berethnet in living memory, and a heathen king, Gloria is an extremely strong willed character, who goes on an extremely emotional journey throughout this book, being forced to come into her own by the grief of ages. While she is in my opinion, the weakest of the 4 PoVs, that's by no means a dishonor to her, as she is phenomenally well written, and in my opinion eclipses all of the PoVs from the previous book.

Secondly there's Dumai. Dumai is the answer to my dislike of Tane's PoV from the previous book, that the East didn't have good representation in that book, whereas here, the East shines, and allows us to finally get a good idea of the culture of the Seiikinese, something I felt was lacking from Priory. On top of that is her romance plot, which is my favourite in the series, not to mention just outright being one of my favourite romances in fantasy overall. Dumai is a temple keeper, who is the daughter of the emperor, kept in hiding in a mountain shrine.

Thirdly, there's Wulf. We stan Wulf in this household. Wulf is an orphan who was adopted by a lord, but has to contend with the whispers that he's the spawn of a witch, due to him being found in the Witchwood as a child. He brings this fascinating perspective on the Six Virtues, as he always feels like he has one foot in and one foot out. Couple that with the mystery surrounding him, and you have the recipe for a genuinely amazing character to follow.

And lastly, we have Tuva. Tuva has my entire heart. This, this right here, is the best character between the two books. Tuva is an older member of the Priory, and the keeper of the tomb. She acts as a mother to her lover's daughter, who bears her name. This is because of the loss of her own child years before the story. Something awesome about this character is that she's older lesbian rep, something that I don't think I've ever seen before, so that's a pretty big feather in her cap. But on top of that, she's just an amazingly well written character. It was like this book was made explicitly so that Shannon could tell her story, and I'm delighted about that, because I adore her so so much. One of my favourite characters in literature, by a country mile.

As I said before, I could gush for ages about the characters in this book, but we'd be here for far too long, because there's just that many great characters throughout. I would recommend this book to people just for the character's alone, so everything else being just as good is just a bonus.

The story itself is amazing. Shannon used the structure of this novel to create this really slow burn plot that explodes all of a sudden, that's only enhanced by having read Priory first, and knowing the battles that are to come. The way she interwove the personal struggles of the characters into the overall throughline of the book was genuinely marvelous. The fact that she was able to convincingly interweave all of the PoVs as well was stellar. Fyredel as a villain is fantastic, and this book really allows us to see why dragons are so feared, much more so than Priory did, in my opinion.
And then there's the worldbuilding. This book not only has really solid explicit worldbuilding, but if you've read Priory, it also has amazing subtle worldbuilding, as you can spy really small cultural changes, such as the fact that the twelve virtues is only six virtues here, implying that over the next 500 years another 6 get added, only enhancing the fact that the religion Virtudom is built on is kind of wishy washy and bullshit. There's also the major cultural differences that the East has, due to the water dragons falling into a slumber years before the story.

And the romance is so good. I thought Ead and Sab were good, but both romances in this book were so well written, one being a really solid slow burn romance that's just burgeoning, and the other being a romance that's been a reality for the two characters for decades at this point, but is still really strong throughout. On top of both of these, whenever there's characters in a relationship, they're written in such a way that you can tell they love each other, and it doesn't feel like them being together is a contrivance for the sake of the story, which is such a breath of fresh air, since a lot of fantasy will write characters that seemingly hate being in their relationship, but will swear up and down that they're happy together.

On top of that, Shannon writes spice really well, though it isn't ACOTAR levels of spice, it's there, and it's fantastic. It doesn't dominate the chapters it's in, but it's portrayed in a realistic manner, and used to show the personalities of the characters, with the way they approach sex reflecting the way they approach everything in life

Then there's the battle scenes. Iw alked away from Priory really disappointed, because the final battle of the book sucked. But that's not the case here. Everytime there's a major battle, it has awesome moments, where every major character involved is given a moment to shine, and I couldn't have been happier about that. This book is host to one of my favourite fight scenes I think I've ever read, that being Fyredel making a delivery of some bones.

Overall, I fucking adored this book, please read it. Even if you didn't enjoy Priory, I think there's something here for you, since this one answered every single issue I had with it, and then some. 5/5 stars, this was a journey I was loathe to see the end of. I can't wait to see what the future holds for Roots of Chaos, but if this is any indication, it's a very bright one.

Not gonna lie I was pretty disappointed with this. It's kind of weird to say that a book that was 850 pages long actually would have benefitted from being longer but here we are. I felt like everything was rushed. I don't understand why the Dreadmont erupted (and maybe I wasn't reading close enough but if it was explained it was too brief), all the relationships needed more development, and the passing of time was really difficult to follow. Don't get me wrong, I still enjoyed it but I won't be going back to reread like I know I will with Priory. Also if the next story in the Roots of Chaos isn't a series I'm gonna be upset. 

Edit: I would like to give the highest praise to the world building though. To build a world (mostly) absent of misogyny and completely accepting of all sexualities and gender identities is pretty cool. All the props to her!

Another epic fantasy masterpiece!! A lot of fun to read with the women-centric plot focusing on warriors, a dragon rider and a queen.

This is a prequel to The Priory of the Orange Tree, and I had completely forgotten what happens in it, but still found this book easy to follow nonetheless. I probably should have refreshed my memory and it might have made the plot line a bit more impactful.

I wished I'd dnfed this.

I found Priory okay, but this book flopped so bad.

it was incredibly slow to start, with hardly anything interesting about the characters that would keep me engaged in reading. the worldbuilding was good, but at times it was a little infodumpy, and i would have liked more of an subtler take.

for such a big book, it was a slog to get through. some of the characters stories felt a bit rushed or they jumped about the story a little. the romances in these books were defiantly rushed and felt a little forced. some of the plot twists were easy to see.

the ending, where I should have been rooting for these characters instead, i was left feeling incredibly disappointed. the outcome of the whole plot, the one thing they were all trying to stop, stopped on it's own. there was nothing the characters really did that furthers the plot or tried to stop the main conflict. they were suffering and dying, and yet no one came up with any idea on how to stop it, instead all they had to do was wait.

highly disappointing read.

“to hold the risen fire at bayuntil the night descends”

How do you make a sequel to something intended as a stand-alone novel? Fans of the series demanded a new book, but things were fairly contained within Priory of the Orange Tree, so how do you square the circle? I quite like the author's approach here; rather than making a direct sequel to the events of the first book, she marched 500 years into the past and created another stand-alone. Fans get their sequel, there's no expectations to live up to, and you can continue building out the (extensive) lore you introduced in the first book. A win all around, that I think the author knocked out of the park to boot.

There be spoilers here after this point.

Despite being an all-new cast of characters, there's just enough familiarity here to hit the ground running with the (many) different viewpoints. Glorian, daughter of Sabran the Ambitious and King Bardholt of Hróth, is having a hard time finding her feet and her place within the role forced upon her. All her life she had her own ideas of how she wanted to live her life, but the older she grows, the more she realizes that duty comes before all else in the Queendom of Inys. Over at the Priory, we're introduced to Tunuva and Esbar, sisters training to slay wyrms that haven't appeared in generations. Discontent is rumbling through the Priory as some younger sisters start questioning why the Order still exists. When Siyu escapes the stifling confines of the Priory, Tunuva is sent to bring her home, but her return brings unwelcome change to the Priory. Finally, in Seiiki, Dumai of Ipyeda is a godsinger at the High Temple of Kwiriki, daughter of Unora of Afa, and heir of more than she knows. When her family comes knocking, she's compelled to leave the mountain home she knows and loves in order to serve the kingdom. But as the world starts to tremble, it is her godsinger heritage that ultimately calls her to duty in service of the sea dragon Furtia. The scope of this book is quite a bit larger than Priory of the Orange Tree I think. Lots more places, tons of minor characters and references, but not to the point where I felt overwhelmed and lost. I think reading Priory of the Orange Tree first gave me the structure I needed to be able to sort through everything thrown at me here. There's quite a bit more politics in this one as well, particularly in the Inys sections, but I'm such a sucker for grand political fantasy that I loved it all. It has a bit of a slow start, and I was starting to wonder where things were headed initially, but about a third of the way through things start ramping up quickly and I had a hard time putting it down. The ending was incredibly satisfying as well, and while a lot was happening at once, it didn't have the same frantic feel as I thought Priory of the Orange Tree had at the end.

I hope the author decides to do more stand-alone books within this universe, because I thought this one was fantastic. Everything had a purpose, the writing was excellent, and I loved basically everything about it. Great fantasy, great work.