A Day of Fallen Night

“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.

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.

 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   

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, definitely give this one a shot!).

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

There is a lot of focus on lineages and pregnancy. It's very relevant to the plot and universe, but my goodness was it uncomfortable half the time. Like, motherhood is a huge focus in this book, from multiple characters across the Abyss.

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

Wow, I went into this not realising what I was getting myself into. So much happened plotwise, following multiple characters, and yet it flowed exceedingly well and smoothly.

The characters were diverse, their development well written and some more lovable than others.

My only gripe is that I felt like the book did drag a little, though to be expected from 800+ pages.

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.

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!

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.