Reviews with content warning for Alcohol - A Day of Fallen Night

A Day of Fallen Night is an improvement over The Priory of the Orange Tree in nearly every way. It would take a long time to enumerate all the positive changes, but a few in short: The pacing is better, the diversity is better, the appeal to modern audiences is better, the feminist themes are clearer, and even the cover art is better! Priory's Eastern branch lagged, but the branches are deftly balanced in Fallen Night. The book remediates Priory's odd penchant for mostly only mentioning the skin type of white characters, and features a significant number of LGBT+ (every letter of the acronym! and then some!) main and secondary characters. It draws on contemporary writing trends from other adult-genre books and, seemingly, fanfiction ("It's too cold, we have to cuddle for warmth") to excellent effect. And women's issues, most notably issues of pregnancy and birth, feature far more prominently, with the noble requirement to sustain a bloodline playing a role throughout the book.

This mandate to procreate establishes this book as far more clearly feminist (the idea that women have issues, interests, and stories worth hearing as much as men do) than its sequel. The need for nobility to sustain itself through childbirth is a recurring, central issue of the book, among other issues which concern women more than they do men, which also make frequent appearances.

In some ways, this book feels like it was written to an audience that might be into medieval court drama or epic adventures, but aren't too fond of the biases that pervade those genres. It is a grand epic, fantastically wrote, including women, LGBT+ characters, and people of color as equals to men, cishet, and white characters.

There are only a few places where it falters. The biggest problem I had is that the action scenes are confusing. I found myself frequently struggling to imagine the scene, re-reading portions over and over again. At first I thought it was a me issue, but after a half-dozen or so times, I figured it's probably not a me problem.

Additionally, I flagged two more minor concerns. First, with the presence of so many LGBT+ characters, the lack of transfeminine characters stands out oddly. Perhaps one or both of the nonbinary characters in the book are intended to be transfeminine, but there is no way to know this from the text. I don't make any guesses as to why; it just sits weirdly. Secondly, while *Priory* is a truly self-contained work, *Fallen Night* hints at an intention to write another book set between the two. This is the only change which I find to be a step backwards from *Priory*.

When layered inside an over 800 page grand adventure, these issues are minor, thus my score of 4.75/5. I strongly recommend this book to anyone who is interested in grand adventures, feminist fiction, fantasy, or fiction with LGBT+ main characters.

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beautifulpaxielreads's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

A Day of Fallen Night is not just epic in length - a whopping 868 pages to be exact - but epic in just about every other way.

The worldbuilding is intricate down to the tiniest detail, and the care that Samantha Shannon took is evident on every single page. I can't imagine what the research process was like for this, but, as with The Priory of the Orange Tree, I can say that it must have been exhaustive (and no doubt exhausting too). I am in awe of the scale of it. Belief, politics, geography, history - it's all here and all believable.

I would have liked a fuller map of Hróth, though!

The plotting is also immaculate. The way Shannon has created her POV characters and how she has crafted every twist and turn of the plot to bring them together and apart is masterful. I will say that at times the characters felt more like pieces in the elaborate chess match that was Shannon's plot, rather than fully fleshed-out human beings.

And the dragons and other magical creatures determined to be dangerous? Let's just say I didn't find their evil natures entirely convincing, given that they seem evil just for the sake of it.

There are four characters - dubbed "storytellers" in Shannon's extensive notes and glossaries - whose points of view we see. Tunuva, a middle-aged sister at the Priory of the Orange Tree, Glorian, the adolescent heir to a fabled queendom, Wulf, a young man sworn to a Northern King, and Dumai, a twenty-seven-year-old apostle at an ancient mountain temple.

Of all of them, the ones I liked best were probably Tunuva, Glorian and Wulf. Dumai I couldn't really warm to, although she was very interesting as a character.

Speaking of characters, this novel has a huge cast - I appreciated the index at the back, which I found an excellent way of keeping track of the characters and their relationships with one another and their worlds. I did feel that some of the smaller characters got lost in the bigness of it all. Of the secondary characters, I probably appreciated Nikeya most. And Canthe (

who I suspected from the start as having a hidden agenda, it was almost too simple when her big reveal happened, thrilling as it was to read

).

Aside from feminine agency and power (similarly dominant in Priory), the themes of environmentalism, religion, and belief also come through very strongly. The overarching plot point of the novel is analogous to world events of the last few years (

the threat of climate change, and the COVID-19 pandemic, most evidently

). Overall this was effective, although I do feel it was hammered home just a bit too much at times.

LGBTQIA+ representation is done well throughout. There are trans and non-binary folk in the large cast of characters, and a range of different sexualities among minor and major characters also. Within the world Shannon has created, this gender and sexual diversity is normalised, which is refreshing to read about. Although this is an imagined world in terms of ethnicity there is still a range of skin tones from white to dark-skinned, which I know many will appreciate.

Although it has its flaws, this was overall a satisfying and highly enjoyable read.

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the_reading_wren's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional inspiring mysterious sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

Wow, what a story! Darker and more brutal than Priory, but beautiful and wise as well. A great foundation for the Roots of Chaos series.

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shingekiyes's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional hopeful inspiring tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

5.0

I WISH I COULD GIVE THIS BOOK TEN STARS. i dare say it was even better than The Priory of the Orange Tree, but only because it had such a fantastic book as a foundation.
A Day Of Fallen Night built upon the lush and brilliant world of Priory and expanded upon the mythos and magic i fell in love with in Priory. the story was much faster in this book, with multiple viscerally real and flawed storytellers that made me fall in love time and time again. the plot was so deep, so intricately woven, and there was not a single point (past page 100) where i felt comfortable putting the book down for too long.
although the audience somewhat knew the story that the book would tell, the devil is truly in the details. the characters and their arcs truly made this book worth reading and enriched the lore of the world tenfold. getting to know the players in the folklore intimately was just magical… i will never read Priory the same way.
also… the romance in this book was NEXT LEVEL. i did not think Samantha Shannon could top Ead and Sabran, but i was very, very wrong. the two main romances in this story were sapphic, which i loved, and all mentioned partnerships were extremely three-dimensional and believable. i won’t put spoilers here, but the enemies to lovers was SERVING in this book and i wept MULTIPLE TIMES over one particular couple. and over other things as well.
this book simultaneously re-opened and healed some aching wounds inside me—wounds surrounding womanhood, motherhood, family, religion, love, duty, and identity. i was a complete sniveling mess for the last ~150 pages of the book, but i wouldn’t have wanted it any other way.
Samantha Shannon has done it again. A Day Of Fallen Night is truly a masterpiece.

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bergha1998's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional sad tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.25

I liked most of the plot lines in this one. It’s helpful that all except one are POVs of women. It’s just a long book, in a way that makes it feel like a long book. I think a more thorough editing could have made this book much more enjoyable.

Multi-POV, LGBTQIA+, Romance Subplots, 1 🔥

“I bid you mind my heart. I leave half of it in your keeping.”

“Your pain is not my pain, but I know its shape. I am sorry for it.“

“‘Because you would not believe until you saw.’ ‘Is that so terrible?’”

“He saw danger in difference… Some people need to call others evil, so they can seem pure and righteous in comparison, or to purge contempt they hold in secret for themselves.“

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eleanora's review against another edition

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adventurous mysterious slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes

4.25

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