A review by beautifulpaxielreads
A Day of Fallen Night by Samantha Shannon

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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