Niclays Roos is an alchemist who was banished from Sabran's court years ago. He yearns for his home and his old love, but he knows the only way he could ever return is if he finds the secret of immortality. He dives into a web of treachery and deceit to do so, propelled by his own sorrow and lust for a longer life. Throughout the novel, he comes to terms with his selfishness and cowardice. The other things that bothered me were fairly minor but I'm curious to see if anyone else felt the same. Shannon introduces us to an entirely new cast of characters in A Day of Fallen Night, which takes place about 500 years before the events of Priory. As in Priory, Shannon excels at creating a strong cast of female characters with excellent queer representation. A Day of Fallen Night is a standalone prequel to The Priory of the Orange Tree, you can read either one first. I would say Priory is the gentler read and is a softer introduction to the world, however ADOFN is (in my opinion) the better of the two. It is truly such a brilliant read and I now love Samantha Shannon and the world of Priory even more.

Prejudice & Clashing of Beliefs: Most importantly, though, Shannon has told a tale of both the struggles and beauties of our differences, asking, “ Would the world be any better if we were all the same?” Or are our contrasting views on life truly meant to be accepted and embraced and joined to form a picture none of us could see individually? As international relations become more a part of the day-to-day life these days, the importance of how people can come together despite years upon years of hostility and bitterness increases with an unsettling yet precious speed, and Shannon offers a path to acceptance of others’ differing identities while not losing our own. It’s written with Ye olde English dialogue that feels corny and inconsistent. It is purposefully archaic at times but totally modern-sounding at others. The lines of dialogue feel like high schoolers trying to recite Shakespeare. It all felt so inorganic. Also, one random side note: there are a plethora of palanquins in this book. Despite taking place across different countries that are mostly cut off from each other, with different cultures and different terrains, nearly everyone in this story travels by palanquin. It makes no sense. There is too much in this book to write a credible summary of the story and its plots. So here are a few snippets of what to expect.. What this book does well: the love story. Despite the fact that this book has four perspectives, Ead's story is clearly the tentpole for the whole book. And Ead has an INCREDIBLE queer love story! There is such a dearth of f/f love stories in fantasy, particularly f/f love stories that don't fetishize lesbian relationships. We get a beautifully told romance between two complicated, well-developed ladies. I loved it.

Reviews

Wulf is our point of view in the North. He's such an engaging character, an intriguing man trying to escape the mysteries of his past. He serves as a warrior under King Bardholt, fighting against the rumours of the Haithwood, trying to be someone his family will be proud of. Wulf is also an incredibly loyal character, much like Tunuva, a fierce defender of those he loves, and a caring friend.

You know when people are rushing somewhere and your curious soul feels helplessly tugged along and then you get there and go, oh, I think I just hit a gold mine. Dumai holds engrossing relationships with all those around her, a devoted bond with her mother, a heart-warming friendship with Kanifa, a complex and entertaining relationship with the silver-tongued Nikeya. I adored every moment of her story, I think it was perfectly written. All of which is to say that motherhood and childbearing and the different ways people feel about them are a STRONG theme across this book that's explored so well I still think about it all the time. The author’s previous books were all YA, and that shows. This writing very much felt like YA writing that the author tried to age up by killing some people and talking about nipples. This book elicited many eye rolls and snorts of derision from me. It might be better under the New Adult category since almost all of the characters are in their twenties and the story has an air of naiveté to it.We trek the furthest in Wulf's perspective, seeing corners of the world we had not dared venture before. As I mentioned with the Republic of Carmentum, Hróth is another land we have not seen before, and (as a person who loves cold, icy lands) I treasured every moment inside of it. Hróth provided many unique obstacles and difficult terrain. It was a brilliant choice to establish so many varying geographies and cultures so that we could see how similar things affected each land differently and in which ways the lands each chose to combat them. My second complaint is about the LGBTQ representation. It's absolutely great that there are central queer characters here acting in the world. That said, they're the kind of queer characters that feel safe to straight people: they're monogamous, committed to one and only one person, and they don't really talk about the experience of being queer in this world to anyone except in very contained moments of coming out. I appreciate the representation but would have liked to see things go further. I've said this before, but there's a lot of room for fantasy to explore how queer identity could be different in different fantasy settings. Sexuality and gender roles were vastly different in different times and places in the history of our world, and there's a lot of room to explore that in fantasy in particular. Since there is a generally progressive throughline present in this story (like with rulers thinking about modernization and how to create alliances without relying on marriages), there seemed like there was a lot of room for a better and more nuanced identity politics. Oh well. While Samantha Shannon already shined at creating strong, emotionally complex female leads in The Priory of the Orange Tree, the male characters were underdeveloped by comparison. In A Day of Fallen Night, Shannon avoids this problem by introducing Wulf, a young man from the North who becomes the fourth main protagonist in the second part of the book. Wulf strives to find his calling in a world that underestimates him, proving to be a multidimensional character every bit as compelling as the three female leads. When it comes to dragons, my all-time favorite books are “Dragon and Thief” , “Iron Dragon’s Daughter”, “Seraphina” and “Eragon”. It’s fair to compare this book with those epic stories but as I said before especially last parts of the book lost its magic and made me wish if it would end at the half part and divide into separate three books. So we may easily relate with the characters and don’t suffer from heavy breathing to catch the last parts’ too fast pacing.

As you've probably already garnered from the above summary, the scope of The Priory of The Orange Tree is majestic, brimming with detail and ideas and teeming with characters, languages, and perspectives. Though this is a single novel, it feels rather like several books meticulously stitched together. In lesser hands, it would be a bewildering welter. Fortunately for us, Shannon possesses the inerrant skills to make it all come together so splendidly. If Priory of the Orange Tree is like a loaded potato, A Day of Fallen Night is like a Dodger Dog: Distinguished by its length, you can only eat so much before you run out of bun and condiments. In the end, you're just left with too much dog. It’s also worth briefly mentioning here that I did not like the author’s series The Bone Season. It was too young adult for my taste, but I clearly loved this. So, I really do urge other readers to try this regardless of what you thought about Samantha Shannon’s other work. This is completely different, and I don’t hesitate to say that this will be one of the biggest fantasy releases this year. Don’t miss it, it’s incredible. Let's start with what I loved: There are cool dragons. There's a growing sense of urgency as the end of the world approaches. And the world itself is well put-together, offering some great threats (like an evil draconic plague that infects people).In the East, where water dragons are revered as living gods, Miduchi Tané has spent her life training to become a dragonrider. When Tané comes upon an outsider and trespasser from the West, she throws her future into jeopardy by hiding him with Niclays Roos, an alcoholic alchemist searching for the secret to immortality who was banished from Sabran's court years ago. A Day of Fallen Night is Samantha Shannon’s standalone prequel to her acclaimed feminist fantasy, The Priory of the Orange Tree. The House of Berethnet has ruled Inys for a thousand years. Still unwed, Queen Sabran the Ninth must conceive a daughter to protect her realm from destruction--but assassins are getting closer to her door. All in all, I really enjoyed this book, and I cannot recommend it highly enough! It's quite a chunky read, but believe me, despite its length, you will be sad to walk away from it. These three women are the heart of the book. They are what made A Day of Fallen Night genuinely excellent; not one POV was less compelling. Each of them had a unique story arc that was woven together by the fabric of Shannon’s universe. I’m reluctant to say more, for fear of spoilers, but the ways that their stories intersected and referenced one another absolutely thrilled me. Even the short scenes that were from other points of view provided the story with some of its best moments.

Love and fear do strange things to our souls. The dreams they bring, those dreams that leave us drenched in salt water and gasping for breath as if we might die - those, we call unquiet dreams. And only the scent of a rose can avert them." Shannon has driven inspiration from folklore and teachings of all over the world and woven every thread in the tapestry that is POT; here are some I’ve managed to deduce—subjects in the book are in italic: It's a reeeeeally long book and there are a ton of things to like here, and also some very uneven things that I can't quite let slide. This book isn't necessarily doing a lot of things that feel new, but it's taking tropes of the high fantasy genre and using them in interesting ways. I appreciated that. Every advance in the plot is gradual, natural, and realistic--but not in a predictable way. Everything makes sense once it’s unveiled. The whole scope of things is something that takes time, but it's not out of grasp.

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The House of Berethnet has ruled Inys for more than 1000 years. Still unwed, Queen Sabran IX must conceive a daughter to protect her realm from destruction—for it is believed that as long as a Berethnet rules in Virtudom, the monster beneath the sea will sleep. But assassins are getting closer to the queen, and Ead Duryan, the outsider lady-in-waiting at court and in truth a mage of the South, is tasked with secretly protecting Sabran with forbidden magic. A holy Queendom in the North, wyrm-worshipers in the West, mages in the South, and dragonriders in the East... a cursed, divided people swallowed by chaos. As a start, why all the authors try to sabotage my eye health by writing books could be only carried by heavyweight champions. Lately I read Imaginary Friend and Institution, I even took them to my training sessions and my torturer trainer made me lift them like heaviest dumbbells (I lifted them at least 500 times and they start to call me Dwayna –Dwayne Johnson’s little sister-) Loth is too gentle and too naive to snatch anyone’s interest and mind you adjective naive is used only because I feel rather magnanimous. There are other, less flattering words that can be used to describe somebody apt at ignoring reality. Loth is so tough that leeches give him shudders, talks faster than thinks, and this is because he does not think too much. In truth, I loathed Loth for most of the time.