Reviews tagging 'Kidnapping'

A Day of Fallen Night by Samantha Shannon

25 reviews

awkwardimagination's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional funny inspiring tense slow-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? Yes

3.5

I finished this last night in kind of a rush so that may have hurt my opinion a little, but I think it stands.

This book was kind of the opposite of the first book, in terms of literary elements. While the plot and pacing have the same strength, I found I didn't like the plot of this one as much as the second one. The fact that I knew so much about the world already also hurt it a little, because I found myself getting frustrated with a lot of the character motivations and actions. Speaking of characters; I liked the characters a lot more in this book then the first one. Oh my god- In the first one I really only formed a connection with Ead, in terms of mcs, and just really liked Tané. Loth felt flat to me and Niclays was just fucking annoying. My favourite characters in the first book were mainly background characters. In this one, I truly loved every mc. Glorian was my fav through out, I fucking adore her (false prophet aside), Dumai was also kickass and I liked her a lot. I felt sympathetic toward Tunuva and liked her well enough, but the other characters in her parts (Esbar and Canthe) bittered her story. I started the story feeling the same way about Wulf, as I did about Loth, but by the end of it Wulf was my guy - I fucking love him. 

God did I like how this ended, it was strong and honestly shocking I was not expecting some of the people who died to die. And dont get me wrong, while i did not like the plot of this book as much, does not mean this had a bad plot; I very much enjoyed getting to watch the setup of all the pieces for Priory of the Orange Tree (except for Tané's jewel that confuses me) and seeing all the places and people that we only heard about. God, I love me some world building!

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Grief, Violence, War, Blood, Death of parent, Injury/Injury detail, and Pregnancy

Moderate: Adult/minor relationship, Kidnapping, Religious bigotry, and Vomit

Minor: Animal death and Suicide

bitter_critter's review against another edition

adventurous dark slow-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? Yes

4.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Religious bigotry, Grief, and Pregnancy

Moderate: Animal death, Child death, Injury/Injury detail, Suicidal thoughts, Colonisation, War, Blood, and Death of parent

Minor: Kidnapping and Adult/minor relationship

mice_are_nice's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional tense medium-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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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Fire/Fire injury, Grief, Pandemic/Epidemic, Religious bigotry, Sexual content, War, and Violence

Moderate: Blood, Death of parent, Medical content, Suicidal thoughts, and Kidnapping

Minor: Animal death, Child death, Animal cruelty, and Adult/minor relationship

shottel's review against another edition

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? Yes

4.75

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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Content Warnings

Graphic: Alcohol, Pregnancy, Fire/Fire injury, Religious bigotry, Murder, Injury/Injury detail, Animal death, Sexism, Blood, Death, Violence, Grief, War, Terminal illness, Misogyny, and Pandemic/Epidemic

Moderate: Kidnapping, Child death, Infertility, Body horror, Gore, Emotional abuse, Torture, Miscarriage, and Adult/minor relationship

Minor: Cannibalism, Abortion, and Animal cruelty

vanessa_books26's review against another edition

adventurous emotional inspiring reflective sad 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

So much better than it's predecessor, all of the characters were better fleshed out and each was a distinct separate entity from the others. None of the characters served as an extension to another's storyline, they had their own journeys and paths. This was beautifully written and I hope we get to see more of these characters again in another book.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Grief, Murder, Religious bigotry, Blood, Animal death, Death, Death of parent, Fire/Fire injury, Infidelity, Injury/Injury detail, Pregnancy, Sexual content, Kidnapping, Sexism, and War

Moderate: Gaslighting, Alcohol, and Medical trauma

Minor: Adult/minor relationship

sehenry20's review against another edition

adventurous emotional hopeful 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? Yes

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Violence, Murder, Kidnapping, Death of parent, War, Pandemic/Epidemic, Grief, Death, and Child death

Moderate: Adult/minor relationship

crownoflaurel's review against another edition

adventurous emotional 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

3.75

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Content Warnings

Graphic: War and Injury/Injury detail

Moderate: Fire/Fire injury, Pregnancy, Confinement, and Gaslighting

Minor: Adult/minor relationship, Child death, Death of parent, and Kidnapping

eas2's review against another edition

adventurous challenging emotional reflective tense slow-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

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Kidnapping and Violence

Minor: Blood

meganpbell's review against another edition

adventurous mysterious 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? Yes

5.0

A glorious, epic, feminist, fantasy masterpiece !!! This prequel to The Priory of the Orange Tree had me acting out scenes and saying lines out loud, it was that beautiful, badass, and moving.  

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Pandemic/Epidemic, Fire/Fire injury, and Pregnancy

Moderate: Suicide, Violence, Death, Death of parent, Kidnapping, Sexism, Terminal illness, Sexual content, Animal death, Child death, Murder, Religious bigotry, War, Colonisation, and Injury/Injury detail

Minor: Grief, Medical content, and Gore

georgialee01's review against another edition

adventurous challenging hopeful 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? No

4.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Blood and Pregnancy

Moderate: Fire/Fire injury, Death, Pandemic/Epidemic, Kidnapping, and Grief

Minor: Cannibalism and Suicide