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

adventurous challenging tense slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.0

This book took me over a year to read so finally finishing it is a relief. 

A Day of Fallen Night by Samantha Shannon is a part of the Roots of Chaos series and the prequel to The Priory of the Orange Tree, taking place a few centuries before the first book. It follows eight different perspectives while the world gets thrown into chaos as wyrms rise to destroy queendoms and lands. Honestly, in some ways the plot of this book felt very similar to that of the original one; however, where The Priory of the Orange Tree is a story of battle, A Day of Fallen Night is one of survival. This book had all the makings of a good story, but I just had a hard time connecting to the characters. Also the fact that it is so chonky makes picking it up intimidating. Don’t get me wrong, I’m usually a fan of a thick book, but if I threw this at somebody I could do some serious damage. Even though I am familiar with the world from the first book, trying to get into this story was really difficult. I restarted reading this book after 130 pages because I was just so confused. Eventually I kind of got into it once I started reading the book in large chunks. Overall, the characters were fine and the plot was fine, but I thought there were some strangely large and awkward time skips toward the end of the book, and the climax of the book was a bit underwhelming. I don’t particularly recommend picking this book up unless you absolutely devoured the first one.