harvestides 's review for:

A Day of Fallen Night by Samantha Shannon

3.75

adventurous emotional 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: Complicated

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i enjoyed all the main characters in this (impressive given that one of them was male and i... did not enjoy the men with povs in priory) and thought the thematic work around gendered duty & motherhood was interesting and well done. i knew where most of the plot would head but this was a point in its favor because 1) it's a prequel 2) i like it when plot twists make sense. so overall an enjoyable read!

my main issue with this is the fact that it displays an interesting evolution of the classic "multipov book where one pov character sucks and isn't fun to read about" trope, which is "multipov book where all pov characters are interesting and enjoyable to read about but the author made 2 and a half satisfying conclusions to a main character's storyline and we have 4 main characters with storylines in need of concluding so now what?" 

i felt this most notably about dumai, who was one of my favorite characters but whose arc felt kind of jumpy and disjointed at the end; i don't think her ultimate ending makes a lot of sense or was built up to well, except for nikeya becoming the ruler of seiiki. glorian and wulf i think had good endings, and tunuva's was... fine? i liked her relationship with canthe a lotttt but i don't think the book satisfactorily addressed the harm done to siyu by the priory which left a sour note in my mouth.

this sounds like more complaining than my star rating merits but i really did enjoy the majority of the book and i think the character work in here is overall very well done! i do also think it could have been like 200 pages shorter but c'est la vie