Review: A Day of Fallen Night by Samantha Shannon

Thank you to Netgalley for sending me a copy in exchange for an honest review

Publication date: 28th February 2023
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Pages: 880

The stunning, standalone prequel to the New York Times bestselling The Priory of the Orange Tree.
Tunuva Melim is a sister of the Priory. For fifty years, she has trained to slay wyrms – but none have appeared since the Nameless One, and the younger generation is starting to question the Priory's purpose.
To the north, in the Queendom of Inys, Sabran the Ambitious has married the new King of Hróth, narrowly saving both realms from ruin. Their daughter, Glorian, trails in their shadow – exactly where she wants to be.
The dragons of the East have slept for centuries. Dumai has spent her life in a Seiikinese mountain temple, trying to wake the gods from their long slumber. Now someone from her mother's past is coming to upend her fate.
When the Dreadmount erupts, bringing with it an age of terror and violence, these women must find the strength to protect humankind from a devastating threat.
Intricate and epic, Samantha Shannon sweeps readers back to the world of A Priory of the Orange Tree, showing us a course of events that shaped it for generations to come.

The Priory of the Orange Tree is one of my favourite fantasy epics - sweeping in scope, lush in vivid rich details, and breath taking in its audacity. Which meant that I had both high hopes and huge fears when it came to A Day of Fallen Night - how could it possibly compare? 

I should not have worried.

Priory will always be excellent, but A Day of Fallen Night is a masterclass that showcases Shannon’s growing talent. She is a force to be reckoned with, a writer who can craft incredibly rich and detailed stories and never lose their reader for an instant. Fallen Night is a behemoth, an epic 880 pages long, but none of that feels bloated or unnecessary. Instead it is a tapestry of interweaving characters and plots, layered over years, coloured through time, and embroidered with the acts of humanity that make it feel raw and real to the reader.

I have struggled over the days since finishing it to articulate fully how I feel about this book. It’s hard to distil it down to a few choice words and phrases. Instead, I will simply press the book into people's hands with the instruction to read it. Read it and fall in love with the world, with the characters, with the scope and force of this novel. 

It is a masterclass in writing, an epic to rival big name fantasy epics, but frankly executed better and with a richer and diverse world. This is one that I will revisit time and time again, and I’m already excited to explore it through the audiobook.

Add this to your to read pile, you won’t regret it.