Week 11 Review: A Day of Fallen Night

From Goodreads:

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.

My Review:
This was such a fantastic read! I loved being back in this world, and seeing this point in the history, before the Dreadmount erupts again, and the events that happen afterwards-just over 500 years since the Nameless One was taken down, and 450ish years before the events of Priory. Yeah.

The way this book opens was really great, because it sets up the world-of the events that lead up to most of the main characters being born, from the perspectives of their mothers. So that was really great to read, once I knew what was going on! 

Sabran the Ambitious, with 3 weak queens before her, made a strategic marriage that led to 4 countries to be under the religion of The Virtues of Knighthood, making it the strongest it's ever been. On the other hand, in the Priory, faith is waning, that the Nameless One hasn't been seen.

And in the East, the dragons, their gods, have been asleep for so long and this one country, Seiiki? which has a ruler that is blessed and can talk to the gods-but has this family that has grabbed all the power that the could, and the situation was perilous...with Dumai the unknown bastard child of the emperor, just what he needed to balance the power scales..yeah.

Then in the Priory, we had Tunuva, the oldest narrating character in this book. I couldn't remember if Canthe was the witch who mothered Galian, and then pretended to be Cleolind, and was the mother of his child. So I was suspicious of her, and there were some odd goings on that I was giving a side eye to! 

Honestly, the ending was pretty sad, considering that there's a few centuries between now and Priory, that the Berethnet line is just going to repeat this cycle again and again for that much longer. But it was satisfying and really enjoyed it! 

Loved reading this book, and if we get more from this series (which I'm hoping for) I'll be reading it! 

Author: Samantha Shannon
Series: The Roots of Chaos #0
Read: March 13th, 2023
Source: Bought 
Reason Why: Love her writing and this series, and it's a Prequel & Sequel Challenge 2023 Book and a WoW Book! 
Publisher: Bloomsbury Books
Published: February 28th 2023

5/5 Hearts

5/5 Books

5/5 Stars