A FANTASTIC addition to an amazing canon Samantha Shannon has clearly put a lot of thought into! I continue to be astounded by how rich the worldbuilding is while still giving the necessary attention to the minutiae of the human relationships in the novel. The friendships and romances tugged at my heartstrings even as I was completely absorbed by the massive tumult that faced the world they lived in. Having read The Priory of the Orange Tree, I of course knew the answers to some of the questions the characters asked, and could pretty easily figure out a (very small) subset of the twists before they happened just by knowing (Priory spoiler that might also spoil a general vibe of one aspect of the prequel)

to be on the look out for the 'Lady of the Woods'

. At the same time, finishing the novel just made me tempted to reread The Priory right away, just to see if there are details that initially went over my head or which I had forgotten in the weeks I'd been reading A Day of Fallen Night which might now make more sense in light of the events of the prequel! Overall, it's really cool to see such a well-developed world, and it continues to astound me that this much complexity could be developed in a world of fiction.

There was so much I could appreciate on a second read. The worldbuilding is beautiful. Every character felt so real and I loved them all so much. The interwoven story between this and Priory, while both can be read without the other is amazing. So much of what I love in fantasy stems from this series.

A Day of Fallen Night is the second book in the Roots of Chaos series and takes place 500 years before Priory of the Orange Tree. In this book, we get to see first hand the events of the Grief of Ages, a year long war between the humans and Wyrms, something that was only discussed in minor detail in Priory of the Orange Tree. This book takes place over a four year period, following four characters located in different parts of this lush and beautiful world Shannon has created. Each character has their own story to tell while also being interconnected to the other main characters from the arrival of the dragons all the way through to the end of the Greif of Ages. This book is the very definition of an epic fantasy and stands out against all the other fantasy novels published before as something so unique and beautiful that I will never get tired of returning to this world. 

Style/writing: 4 stars
Themes: 4.5 stars
Characters: 4 stars
Plot: 3.5 stars stars
Worldbuilding: 4 stars

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.