Welcome fellow reading fans! In today’s post I am going to show you the book that took me several weeks to finish. It really was huge…

I have read several books by Samantha Shannon, including another book in this series: A Priory of the Orange Tree. But, more about that later.

Here is the blurb:

“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.”

I have to say that I was quite confused at the beginning of the book. For some odd reason, I thought that this was a sequel, and I kept trying to seek out and match the main characters with the ones in my memory. In fact, it is a prequel and the action occurs 500 years before “A Priory of the Orange Tree”!

This is my response:

A Day of Fallen Night by Samantha Shannon
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Well, I have just finished the book and I’m rather uncertain about how I feel. There were a lot of good things in the book, but many were outweighed by the negative.

First of all the length! This was such a long read. Unnecessarily so, in my opinion. A lot could and should have been edited out. Some of the travelling back and forth was not needed to move the plot along. Then we have the characters. Most seemed to be stereotypical “goodies” or “baddies”, with no shades or nuances at all. And so many were LGBT, which seemed to be a bit unbalanced.

Then we also had some ridiculous and risible moments in the plot. I don’t want to give spoilers away, so won’t go into detail, but, unless some of the women in the book are over six feet tall and hugely strong, quite a lot of the action would have been impossible!

The author has an amazing imagination and writes really well. I have also enjoyed her previous books as well as many parts of this one, so I am sure that I will pick up her next one.

I just hope that she can restrain herself a bit and write something shorter!

View all my reviews

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I am now half-way through my next book, so at least I will have something to write about next week!

Happy Reading to you all!

Love and best wishes,

Anne

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