The Roots of Chaos Series 2 Books Collection Set By Samantha Shannon (The Priory of the Orange Tree, [Hardcover] A Day of Fallen Night)

Product Information

As part of my work with UN Women, I have started reading OUR SHARED SHELF IS CURRENTLY DORMANT AND NOT MANAGED BY EMMA AND HER TEAM. Not to mention the like 10+ library books I have at home..... (2 of which are Fire and Blood and War Storm which are also GIANT BOOKS) The Priory of the Orange Tree starts out slow, which I like. We’re very gradually introduced to the world--absolutely no infodumps. And by the end, I was completely immersed in the story, characters, and religions.

Now, this is not in reference to the character lying prone, wounded in the face. It's about another character. Why would you use a pronoun here? It's very easy to just use a name. The pronoun, given the context of the scene, invites confusion. There is an INCREDIBLY easy fix for this!!!!The faith of the Virtues of Knighthood is predominant in several nations of the West, collectively called Virtudom. The faith of the Mother among the Lasians believes that rather than Sir Galian, it was Princess Cleolind Onjenyu who banished the Nameless One. The people of the East revere dragons as gods. I did not connect with the characters. I just felt so detached and that put a damper on my experience. Most of the original cast aren’t born yet, but some of the new characters are their distant relatives, which I hope will give you a sense of connection to them.

It's a reeeeeally long book and there are a ton of things to like here, and also some very uneven things that I can't quite let slide. This book isn't necessarily doing a lot of things that feel new, but it's taking tropes of the high fantasy genre and using them in interesting ways. I appreciated that. Overwhelmed by a sense of their own destinies, their differences become lightweight. This is a danger, a disaster, a calamity—and they alone can stop it. Firstly, it has a sexy tittle. Some time ago on Fantasy Buddy Reads, we have had this awesome discussion about the best titles. The general agreement was that the majority of the fantasy books follow the “something of something” line. You know, Gardens of the Moon, Fellowship of the Ring, and so on and so forth. It is really not that easy to find something original. But even among this crowd “The Priory of the Orange Tree” has a nice ring to it. How many times have you heard that you should not judge the book by its cover? More, I am sure, than you care to count. Now, heed my advice. Do not judge it by the title either. It was the stuff of legend, a tale destined to be enshrined in song”. and a song that needed to be sung. And so from the realm of the Orange Tree we travel east and west, to reveal how the lives of Ead, Tane, Niclays, Loth and Sabran become so dependent on each other as they face an evil buried for a thousand-years. A world on the brink of destruction. A world divided for many years.The three lead protagonists represent each major region of the world—East, West, and South—which have very different religions, political structures, and cultures. In the East, the mountain-dwelling Dumai trains as a godsinger, establishing a connection between humankind and the dragons that her society worships. In the West, Glorian is the young heir to the queendom of Inys who struggles with her royal calling. In the South, Tunuva is a warrior from the mysterious Priory of the Orange Tree, a religious organization who follow the Mother and are committed to defeating the Nameless One, an enormous fire-breathing dragon.

It’s also worth briefly mentioning here that I did not like the author’s series The Bone Season. It was too young adult for my taste, but I clearly loved this. So, I really do urge other readers to try this regardless of what you thought about Samantha Shannon’s other work. This is completely different, and I don’t hesitate to say that this will be one of the biggest fantasy releases this year. Don’t miss it, it’s incredible. All this while across the Abyss far in the East, Tané who has trained all her life to be a dragonrider teeters on the brink of her dreams and one choice could unravel her life, taking her to places no Easterner has set foot in centuries. I know my opinion is unpopular and that most readers absolutely loved this book. And that's great! I think this book would be awesome for people wanting to start reading adult epic fanatasy. It's not too complicated and it's easy to follow. A Day of Fallen Night is Samantha Shannon’s standalone prequel to her acclaimed feminist fantasy, The Priory of the Orange Tree.

Through Tunuva we see the most siden magic, a magic of heat and day and fire. I have always adored the careful balance of this world's magic system and was delighted to see so much magic throughout the different perspectives. Ead (POV): A mage and strong warrior, with an open heart and open mind, she smells secrets and roots them out. I can’t even begin to explain the love I feel for this inspiring young woman. In the East, where water dragons are revered as living gods, Miduchi Tané has spent her life training to become a dragonrider. When Tané comes upon an outsider and trespasser from the West, she throws her future into jeopardy by hiding him with Niclays Roos, an alcoholic alchemist searching for the secret to immortality who was banished from Sabran's court years ago. As a huge Tolkien fan, and one who considers his writing to be the very best fantasy has to offer, I don’t often compare other books to his works (at least not in a positive way.) Simply because there is very rarely a good comparison to be made. Every great work of fantasy has felt somewhat shallow in contrast to the deep pool of imagination he conjured with his words. Nothing cuts it. Nothing competes.

Priory is known as a sapphic fantasy staple, and I wholeheartedly agree with this. But A Day of Fallen Night boasts an even higher count of sapphic relationships, alongside it's other incredible representation. Out of our four main characters, two are sapphic, one is achillean, and one is aroace-spec. There are also several other queer characters as well as trans and genderqueer characters. Samantha Shannon could I possibly love you more? A Day of Fallen Night is a standalone prequel to The Priory of the Orange Tree. It’s set just shy of five centuries before Priory and covers the period known as the Great Sorrow, or Grief of Ages. Feminism: Full of precious, strong women taking the stage, ruling, glowing, and fighting the world’s expectations, POT is one of the best feminist books out there, if not the best feminist fantasy book yet. The story itself switches between five main narrators who are mostly divided by whether they are in the East or the West. The narrative jumps between people within chapters, but at least it’s all told in third person. As you've probably already garnered from the above summary, the scope of The Priory of The Orange Tree is majestic, brimming with detail and ideas and teeming with characters, languages, and perspectives. Though this is a single novel, it feels rather like several books meticulously stitched together. In lesser hands, it would be a bewildering welter. Fortunately for us, Shannon possesses the inerrant skills to make it all come together so splendidly.A queen who doesn’t want to conceive although it’s her to be or not to be; a girl who spent her whole life to earn the red cloak of a slayer and refuses it because; a dragon rider who was not told anything about dragons by her teachers; a gal able to win marital duels in a full Victorian dress; the living Kinder Surprise Egg (now, that was rich!). I could continue, but I’ll spare you. The most important effect of this is that the most dramatic turns of events instead of being riveting were hilarious in their absurdity. When it comes to dragons, my all-time favorite books are “Dragon and Thief” , “Iron Dragon’s Daughter”, “Seraphina” and “Eragon”. It’s fair to compare this book with those epic stories but as I said before especially last parts of the book lost its magic and made me wish if it would end at the half part and divide into separate three books. So we may easily relate with the characters and don’t suffer from heavy breathing to catch the last parts’ too fast pacing. I don’t want this review to sound lukewarm because there were many instances where I was completely hooked and stayed up late to read it. It’s just hard to live up to the expectations set by the first book.