A Day of Fallen Night, Samantha Shannon's sprawling, breathtaking prequel to The Priory of the Orange Tree, soars as it expands her beautiful world of warrior nuns, queens and dragons with a new era of catastrophe and heroism. "A princess for the West. One lost in the East." In the West, Princess Glorian of Inys grows up in the shadow of her mother, who will always be a queen first and a parent second. Her childhood friend Wulfert Glenn serves her father, the king, but cannot escape the rumors of witchcraft that follow him. In the East, young, temple-raised Dumai learns she shares the blood of the royal family and can speak to the gods, a slumbering race of water-dwelling dragons. Meanwhile, at the Priory of the Orange Tree, two sisters and soulmates face challenges when a postulant strikes up a forbidden relationship with an outsider. Their paths become set on a collision course when the volcano Dreadmount erupts and releases an army of fire-breathing wyrms bent on razing civilization to the ground. Gods will awaken, heroes will rise and hearts will break as the future of humanity hangs in the balance.
Readers new to the series should find this standalone novel a fine entry point. Shannon (The Song Rising; The Mime Order) packs in enough courtly intrigue, high-stakes battles and dragon-human bonding to satisfy most fans of high fantasy. As in The Priory of the Orange Tree, queer characters and relationships are normalized and given center stage. A Day of Fallen Night demonstrates that Shannon's magnificent world contains a wealth of intriguing stories. --Jaclyn Fulwood, blogger at Infinite Reads