A Day of Fallen Night
core novel 2023 The Roots of Chaos
Record
| First published | 2023 |
|---|---|
| Original language |  EN |
| Work type | novel |
| Canon status | core |
| Reader rating | 4.31 (62,544 ratings, collected 2026-09-14) |
| First-edition ISBN | 9781635577921 |
Synopsis
A Day of Fallen Night is set roughly five hundred years before The Priory of the Orange Tree, in a world that has lived under the shadow of the wyrm known as the Nameless One for five centuries without a direct attack. The relative calm ends when the volcano Dreadmount erupts and releases five dragons into the world, shattering the long-held belief that the Berethnet bloodline's rule is enough to keep the Nameless One contained. The novel follows three interconnected women: Glorian, heir to the western kingdom of Inys and unprepared for the throne; Dumai, a newly discovered imperial daughter in the East; and Tunuva Melim, a warrior-sister of the Priory of the Orange Tree confronting secrets from her own past. As wyrm attacks spread across several kingdoms, each woman must respond to a crisis that threatens to unravel centuries of fragile peace.
Where it sits
- Universe: The Roots of Chaos
- Series: The Roots of Chaos core; position 2 of 3 in the series' recorded order
- Author: Samantha Shannon
Notes
- From the series record (The Roots of Chaos): New author record. A dragon-and-queendom epic fantasy told across 4 POV threads, notable for its major sapphic romance plotline. The Priory of the Orange Tree (2019) is the flagship volume; A Day of Fallen Night (2023) is a marketed 'standalone prequel' set centuries earlier in the same world; Among the Burning Flowers (2025) is a further, shorter entry in the same continuity. All 3 are published; registered by publication year, not by the series' own internal prequel numbering (#0.1/#0.2), matching this project's standing preference for sourced publication order over an editorializing reading order. In progress -- Shannon has stated further Roots of Chaos work is possible but nothing further is dated.
Neighbouring works
Publication order and internal chronology are tracked as two separate orderings and are never conflated: a book's place in one says nothing about its place in the other.
- Publication order, within the series The Roots of Chaos: position 2 of 3: previous The Priory of the Orange Tree (2019) · next Among the Burning Flowers (2025)
Sources
- Wikipedia: The Priory of the Orange Tree
- https://www.supersummary.com/a-day-of-fallen-night/summary/
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