A Day of Fallen Night (The Roots of Chaos #0.1)

by Samantha Shannon

Her name was Dumai, from an ancient word for a dream that ends too soon.

why is this first sentence not set apart more?! it switches right away to talking about Dumai's mother and grandfather, but i had to reread the whole prologue like three times to start making sense of all the perspective shifts... i think it must be because the prologue is badly laid out (giving it the benefit of the doubt that it's not just badly edited, which is also a possibility)

For a year, he was the most trusted and beloved of the boy emperor. So it shocked no one when he was suddenly banished, accused of having roused a god to make his province thrive. One family surrounded the emperor, and they allowed no one else close.

huh?

Pajati took her tear with the tip of his tongue, and before he could tell her the whole of the bargain, Unora fell to the ground in a faint.

‘I dreamed there was a butterfly asleep beside those falls,’ she said. ‘Where did you come from?’

you must be a butterfly spirit. A servant of the great Kwiriki. They say his spirits fade if they are not always close to water.

He kept his name a secret. She called him her Dancing Prince, and he called her his Snow Maiden. He whispered to her that it must be a dream, for only in dreams could such joy exist.

Her councillors prayed she might die in childbed, but she strode triumphant from the birthing chamber, a plump baby girl squalling in her wake – a new link in the chain, binding the beast for the next generation. The queen made a sport of mocking the child, seeing in her daughter a feeble imitation of herself, and Jillian, in turn, grew hard and bitter, and then cruel.

the younger Sabran did not have her mother’s fear, her grandmother’s spite, or the tyrant’s cruelty. She carried herself with purpose and dignity, never rising to a taunt.

Sabran had not grieved for her grandmother, and she doubted she would mourn her parents for too long. Still, she imagined the loss of a loved one would hurt like an arrowhead lodged in the body. Life would grow and twine around it, but it would remain, always hurting.

A princess for the West. One lost in the East. In the South, a third girl was born, between the other two. This girl was not destined to wear a crown. Her birth did not stitch the wounds in a queendom, or gift her with any right to a throne. This birth took place deep in the Lasian Basin, out of sight of the eyes of the world – because this girl, like her birthplace, was a secret.

On her right hand, only the forefinger and thumb were whole, the others shortened with hot steel.

as part of a monkish ritual? or because they had to be amputated due to frostbite?

At thirty, he was only three years older than Dumai, but the deep lines carved around his eyes made him seem older.

He knew she had only two dreams. The first was to set eyes on a dragon; the second was to one day succeed her mother as Maiden Officiant.

As she ate on one of the roofs, she watched for the sorrowers that nested in the crags above the temple. Soon their young would hatch and fill the evening air with song.

Expecting Kanifa, she turned – only to find her mother beside her, wearing her headdress of silver butterflies.

‘I don’t need anyone to save me. All I ever ask is that you not abandon me.’

Saghul Yedanya had been elected Prioress when she was only thirty.

Deep lines were carved across her brow. Tunuva envied such discernible wisdom – when every year could be read on the skin, laid out like the rings of growth in a tree.

She teased him, but in truth, Kanifa had never expressed interest in anyone. The mountain was his only love.

ace representation?

Once, she had been the shrewd and beloved Empress Manai – until some unknown malady had left her frail and confused, baffling her physicians. When she could no longer work around her decline, she had seen no choice but to abdicate in favour of her son and withdraw to Mount Ipyeda, to take the vacant post of Supreme Officiant of Seiiki. Her illness had mysteriously faded on the mountain, but by then, her ordainment had precluded her from returning to court. It was she who had welcomed a destitute and friendless Unora when she came to the temple, swollen with Dumai, and asked for sanctuary. Since her abdication, the boy left on the throne had grown into a man. Emperor Jorodu had never once visited the temple, though he did occasionally write to his mother.

The Grand Empress watched the woodfall breathe in the brazier. White streaked her short grey hair, as if she had combed snow through it. Dumai longed for hers to be the same.

Dumai had never seen a face like hers, one side precisely the same as the other. Kanifa said that was how you told a butterfly spirit from an ordinary woman.

They resembled mongooses in the way that a lion resembled a cat.

ichneumon-y

‘Perhaps you would sooner ride with clever Esbar tomorrow, then.’ Tunuva scratched her under the chin. ‘Hm?’ ‘No,’ the ichneumon said. ‘You are often stupid. But you fed me.’

This mistake is a small part of your life. It does not define it.’

‘I hear Numun has two companions,’ Julain said, hiding her mouth with her hand. Helisent snorted in amazement, while Glorian finished her third (or perhaps fourth) cup of wine. ‘Yes, it must have caused a scandal in Halgalant. A marriage of three.

polyamory <3

‘Why don’t I fetch us some crispels?’ she offered. ‘The kitchen made a fresh batch today.’ She left before Glorian could stop her. For once, her belly was in too much of a twist for crispels.

idk what crispels are but they sound delicious

‘You two were so close. I remember being a little jealous,’ Julain admitted. ‘When Wulf came to court, no one else could hold your attention, Glorian. You would spend hours with him.’ A strange thing to forget.

‘Did you wake Pajati?’ Unora remained as blank as fresh paper. ‘No. I only prayed.’ Dumai nodded, reassured. Her mother would never be so reckless, not even when she was young.

(except she totally was)

One can grow tired of smelling snow.’ ‘Snow has a smell?’ ‘We have a word for it. Skethra – a scent that washes the air clean.’

Roland now looked the part of heir apparent to the barony. He was broad in the shoulder and chest, nonchalantly handsome. The chestnut hair he shared with Mara was from their mother, Lady Rosa Glenn. She and her companion had been killed by thieves when Roland was four, and Mara just two – an act of violence that had shaken the queendom. Lord Edrick had adopted his niece and nephew, who had grown up seeing him as their father. He had married Lord Mansell, and Wulf had made them a family of five, all gathered into Langarth.

Unora watched her kneel on the floor. ‘Can you ever forgive me?’ ‘There is nothing to forgive. It did hurt me that you lied, but everything you ever did was to protect me. Even by calling me your kite, you taught me never to look down.’

She dreamed of a white dragon, a woman trapped in her own bones, the parched earth splintering.

‘Taporo.’ Osipa limped to Dumai, leaning on her cane, and eyed the woman. ‘I see you got old, too.’

‘Then we must both be silly,’ he said solemnly, ‘because I felt the same fear before I married your mother. The fear that in knitting my flesh to hers, I would have to sacrifice some . . . secret place inside me.’ ‘Did you?’ ‘Some of it,’ he confessed, ‘but because I loved her, I let her inside, and found it was good to have company there.’

Yeleni buckled, heaving with sobs. ‘Siyu said I could go with them to Hróth. I wanted to see the sky lights, just once!

same, Yeleni

The sunset had turned the snow to spun honey.

When dragons had first come to Seiiki, its people had feared the giant creatures and driven them away – but one woman had seen their beauty, and mourned their loss. She would walk on the cliffs of Uramyesi and sing her sorrow to the sea. The story called her Snow Maiden, for she would walk even in the harsh winter.

‘This palace is now a battlefield. Emperor Jorodu and the River Lord are the generals. You and Suzumai are their weapons.’ ‘I am no man’s weapon,’ Dumai said, nettled. ‘Then work harder. Be your own general.’

Though it was close to midnight, the sun was too shy to kiss the horizon.

Here, summer was heat. Thick, endless heat. When she drew the silk from her skin in the evenings, it was like peeling fruit. She clung to everything she touched, a moth in an elaborate web.

Furtia Stormcaller rose towards the sun, and Noziken pa Dumai was flying, just as she had always dreamed.

Her robe clung to her skin, but she relished the cold, even as her nose ran.

Wulf took Thrit in – the hollow where his collarbone met his throat, the dark stubble that lined his jaw and upper lip. Wulf had the sudden instinct to run his thumb across it, feel how sharp or soft it was.

Wulf, you beautiful bisexual boy

To know many tongues is to rule many hearts.

She stood as tall as Tunuva, and wore a sleeveless dress that fell to the floor, cut of blue and cream brocade and girded with a leather belt. It offered no connexions to a family or trade, though the Ersyri cloth looked costly. She was pale in a way few Southerners were, with an uptilted nose, amber eyes, and golden hair that rippled past a slender waist.

As their eyes met, she felt a faint pull towards the woman. At the same time, inexplicable nausea wound through her, as if she had drunk cream to the point of sickness.

just in case we didn't remember Canthe's evilness from the Priory book

‘It seems there were once two other siden trees – a hawthorn in the West, and a mulberry in the East. The hawthorn tree grew on an Inysh island. Both, alas, are dead.’

‘And if one were like Gedali, neither man nor woman?’ Canthe said. ‘Is there a middle way?’ ‘It would be easier to choose one or the other.

nb representation? (the priory kind of dismisses it as too complicated, but at least it's acknowledged)

Nikeya shouldered out of her robe. As she came to lounge on the other side of the bath, bare as her ambition, Dumai made a failed attempt to shrink her body behind her knee, lowering her waist.