Synopsis
Hadrian Marlowe, a man revered as a hero and despised as a murderer, chronicles his tale in the galaxy-spanning debut of the Sun Eater series, merging the best of space opera and epic fantasy.
It was not his war.
On the wrong planet, at the right time, for the best reasons, Hadrian Marlowe started down a path that could only end in fire. The galaxy remembers him as a hero: the man who burned every last alien Cielcin from the sky. They remember him as a monster: the devil who destroyed a sun, casually annihilating four billion human lives—even the Emperor himself—against Imperial orders.
But Hadrian was not a hero. He was not a monster. He was not even a soldier.
Fleeing his father and a future as a torturer, Hadrian finds himself stranded on a strange, backwater world. Forced to fight as a gladiator and navigate the intrigues of a foreign planetary court, he will find himself fighting a war he did not start, for an Empire he does not love, against an enemy he will never understand.
Review
This book serves as a wonderful, and much needed reminder that it can be an immense experience to take time and invest in the world you’re temporarily transported to.
My attention is not the most sturdy attribute in my readers utility belt. I can often want to move on to the next author before I’ve given the current book a decent amount of time (there are so many incredible books out there!).
This book kept me on the razors edge of that decision, constantly reaching for something else, something with an easier fix, but never quite grabbing it. After said period of indecision I was suddenly elevated to the next level of fandom for Christopher Ruocchio!
Boom! As if Matt Dinniman (author of the excellent Dungeon Crawler Carl) had declared my traversal towards the end of game boss, I found myself in space opera Nirvana, both grateful for my stoicism and delighted that I was to be rewarded with the rest of this excellent read.
Ruocchio is so abundant in talent for world building and social, political, scientific and religious culture depiction that he can happily commit universe-sized chunks to history as he fires his MC into the next challenging environment. The previous sections are never forgotten (the scars they leave will always be present) but they remain in the past. Ghostly and far-reaching but in the past never the less.
I cannot stress enough how much detail and nuance this author puts into the world he invites you to, whether his main characters choose to stay there or not, as a reader I felt truly blessed.
I feel I need to make special mention of the solar system and travel in Empire of Silence. In space no-one can hear you scream, and galaxies can be traversed in seconds… Not so in this book! Ruocchio manages to express just how far characters travel across this expansive universe and the time it takes to get there.
This gives the feeling of actually being that tiny speck in a massive sprawling universe that some space operas overlook due to miraculous light speed travel tech or quickly mentioned stasis pods that can sometimes effectively shrink the universe in question. Ruocchio uses equivalent tech but still manages get across the enormity of space travel, top job!!
As always, I try to orbit spoilers and plot to allow readers to take their virgin “first step into a larger world” or to “boldly go where no man has gone before.” Countless other sci-fi references are available!
With this book you will witness many worlds and dip your toe into many sub-stories while the universe is sketched in around you. With this many ideas and veins running through this introduction to the Sun Eater series the mind boggles at where Mr Ruochio will take us next.
Suffice to say that Empire of silence has heart and emotion in abundance and it has an infinite universe of which you will see and hear of in poetic prose.
The book also has a wonderful way of spinning it’s tale through the cyclic and repetitive aeons of history. Mimicking and indeed mentioning actual historical cultures and the deeds that progressed or devolved those cultures.
There is a wonderful sense that we, as readers, are witnessing the past and future one beautiful and emotive scene at a time.
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