Empire of Silence

⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️

Empire of Silence (The Sun Eater, Book 1) by Christopher Ruocchio

Slow, but good... but slow... it’s very slow.

I know I’ve used this phrase before, but it applies even more so here: A long walk for a short drink of water. Now Empire of Silence isn’t overly long, but it’s long enough to be unnecessarily long. Especially when looking back at how much ground the story actually covered (not a lot). I feel like everything could’ve been covered in about 2/3 the length.

Its biggest downfall is that it’s VERY slow. It’s got engaging characters, unique locations, a lot of political intrigue, conspiracy, murder, gladiator fights, and what's quickly becoming one of my favorite quotes:

"It is a mistake to believe we must know a thing to be influenced by it. It is a mistake to believe the thing must even be real."

But the problem is that everything is so drawn out that they lose their impact (I don't need to know an entire planets hierarchy when 90% of them have nothing to do with what's going on). Come to think of it, this is really its only downfall. I don’t think it’s a bad book by any means, but the pacing just kills it. I almost feel like you could keep pretty much everything exactly how it is, plot, characters, relationships, set pieces, everything, just pick up the pace a little bit and it would be so much better.

This book reminded me a lot of Red Rising ❤️ in a couple different ways. Most notably in terms of the dialect and writing style. But also that Empire of Silence felt like it was primarily just an introduction to the characters and the world, and is simply setting the stage for things to come. While I don’t know how many books are going to be in this series, I just hope the sequels have more substance.