Empire of Silence by Christopher Ruocchio
(The Sun Eater, Book 1)
Released: July 3, 2018 | Genre: Science Fiction, Space Opera
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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.
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Christopher Ruocchio has technically been working on Empire of Silence since he was about eight years old. He and his friends used to play make-believe on the playground. They played Dragon Ball Z characters, while Ruocchio, who apparently had no idea what Dragon Ball Z was, was allowed to be Batman. He eventually started writing down stories about their adventures, then repeatedly started, abandoned, and rewrote novels as he grew up. Those early stories eventually evolved into Empire of Silence.
REVIEW
⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ☆ ☆
Slow, but good… but slow. Really slow.
I’ve used this phrase before, but it fits perfectly here: a long walk for a short drink of water.Empire of Silence isn’t excessively long, but it feels longer than it needs to be, especially when you look back and realize how little ground the story actually covers. Honestly, the same plot could’ve been told in about two-thirds the length.
Its biggest flaw is pacing. On paper, it has everything you could want: engaging characters, unique worlds, political intrigue, conspiracies, murder, gladiator fights, and even one of my new 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 all of it is so drawn out that much of the impact is lost. Do I really need a deep dive into an entire planet’s hierarchy when most of it never comes into play? Probably not. And that’s really the heart of it, I don’t think this is a bad book at all, but the pacing drags everything down. Keep the plot, the characters, the set pieces, the relationships, just trim the fat and this would be incredible.
In many ways, this book reminded me of Red Rising, especially in its dialect and writing style. But like Red Rising, Empire of Silence feels more like an extended prologue: an introduction to the world and its players, setting the stage for bigger things to come. I don’t know how many books are planned for this series, but I can only hope the sequels move faster and bring more substance to match the promise.
