Empire of Silence: The Sun Eater: Book One Paperback – September 19, 2023

Empire of Silence, the first installment in Christopher Ruocchio’s Sun Eater series was a highly entertaining read and a great start to a space opera series. I have seen a lot of criticism of Mr. Ruocchio’s work, claiming it is entirely too derivative (if not a near replica) of Patrick Rothfuss’ Kingkiller Chronicles, however, other than the use of a framing narrative (which is not exclusive to Rothfuss) and some common themes (which, frankly, are common to many sci-fi and fantasy works in general) I don’t see Empire of Silence as being overly derivative. Honestly, I see a lot more Dune inspired references than anything else – which I rather enjoyed.Empire of Silence effectively uses a framing narrative, in which Hadrian Marlow opens the story by telling the reader he is known as a hero, a villain, a murderer, a savior, and the man who eradicate an entire species and killed a sun. After Hadrian “introduces” himself to the reader, the story opens as he recounts his early life as a privileged scion of a powerful family and the internal turmoil he feels between duty (family) and his heart’s desire (to be a scholar). After the latest in a string of arguments with his father, 19-year old Hadrian is destined to be packed off to the Chantry – the religious type order that controls the empire’s technology and is not afraid to use torture to get what it wants. Hadrian, horrified by this turn of events, attempts to flee his fate, but (as is wont to happen) things don’t go to plan and Hadrian finds himself penniless and abandoned on a strangle planet where, through a combination of wit, guile, and luck he manages to find himself entwined in empire political intrigues and hidden secrets of the Chantry.The world building was top notch, with the reader’s knowledge of the empire, its planets, inhabitants (human and non-human), technology, history, and political structure expanding as Hadrian learns of these things. I especially liked the blending of sci-fi with fantasy and the use of the Roman Empire as a basis for some of the political/military structure.While information was presented through structured lessons, conversations, or as an aside as “older” Hadrian expanded on a certain point it never felt like an exposition dump. I credit that due to Mr. Ruocchio’s skill as an author; while there were certain passages that felt a bit . . . clumsy, the novel’s overall prose was a lovely balance between straight forward/direct and poetic – with the poetic passages being (mostly) limited to Hadrian’s inner thoughts, reflections, and mediations (which makes sense considering he wanted to be a scholar).Since this is a first person POV narrative, I always take the characterizations of others with a grain of salt since our narrator’s basis and personal feelings certainly will cloud his perceptions. I did enjoy the characters that Hadrian met; I thought they were all interesting, allowed for Hadrian to do some soul searching, and moved the story well. While the pacing was a bit slow, the story was never dull.I greatly enjoyed Empire of Silence and look forward to continuing on with the series.

I will admit that I had high expectations of this book. It has a lot of praise online, and many have compared it to the Red Rising books. This is not Red Rising. It is The Name of the Wind.The best part of this book is Christopher Ruoccio's prose. It is beautifully written with vivid descriptions and creative choice of words. It challenged my vocabulary, but that is something that I enjoy. I was pulling up words to get definitions more often than I have in a while.The next thing I enjoyed was the world building. It was done without huge explanations or word dumps. Instead, it incorporated it into the story, and it grew throughout the story. And what a world it is! A feudal, galaxy-wide human civilization; a centuries long war with an alien civilization that is a mystery; a religious, propaganda branch of society that keeps society in line through fear; and an ancient civilization that left gigantic monolithic structures throughout the galaxy. This universe has mysteries galore.This leads to my biggest issue. The book is pretty boring. Our main character is not brave or cowardly, smart or dumb, good or bad, gallant or crass. He's just kind of bland. I can see hints of a great character but no development. The only character to stand out to me was Dr. Valka Onderra. She is fascinating. Smart, principled, mysterious, funny, and witty. The book picked up for me once she came into the story. I will say that I didn't like the first 400 pages of this book.Thankfully, the last 300 pages were better. We get our best evolution of the overall story. The best political plays. The best dialog and an overarching mystery that could have monumental consequence on humanity. But again, there is not much action.Overall, I give Empire of Silence 3.5 stars. I will give book 2 a chance, but I hope to see more actually happening. It's a beautifully written story in a fascinating universe. However, I am expecting character development out of the main character, a bit more action, and hopefully, some philosophical undertones that have me thinking about them after I've finished the book.

I very much enjoyed this novel. It was well written, with believable characters and a story that held my attention. Ill be diving into book two soon!

Overall I really enjoyed reading this novel, the characters were mostly well drawn and engaging and there was some fascinating world building going on and an intriguing future history that was teasingly revealed throughout the story.I had to knock off a star though for a few, mostly minor, flaws and irritants. Many of the main drivers of the plot revolve around the protagonists "mistakes" (as he repeatedly refers to them owing to the first person biographical style of the writing) - as much as the novel tries to paint him as a flawed but mostly well meaning man, he repeatedly foils his own plans through a combination of poor insight or impetuosity to a point where it almost becomes farcical. The future history also suggests that 16,000 years in the future people will still quote Greek myth and Shakespeare, which seems highly unlikely. There is also such a large array of minor characters, many with similar titles, that I struggled to remember who was who during the latter part of the book.All this world building and future history exposition does take some time and some who are not so interested in such detail may find the pace of the story flagging a little in parts. However, this is the first book in a series so in fairness there is a lot of scene setting to do before the main story really gets into gear, which begins in the final third of this book.Flaws aside, this is an excellent choice for those who like their epics really epic in scale and appreciate some detailed and nuanced world building. I also thought the inevitable aliens were done well and felt suitably alien. I will definitely be looking out for the second novel in this series.