Empire of Silence
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 into the intrigues of a foreign planetary court, he will find himself fight a war he did not start, for an Empire he does not love, against an enemy he will never understand.
Christopher Ruocchio
Christopher Ruocchio is the author of the Sun Eater Chronicle, a space opera series from DAW Books, the first novel of which, Empire of Silence, will be out in 2018. He is also the Assistant Editor at Baen Books and a graduate of North Carolina State University. He lives in Raleigh, North Carolina.
The Sun Eater
The Sun Eater series follows antihero Hadrian Marlowe as he recounts the history of his controversial life in a galaxy-spanning tale that combines the best of space opera and epic fantasy.
The Sun Eater consists of six primary books, and includes one additional book that complement the series but is not considered mandatory reads, and the series is set to expand with the upcoming release of one more book. The current recommended reading order for the series is provided below.
Book Reviews
It's odd to feel so hyped to start a series, that while it's been talked about it is still slightly smaller known. Starting this book, even a few chapters in, I noticed that this one was feeling slow. Not for lack of things happening just the amount of detail put into it it has made the pace feel that way, to me at least.
Our story follows and is told to us by Lord Hadrian Marlow. He is writing the story of his life and experiences from a very late point in his life. Older Hadrian does not seem to shy away from the rashness or ignorance of his youth. He is a bright man to be sure but doesn't have the calculating mind needed for most lords. By this I mean he only plots a few steps ahead of most of his actions. Hadrian doesn't know much of the universe outside of books and is thus naive to several things.