Rancid

Empire of Silence by Christopher Ruocchio My rating: 2 of 5 stars I have just finished reading Empire of Silence, the first volume of Christopher Ruocchio’s Sun Eater series. It is an expansive, ambitious epic that wears its influences on its sleeve—most notably Frank Herbert’s Dune—while eventually carving out a haunting identity of its own. The Premise: A Hero or a Monster? The story is told as a memoir by Hadrian Marlowe, a man infamous across the galaxy for two world-altering acts: destroying a sun and committing xenocide against an alien race known as the Cielcin. While history remembers him as either a monster or a savior, this first book introduces us to a different Hadrian: a young man simply trying to escape his father’s shadow and the crushing expectations of his noble birth. After fleeing his home, Hadrian finds himself stranded on a backwater planet. His journey takes him from the lowest rungs of society as a beggar to the brutal life of a gladiator, all while the galaxy...