Empire of Silence by Christopher Ruocchio
My rating: 4.5 of 5 stars

“We live in stories, and in stories, we are subject to phenomena beyond the mechanisms of space and time. Fear and love, death and wrath and wisdom—these are as much parts of our universe as light and gravity.”

The Sun Eater is one of those series that I’ve heard so many good things about that I found myself really hesitant to pick it up. But I’m glad that I finally decided to take the plunge, because I was immediately enamored by Hadrian Marlowe and held rapt by his story. Ruocchio has an immaculate way with words, and he’s drawn a dark but impeccably nuanced system of worlds that feels true, even if fictitious. This is a gigantic story, the surface of which is barely scratched in this first installment.

“No matter who tries to move you, be it your father or any man of power, you have a choice, because your soul is in your hands. Always.”

Empire of Silence shares a definite feel with Red Rising in terms of galactic, science fiction setting blended with a Romanesque vibe. I love this meshing of ancient and futuristic. Seeing a society so far flung into the future and away from Earth choose to revert back to the naming and societal conventions of the Roman Empire always fascinates me, as it makes an odd type of sense. There’s also some the really interesting interplay with and commentary on faith, which plays a vital but disturbing role in this society.

“I knew what the Chantry was, and I despised it. No true religion, as among the adorators who yet keep the old gods. Only the fist in the Imperial glove, anointed with holy oil. Only the cynical posture of faith, its prayers memorable but hollow, dripping with unearned tradition. It was an instrument of terror and holy awe, the largest circus under Sol. Obedience out of piety.”

I was also reminded of stories like Blood Song and The Empire of the Vampire and The Name of the Wind in terms of the framework story. We know that our narrator, Hadrian, is the infamous Sun Eater, but we do not yet know exactly what that entails or what he did to garner such infamy. We also don’t know how much we can trust his presentation of himself and his story and the events that take place within it. How reliably can anyone narrate their own story? Hadrian paints himself almost as a Romantic artist or poet would; he seems lightly self-deprecating on the surface while actually viewing himself as more empathetic, more moral, more human, than everyone around him. He’s a truly Byronic figure, and undergoes a lot of tragedy and trauma as well as growing significantly over the course of the story.

“If blood does not soak the foundations of a civilization—ours or any other—it is surely mixed into the mortar, surely drips from the walls.”

There are so many light references to classic literature, and even to more current popular culture. Hadrian wondering “if the bell tolled for me,” harkened back to Donne and Hemingway. His internal quip that “the clock was striking thirteen,” recalls the first line of Orwell’s 1984. Somehow these echoes of reality imbue Hadrian’s story with a timelessness, and a gravitas, that brought to mind The Odyssey or the works of Shakespeare. While I’ve spent much of this review expressing all of the stories this novel reminded me of, Empire of Silence is very much its own, original story; Ruocchio simply doesn’t pretend that any powerful story can exist in a vacuum, without those that have shaped our collective imagination undergirding it.

“Would they call us barbarians, those men of ancient days?”

I mentioned that Hadrian endures a lot over the course of this novel, and that’s an understatement. He’s put through the wringer in this first installment, though evidently that is but the merest foretaste of what he will experience over the course of the series. And yet, while tragedy takes place, it managed to not feel unrelentingly, overwhelmingly dark. I loved Hadrian’s narrative voice, both in the story’s present and as he reached back in time from his own present to offer flashes of “memento mori” that harkened back to the Chorus of a Grecian tragedy. And I loved, absolutely loved, the way this first installment ended. It felt like such a note of light and joy after so much devastation. “There are endings, reader. And this is one.”

“When we think of War, we imagine atrocity as only a feature of the battlefield, a thing of heat and fire. It is not. Atrocity is wrought by quiet men in fine rooms over pitchers of cool water. Strange little men with ashes in their hearts. Sans passion, sans hope . . . sans everything. Everything but fear. For themselves, for their own lives, for some imagined future. And in the name of safety, security, piety, they labor to found future heaven on present horror. But their kingdom of heaven is in the mind, in the future that will never be, and their present horrors are real.”

The only slight drawback was the pacing. While I was always interested to learn what would happen next, I was never deeply compelling to keep reading, or to pick the book back up when I had put it down. It took me six weeks to read this, which is really unusual for me. But every time I did return to the story, I was fascinated.

“My memory is to the world as a drawing is to the photograph. Imperfect. More perfect. We remember what we must, what we choose to, because it is more beautiful and real than the truth.”

Readers who tend to stick to the clean and wholesome might want to give this series a pass, as there is coarse language, serious violence, and a not completely heteronormative society. But I have a feeling that those who can handle such content will find this series more than worth it. This is a brilliant story, and only the beginning of what promises to be an incredible, deeply thoughtful and philosophical series. I’m really looking forward to seeing where Hadrian’s story takes us from here.

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