Literature / Ashes of Man

WARNING: This page contains Late Arrival Spoilers for previous works in The Sun Eater series.

Ashes of Man is the fith book in the The Sun Eater Science Fantasy series by Christopher Ruocchio.

The Cielcin have united. Under the white-hand banner of the Prophet of the Watchers, Syriani Doryaica, the innumerable alien hordes burn the worlds of the Sollan Empire- an empire that stands alone after the betrayal of the Lothrian Commonwealth and the continued inaction of the Principalities of Jadd.

But despite rumors to the contrary, Hadrian Marlowe lives. After a narrow escape from the black sands of Eue and years of exile of Colchis, it is final time for Hadrian and Valka to rejoin Imperial society...

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This book provides examples of:

• A Million Is a Statistic: Discussed; the losses of a single city on a single planet attacked by the Cielcin number in the tens of millions. The overwhelming burden of this being repeated on hundreds of worlds weighs heavily on William.
• Altar Diplomacy: William plans to arranges a marriage between Prince Kaim and one of his daughters, Vivian, in order to cement friendly ties with the Jaddians and motivate them to further commit to the war.
• And Your Little Dog, Too!: Urbaine taunts Hadrian by specifically mentioning Delos as one of the worlds MINOS plans to unleash their bioweapon on.
• Ancestral Weapon: Hadrian realizes that the highmatter sword used by Irshan was likely Prince Phillipe's, meaning that, should he ever have the core reforged into a new blade, he would be wielding Gibson's sword.
• Another Story for Another Time: After their tearful final farewell, Hadrian asks Lorien how he managed to break the Red Company lieutenant out of the Chantry's grasp back on Forum. Lorien grins and replies that he'll tell him later as a subtle hint that he's working behind the scenes to break Hadrian out.
• Armor Is Useless: Averted. While Highmatter blades slice through anything short of adamantine, Takeshi's Plasma Sword is partially stopped by Hadrian's mundane ceramic armor, while his own Nipponese clothing provides no protection at all from Hadrian's ceramic blade.
• Babies Ever After: Valka finally realizes that she wants what Hadrian always has: to retire and start a family, even it means calling in every favor they've ever had with William to see it done. Hadrian agrees but fate and Attavaisa had other plans...
• Badass Back: Kaim blocks a strike from a Cielcin chimera without looking or being warned, and turns the movement into a slash that destroys the creature.
• Bag of Spilling: Hadrian just can't hold on to a sword . Tor Gibson's highmatter blade chamber requires a new hilt, one that would take some time and a specialist to construct. The Cielcin scimitar he took from Eue is broken in the fight against Takeshi. Hadrian attempts to use Takeshi's plasma sword, but is almost immediately disarmed by the Urbaine-possessed golem. Finally, William lends him his personal blade in the final battle on Perfugium.
• Body Horror: The Synthetic Plague developed by MINOS disables the human body's genetic limiters on cell and bone growth, turning its victims into enormous, cancerous blobs.
• Breather Episode: After the onslaught of horrific events in the previous book, the first few acts of this novel focus on Hadrian, Valka, and Lorien re-integrating with the Empire as Hadrian recovers from his injuries.
• Broken Pedestal: Hadrian's view of the scholiast orders as a whole is rather shaken when Arian explains that the vast majority of their order are not wise, sagacious stoics like Gibson but rather the failures of palatine families, those whom couldn't be married off or dumped onto the Legion or Chantry. Many of the order are simple servants and laborers whose grasp of classical philosophy and history is about as firm as that of the average peasant.
  • The Empire's hero-worship of Hadrian is shattered after witnessing Hadrian talking back to Emperor William and punching him in the face.
• Brought Down to Normal: After his escape from Eue, Hadrian is unable to access his powers until the death of Valka drives him so far into despair that he is once again able to access a state of perfect emptiness.
• Call-Back: Cornered under the colosso on Perfugium, Hadrian remembers his first encounter with Gilliam Vas in a similar location, and realizes that this dungeon must have a secret entrance as well, allowing him to locate where the emperor is hiding.
• The Cavalry: With the Sollan fleet facing a much larger enemy presence than expected at DB-639D and their ground forces already engaged, things seem grim until a sizeable Jaddian force warps in and turns the tide.
  • During the seemingly hopeless siege of Perfugium, Hadrian, Bassander, and Prince Kaim lead a rescue team that manages to extract the Emperor and a number of the world's people, although at a heavy cost...
• Cavalry Refusal: Years after the events of this book, during the Sollan Empire's darkest hour as Nessus falls, the people of the Empire will look for Hadrian Marlowe to return and save the day. And he will not be there.
• Combat Compliment: Hadrian and Oliva each acknowledge the other's skill in turn as they spar.
• Convection, Schmonvection: Averted, the fully-armored Hadrian finds Takeshi's plasma sword is still uncomfortably hot even when deactivated.
• The Chosen One: The Emperor fully realizes Hadrian is the one that William I's "angels" have chosen to save humanity, but keeps this a secret between the two of them and Nicephorus.
• Dented Iron: After the escape from Akterumu, Hadrian is physically and mentally a shadow of his former self. While he could previously beat four of training machines at Maddalo house simultaneously, he is now bested by one.
• Despair Event Horizon: As horrific as Dharan-Tun and Akterumu were, Hadrian is driven far further into despair by Valka's death.
• Downer Ending: The planet Perfugium is conquered and the Martian Legion fleet devastated. This loss would be a sign of things to come as the united Cielcin empire steam-rolls over the Sollans, meanwhile the Lothrians would eventually be resurgent and bleed their end of the Sollan Empire causing the Sollans to fight a losing war on two fronts. Valka is dead and Hadrian is jailed for striking the Emperor, a jailbreak that frees him makes Hadrian a fugitive from Imperial justice.
• Drowning My Sorrows: After Valka's death, Hadrian spends the week curled up in his cabin with a case of cheap wine. He's a pretty sorry sight when Bassander finally pulls him out.
• Earth-Shattering Kaboom: Downplayed, Bassander Lin's fleet devastated the world DB-639D where MINOS was producing its viral weapon. But because they used atomics rather than anti-matter warheads, the world was rendered lifeless and uninhabitable for ages but it's still intact.
• Enormous Engine: The reason why Hadrian was worried about imminent Cielcin attacks, the enormous landmass-sized engines on a Cielcin Planet Space Ship makes it many times faster than an Imperial ship though it does take a longer time to rev up its engines.
• Evil Is Not a Toy: Hadrian tries to warn Urbaine that Syriani is not something that he can control and already plans on disposing of him.
• Faceful of Alien Wing-Wong: Poor Duke Gaspar Valavar of Perfugium is captured and impregnated with a Cielcin embryo. Attavaisa disembowels him in a live transmission to the Imperial officials on the planet, including Gaspar's own wife, causing the half-gestated alien to spill out.
• Fake Memories: Hadrian recalls several important pieces of information he learned about the relationship between the Cielcin, Enar, and Watchers when he and Valka were shown the recovered artifacts from Echidna. Like many of the memories given to him by the Quiet, this never actually happened.
• Foreshadowing: When Hadrian meets Prince Rafael on Carteia, he mentions his past friendship with Olorin. The Jaddian prince had never heard of Olorin or his satrapy, hinting that the swordmaster had not been truthful of his true identity.
• Giant's Knife; Human's Greatsword: Until it broke, Hadrian used the Cielcin ceramic scimitar he previously found as he felt finding it was a favor from the Quiet. It's a single-handed blade for a Cielcin but in Hadrian's hands it's at least a bastard sword. After it breaks, Had notes that using it was a liability because of its awkward size and how he's too used to highmatter swords to fight at his best with it.
• Godzilla Threshold: On the part of the Hushana the Many-Handed, he's so enraged at Hadrian and frustrated with the lack of progress in the siege that he decides to go for antimatter bombardments on Hadrian and Emperor William's location rather than continue trying to capture them. King Dorayaica wouldn't be pleased with this, but Hushana figured it's better to have them killed rather than have the possibility of escaping.
• The Good King: Emperor William shows this in how personally he takes the losses of life on Carteia even as they celebrate its rebuilding. He also stays during the siege of Perfugium to ensure the safe evacution of surviving colonists. Hadrian addresses future readers that regardless of whatever sins of the Sollan empire, its Emperor at the time is a great and good man.
• Gradual Regeneration: Hadrian gets new boneless baby fingers regenerated and it takes a while for them to grow to normal size. It also takes even longer for the bones to begin growing into what's little more than a few hollow meat packages.
• Healing Magic Is the Hardest: Well, far-future medical technology in this case. Replacing Hadrian's fingers isn't simply cloning new fingers and attaching them. Instead boneless new fingers were regenerating on the hand for weeks and later bones grew into them. Fixing Hadrian's damaged shoulder was even more difficult and required intricate surgery from an elite doctor.
• Heroic BSoD: Hadrian blanks out a number of times when his PTSD kicks in, but he gets the largest one when he sees Valka's transport under attack and then wiped off the scanners. He collapses and doesn't get up even when Emperor William orders him to translate what Attavaisa is saying. When he does get up, he's gone beyond rage into Tranquil Fury and Attavaisa is on the receiving end
• Hero of Another Story: Hadrian writes that his escort Captain Hector Oliva will one day face against Grand Vayadan Vati Inamna when he invades Nessus, but that's Hector's story. Hadrian wasn't there.
• I Need a Freaking Drink: As he sits down for what he knows will be the first of several interrogations after his return, Hadrian asks for a glass of the strongest liquor he can think of, Jaddian zvanya.
• Is This Thing Still On?: One soldier, seeing Valka kitted out for the first time, wonders aloud if she's "the Devil's witch". Another snaps that Hadrian and Valka can hear him, all of them being on the same comm channel.
• Kill the God: Emperor William has assigned Imperial Intelligence, HAPSIS, and later Hadrian with the task of finding a living Watcher/Monumental before the Cielcin can and then killing it.
• Kill the Host Body: Kaim destroys a rampaging nahute by slicing the soldier it had burrowed into in half.
• Killer Robot: The security golems of MINOS are Lightning Bruisers capable of moving faster than the human eye can track and punching through shields.
• Laser Blade: The Extrasolarian magus Takeshi duels Hadrian with a unique plasma-based sword. Hadrian goes up against it with the Cielcin ceramic scimitar he found in the previous book. The ceramic sword has an extremely high temperature tolerance and can block a hit or two but it quickly breaks against the plasma sword.
• Ludicrous Mêlée Accuracy: MINOS's security robots strike through shields by pulling their punches for just the fraction of a second needed to pass through, then accelerating them back to bone-pulverizing speed just as quickly.
• Nothing Is Scarier: What exactly happened to the expedition to Nairi is left ambiguous. William only states that, although they did find the body of a Watcher all of the men sent were dead, and what transmissions where sent back would disturb even Hadrian.
• Offscreen Moment of Awesome: Despite being outnumbered and ambushed, Bassander's leadership at the battle of Perfugium results in almost all of the evacuation transports being rescued.
• Psychic Strangle: When a MINOS scientist tries to talk back to Urbaine, he assumes control of her nervous system via her neural lace and shuts down her breathing.
• Power Incontinence: Hadrian's powers don't come back until after Valka dies when the colonial transport she's on is blown up by Cielcin interceptors. Hadrian then uses his power offensively on Attavasia while the Vayadan is in outer space and he himself is on the surface of Perfugium
• Pyrrhic Victory: For the Cielcin. Perfugium had been conquered and the Martian Legion fleet smashed, but Hadrian and the Emperor escaped and Vayadan Attavaisa is killed.
• Precision F-Strike: Blurted out by Hadrian after Lorien punches him in his injured shoulder.
• Rare Random Drop: In finding Gibson's highmatter blade chamber, Hadrian goes over what he knows about highmatter and how rare it is. Highmatter is an extremely rare byproduct found in the activation of particle accelerators, only a trace amount of Baryon-5 particles might be made. It takes trillions of these exotic matter particles to create the blade of a sword as the Baryon-5 needs further refining and crafting.
• Raygun: In the fight with MINOS, Hadrian and later Valka make use of a strange gun that they capture from a fallen magus. Turns out to be an extremely powerful laser beam that instantly punches through even the heavy armor on a golem.
• Redundant Rescue: Hadrian relates that by the time he and Crim had broken into the Tavrosi hospital, they found that Valka had already killed her would-be brainwashers.
• Retirony: Hadrian finally secures a promise from Alexander to allow him and Valka to retire from the war after Perfugium. By the end of the battle, Valka is dead and Hadrian is forced to flee into exile.
• Shout-Out: When Hadrian claims to hear from the Quiet, Nicephorus sarcastically asks him if Zeus or Ulmo speak to him as well.
  • At one point during the battle at DB-639D, after the Dragonslayers detonate a second dome, a MINOS scientist exclamations that "this is getting out of hand" as there were now two of them.
  • Later, during the infiltration of Perfugium, Hadrian frets that his presence is endangering the mission, as the Cielcin will make killing or capturing him a priority.
  • The evacuation of Perfugium plays out much like the evacuation of Echo Base, with mission control calling out the first flight being away, to the cheers of those in the base.
• Shown Their Work: Takeshi's plasma sword glows bluish-white and is not as effective as other plasma weapons in the setting, which glow purple. In real life, Violet stars are significantly hotter than blue stars.
• Shrouded in Myth: Hadrian's isolated journey from Akterumu to Colchis becomes yet another part of his legend across the galaxy, with embellishments such as duels with devils and Extrasolarian kings.
• Shut Up, Kirk!: William refuses to evacuate Perfugium, not willing to consider his one life as more important than the millions of colonists stranded on the planet. Hadrian snaps back that William is Caesar, and that as the symbol of human civilization his death could doom trillions''. William is briefly stunned.
• Single Tear: Hadrian blames the rain for the lone streak of water that runs down his face as he leaves Nessus for the last time.
• Snicket Warning Label: Inverted; Hadrian pauses the narrative just before recounting the events at Perfugium and admits that he has had a very hard time continuing to write past this section.
• Super-Soldier: Prince Kaim brings an army of Jaddian mamluks who are genetically engineered to be able to do things like a 12 foot jumping slash with a highmatter sword. Between their biology and mastery of the highmatter sword, these warriors are a match even for the Cielcin chimeras.
• Survivor Guilt: Both Hadrian and Lorien are struck hard by this as they try to move forward after the death of the entire Red Company.
• Synthetic Plague: MINOS has given the Cielcin a carcinogenic plague LTH-81, which is similar to what the Mericanii machines used on its human subjects. It's an airborne virus and can eventually kill the entire population of a planet with cancers.
• Talk to the Fist: When the Emperor William brings Hadrian to award his rescue of the 600,000+ civillians and the imperial retinue, Hadrian asks to be released from duty - something that the Emperor is loathe to do at such a pivotal juncture at the war and it was a request that's also a breaking of Hadrian's oath. When William refuses and later unintentionly insults deceased Valka "She's just a Tavrosi", Hadrian punchess him hard in the face, which bloodies and breaks the Emperor's nose
• There Are No Therapists: Hadrian never gets any psychological support and it seems this is a bias of the Sollan Empire. So for decades, he's been running around with PTSD from being a Cielcin prisoner and seeing his comrades get slaughtered. They can fix his body, including his missing fingers but there's no couch to tell a psychologist about his deepest fears.
• Thrown Out the Airlock: Hadrian kills Attavaisa by shattering the windows of his throne room, causing the Vayadan and his entourage to be sucked into space.
• Tomes of Prophecy and Fate: The Emperor tells Hadrian what only a few in the empire know, that there's book called the Act of Wills a.k.a The Book of the Son of Suns which is a personal journal from the God-Emperor's mistress that also recorded some portentous prophecies from him.
• Tragic Keepsake: Hadrian gets a number of these, one was the highmatter chamber from Tor Gibson's a.k.a Prince Philippe Bourbon sword and another is a decades-old piece of candy from Crim found in a coat that Hadrian once left behind. His final keepsake is the phylactery from Valka after the transport she was on was shot down
• Use Your Head: Hadrian was losing his sword fight with the magus Takeshi. He saved himself by headbutting Takeshi's plasma sword with his ceramic helm, which deflected the blade away.
• Vestigial Empire: Hadrian discounts the threat of the Commonwealth as a paper tiger because the Cielcin have eaten so much of the population. At the end of the story, the Commonwealth had probably replenished its lost population with homunculi as they become a major threat raiding Sollan territories
• What Have I Done: Hadrian is horrified when he realizes he's killed Tor Gibson's son when he had Augustin Bourbon assassinated.
• Who You Gonna Call?: Turns out the Emperor already knows about the Enar/Vaiartu and the Watchers/Monumentals. The empire has a special division, HAPSIS, tasked with investigating ruins and activity involving ancient alien civilizations.
• Wrongfully Attributed: Urbaine boasts that, just as Aristotle could move the whole world with the right lever, so could he move the whole galaxy with the right control over Syriani. Hadrian takes a small amount of satisfaction in pointing out that it was actually Archimedes who said that.
• You Are in Command Now: With William either trapped, captured, or dead on Perfugium, Alexander is forced to take charge of the Imperial rescue effort. Hadrian presses that, should this fail, the prince must claim the throne if the Empire is going to survive.
• You Are Too Late: MINOS has been producing their cancer-inducing virus for decades before the Sollans raided their production facility; it has already been spread across the galaxy.
• Weaponized Exhaust: Discussed; the blast doors and reinforced tunnels on Perfugium are designed to keep shuttle exhaust from the launch bays from incinerating the entire complex. This is problem with the planet is under siege, as the Cielcin breaking through the wrong section could kill millions.
• We Used to Be Friends: William truly does care for Hadrian, and as insensitive as he often acts, he really wants to keep him from being killed by the Chantry. After Hadrian ruins this by punching him in full view of the court, the Emperor is truly sorrowful that he was not able to keep Hadrian on his side.