WARNING: This page contains Late Arrival Spoilers for previous works in The Sun Eater series.
Demon in White is the third book in The Sun Eater, a Science Fantasy Space Opera series by Christopher Ruocchio.
Over a century after his fateful encounter aboard the Demiurge, Hadrian Marlowe continues to serve the Emperor as a Knight Victorian. At the head of the Red Company, Hadrian has become one of mankind's greatest heroes. The stories say that he has defeated two Cielcin princes in single combat, won countless battles against the Pale menace—and that he is the Halfmortal, the man that cannot be killed. Many in the Imperial Court feel threatened by Hadrian's growing fame, and begin to take steps to counter it.
As the war against the Cielcin continues, rumors spread across the galaxy of a coming threat; a King among the Pale, one who seeks to unite the xenobyte tribes under its banner and supplant the Empire itself, the silver-crowned demon of Hadrian's visions.
And behind it all, the strange being known as the Quiet continues to manipulate Hadrian's destiny. His quest to discover more about this power will uncover the secrets of the founding of the Sollan Empire, and the very nature of reality itself...
This book provides examples of:
- Agony of the Feet: Hadrian manages to overcome Irshan by stabbing him in the foot just before the Maeskolos can execute him.
- Air-Vent Passageway: Lorien's small frame allows him to just barely sneak through the vents of the Tamerlane.
- Arranged Marriage: The emperor decrees that Hadrian should be joined into his family by marrying Selene.
- Awesome Moment of Crowning: Hadrian recounts that, after scouring the earth of all life and machine, the first Emperor William donned a radiation suit and walked alone through the ruins of the Roman Forum on earth, where he crowned himself emperor of all mankind.
- Bare-Handed Blade Block: Hadrian manages to catch Irshan's highmatter sword with his left hand; his muscles are lacerated, but the adamant bones are too strong to be cut.
- Bird People: The Irchtani are a small bird-like people with large wings that are capable of flight. They're one of the most assimilated xenobite people in the Empire.
- BFS: The Irchtani use great swords that are unusually long even for that type of weapon. The reach on them is so long that the Irchtani often land the first and decapitating last hit in a fight against the Cielcin despite the Pale being so much taller and longer-limbed.
- Boarding Party: Where they used to gun down unshielded Cielcin vessels, this is apparently becoming a more common tactic for Imperial vessels. This is also the main way Cielcin attack human ships; launching shuttles with diamond cutters to attack the parts of a ship that aren't covered in adamant. Once through, Cielcin superior strength and speed usually prevail, particularly as most of the human crew members are usually in fugue.
- Broke Your Arm Punching Out Cthulhu: An enraged Prince Alexander continues to punch the unresisting Hadrian, until Hadrian uses his power to interpose an outcome in which Alexander whiffs his final punch and ends up breaking his hand on Hadrian's head.
- Celebrating the Heroes: After defeating Iubalu and recovering the captured legions, Hadrian is given a triumphal parade through the streets of Forum.
- Close-Range Combatant: The Irchtani irregulars are restricted to melee having only swords but because of their flight, quickness and the great length of their swords they do well against the mighty Cielcin.
- Cosmic Horror Reveal: This is the book that shows that the universe is a much darker and more "supernatural" place than initially thought as Hadrian learns of ancient gods who nearly destroyed the universe and the lone being that opposed them.
- Crystal Spires and Togas: Forum, the capital world of the Empire, is a habitable gas giant dotted with ornate floating cities that fully embody the Sollan's Ancient Grome aesthetic.
- Cult: Much like the ancient mystery religions of Rome, many Imperial soldiers worship gods not approved by the Chantry, including Christ, the Cid Arthur, and, after the events of Howling Dark, Hadrian himself.
- Dead Guy on Display: Iubalu's corpse is paraded through the streets of Forum as part of Hadrian's triumph, before being publicly incinerated.
- Deity Identity Confusion: Hadrian had assumed that "the Watchers" was the Cielcin term for the Quiet; in this book, he finally learns that the Watchers are a different set of Eldritch Abominations entirely.
- Eldritch Abomination: The Quiet reveals to Hadrian in a vision that the Cielcin worship impossibly ancient, life-devouring, kraken-like entities called the Watchers.
- Expecting Someone Taller: Iubalu mocks Hadrian by remarking that it's suprise that the warrior who slew Aranata and Ulurani is so small.
- Floating Continent: The first and third acts of the book take place in the Eternal City on Forum, the enormous capital of the Empire floating within the atmosphere of a gas giant.
- Foreshadowing: After recording his kiss with Valka before a battle, Hadrian wonders in his narration why this particular kiss has stuck in his memory more than so many others, including one during the escape back to Colchis that is recorded at the end of Kingdoms of Death.
- Gibson remarks that Hadrian is the closest thing to a son he has left, hinting at a reveal to come in the next book.
- As the Red Company relaxes on Forum and reflect on how long they've been fighting, Siran expresses a desire to retire one day. A few chapters later, she chooses to remain on Colchis when the rest of the company leaves.
- Frame-Up: The Chantry attempts to use its access to the Tamerlane to plant evidence that Hadrian has consorted with illegal technology.
- Future Imperfect: While debating the merits of various historical military commanders with his friends, Lorien claims that Harrington was a fictional character, just like Wellington. Hadrian thinks he's wrong... about Harrington.
- Later on, he ponders the fact that Christopher Marcus Gibson, a man born in the 1990s, might have dined with Winston Churchill or Napoleon.
- Genre Shift: Demon in White introduces elements of Cosmic Horror with the revelation of the natures of the Quiet and the Watchers.
- God-Emperor: The first emperor of the Sollan Empire, William Windsor, is worshiped as the God-Emperor by the modern empire. Given prophecy and other powers by the Quiet, he led humanity against the machine rulers of the Mericanii. This involved nuking Earth into a radioactive wasteland, but no one holds that against him.
- According to prophecy, the Son of Earth, the God-Emperor reborn, will one day return to restore Earth to her children. Many who witness his powers believe that Hadrian is the fulfillment of this prophecy.
- Good Wears White: White is the traditional color of the Imperial Family and only allowed for others on special occasions. During his triumph on Forum after defeating Iubalu, Hadrian is dressed in an all-white uniform.
- Great Big Library of Everything: The Imperial Library on Colchis stores books on nearly every subject in humanity's millennia-long history.
- Green-Eyed Monster: Empress Maria is very envious of the rising reputation of Hadrian and seeks his downfall; bonus points for actually having green-eyes.
- Grew Beyond Their Programming: The reader learns more of the history of the Mericanii; their A.I. would come to rule humanity as gods and imprison everyone under their domain in Lotus Eater Machines, afflicting them with immortality inducing cancers and using their brains as processors. With this advanced computational power, they were able to discern the existence of the Quiet and the Watchers and, according to Horizon, would have been able to match them had they not been defeated by King William.
- Internal Retcon: Hadrian won the battle of Aptucca without spilling a single drop of human blood. This is true because the Emperor declares it, and Hadrian had better not contradict the official story.
- Impossible Task: Hadrian views his first mission from the Emperor, to recover the legions lost in transit from Gododdin, as this.
- Kissing Cousins: The Emperor and Empress are cousins, as the Empire wishes to keep the specialized genes and titles of the Imperial Family from being too spread out.
- Knighting: On Forum, Hadrian thinks back to his knighthood ceremony after the events of the last book.
- Lie Detector: Discussed; Hadrian is hooked up to a machine that seems identical to a stereotypical lie detector, and is asked a series of yes or no questions. When he points out that these indicators have been proven not to actually be able to discern whether or not the interrogee is lying, the inquisitor explains that the machine is actually designed to detect whether or not his involuntary responses are in line with a real human being and the procedure has nothing to do with determining Hadrian's truthfulness.
- Lightspeed Leapfrog: Discussed by Tor Arrian; because the Mericanii never invented faster-than-life travel, it should be impossible for any of their probes to be beyond the limits of human exploration.
- Lock-and-Load Montage: Chapter 21 opens with Hadrian suiting up into his full Red Company battle kit.
- Lotus-Eater Machine: Hadrian draws parallels between the virtual realities that pre-fall humanity under the Mericanii had trapped themselves in and Homer's lotus eaters.
- Nothing but Skulls: Within the hold of a Legion transport ship captured by the Cielcin, the Red Company finds a monument of hundreds of stacked human skulls.
- Obstructive Bureaucrat: Pallino regales his friends with a story of an extremely zealous tram security officer who insisted on checking his kit for weapons once, despite the fact that Pallino was covered in blood and holding one eye in at the time, not to mention that his kit included a very large and obvious plasma rifle, as well as several grenades.
- Offscreen Moment of Awesome: During the Time Skip, Hadrian defeated another Cielcin prince, Ulurani, this time in a open duel.
- Lorien, Crim, and Ilex infiltrate a chantry frigate and extract a traitorous Red Company lieutenant in order to secure her testimony. Hadrian is in lockdown at the time and can only imagine what might be happening.
- Open Secret: Publicly acknowledging the stories of Hadrian's resurrections and the cult that worships him, even to deny them, would bring even more strife between Hadrian, the Emperor, the nobiles, and the Chantry, despite the fact that all involved know something happened on the Demiurge.
- Our Founder: The Archivist's Grotto features a statue of Imore, the first scholiast.
- Our Humans Are Different: The Mericanii machines kept their enslaved humans trapped in simulated realities by turning them into immortal blobs of cancer. These cancer blobs would then be harvested of excess growths to keep them from being crushed by the weight. In those cases where a cancer blob did die, it was replaced with a homunculus.
- Praetorian Guard: This novel introduces Dorayaica's vayadayan, its bodyguard-concubine-generals. Each has been enhanced beyond the regular Cielcin chimeras.
- Precision F-Strike: Hadrian's frustration at once again being targeted for an assassination attempt leads to one of his few uses of profanity.
- Projected Man: According to legend, the Mericanii seduced mankind with beautiful women made of light. Aboard an ancient colony ship, Hadrian comes to understand these myths when he comes face to face with the holographic avatar of the ship's artificial intelligence.
- Rags to Riches: Hadrian has been restored to the nobility as the head of a new house and, alongside monetary wealth, been given an extremely rare dreadnought in lieu of being landed nobility.
- The Reveal: Up to this book, Hadrian had believed that the Cielcin worshiped the Quiet as gods. We learn that the Quiet is actually a singular entity, and the Watchers are a completely different, much more malevolent group of gods.
- Royal Brat: Alexander has his flaws, but they're vastly overshadowed by the terrible behavior of his brothers Richard and Philip.
- Sadly Mythtaken: Hadrian had only heard of the figures of Arthurian Legend from the cult of the Cid Arthur that mingles these myths with Buddhism and makes the mistake of mentioning this around William, who claims descent from the "real" Arthur.
- Science Is Bad: Discussed by Gibson and Hadrian as they reflect on the actions of Felsenburgh. Gibson explains that the last president's flaw was in thinking he could control the artificial intelligences he had created; the orders of the scholiasts were created to ensure that the most intelligent had their egos checked with humility and philosophy.
- Shout-Out: When informed that he'll be bunking with the junior officers, Alexander protests that this is both outrageous and not fair. Later on, he pouts that he doesn't like sand.
- While debating which historic commander would perform the best in the modern day, one of Lorien's friends suggests Harrington. Lorien asserts that she was a fictional character, but Hadrian isn't so sure.
- Significant Green-Eyed Redhead: The entire Sollan Imperial family are green-eyed redheads. Their resemblance of each other is so fine-tuned that they almost appear to be clones rather than family members.
- Subverted Catchphrase: At the end of chapter 33, Hadrian reflects that there are endings, reader... but this is not one of them.
- Super-Soldier: Thanks to its alliance with the Exalted, Dorayaica's forces include chimeras, cybernetic Cielcin warriors with enhanced strength and speed, armed with built-in plasma burners and arm blades.
- The vayadayan are even more fearsome; each custom-designed for a different tactical niche and armored with near-impenetrable adamant armor.
- Sworn in by Oath: Hadrian makes several oaths as he is knighted by the Emperor. Too many, according to his narration; he had to look up what he would have said in order to get it right for the account.
- Time Skip: The novel picks up almost a century after the end of Howling Dark.
- Within the novel, chapter 18 briefly summarizes the nine-year voyage of the Tamerlane from Gododdin that Hadrian stays awake for.
- Tuckerization: The Legion officers that Lorien is drinking with in chapter 31 are all named after Baen Books authors. Their conversation, on which historic military commander would do the best in modern times, is based off of several conversations overheard by the author.
- Walking Tank: Demon In White marks the first appearance of the Imperial Legion's colossi, enormous walkers that serve as mobile artillery platforms and troop transports.
- Weaksauce Weakness: A Mericanii A.I. can easily be contained by a simple Faraday cage. Additionally, it's the biological chips that greatly augment a Mericanii's power and intelligence. Without the biological components harvested from its cancer-ridden humans, its intelligence is still formidable but not to the levels approaching godhood they had before.
- World's Most Beautiful Woman: Empress Maria is widely seen as the most beautiful in the Empire, rivaled only by her (near-identical) daughters.
- Xanatos Gambit: Sending Hadrian after the lost legions benefits William whether he succeeds or fails; had he failed, Hadrian would have been disgraced and no longer a rival for the people's adoration. If Hadrian finds the legions, it still keeps him off Forum and out of the public light for a few decades, the Empire recovers valuable soldiers, and William can spin the victory for his own acclaim.
- You Can Barely Stand: Said nearly word-for-word by Hadrian after a concentrated burst from a plasma howitzer has nearly crippled Iubalu.
