Literature / Empire of Silence

"Light. The light of that murdered sun still burns me. I see it through my eyelids, blazing out of history from that bloody day, hinting at fires indescribable. It is like something holy, as if it were the light of God's own heaven that burned the world and billions of lives with it. I carry that light always, seared into the back of my mind. I make no excuses, no denials, no apologies for what I have done. I know what I am."

Empire of Silence is the first book in The Sun Eater Science Fantasy series, by Christopher Ruocchio.

Hadrian Marlowe is revered and reviled as the man who ended the millennia-long war between the human Sollan Empire and the savage alien race called the Cielcin. He is mankind's greatest hero and worse murderer; The Halfmortal, the Palekiller, the one who burned every last Cielcin from the sky by destroying a sun— and along with them, four billion human lives, including the Emperor himself.

But this was never supposed to be Hadrian's war. As a young man, he desired only peace, fleeing a life as a torturer, a political instrument of his father, only to end up the tool of far greater forces.

The novel is told from the perspective of Hadrian, recounting his life story long after the events within have past. From his boyhood conflict with his father, to being stranded on a foreign world, forced to fight as a gladiator and survive the intrigue of a planetary court, Hadrian begins the first steps that will take him towards his fiery destiny-and to an enemy far more inhuman and incomprehensible than he could have imagined...

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This book provides examples of:

• 13 Is Unlucky: The clock strikes thirteen (Delos having longer days than Earth) as Hadrian leaves Devil's Rest for the last time, portending the various misfortunes and adventures he is about to embark on.
• Abusive Parents: Alistair sees his sons and daughter as little more than a means by which the Marlowe legacy can live on, and shows little concern for them otherwise. When Hadrian is nearly beaten to death by muggers, Alistair's only response is anger that his son embarrassed the family name.
• Accidental Pun: At one point, Gilliam sneers that Count Mataro has queer notions about propriety. He quickly realizes the poor choice of words, to his embarrassment and irritation.
• Belief Makes You Stupid: Hadrian expresses this view during the events of the novel, but admits in his narration that his disposition towards religion in general had been unfairly tainted by his exposure to the Terran Chantry.
• Cold-Blooded Torture: One of the Chantry's favorite activities. Hadrian is forced to assist with Uvanari's "interrogation" as he's the only one who speaks Cielcin.
• Darwinist Desire: Count Mataro seeks to marry Hadrian into his family because his genes are superior to most other palatines, being closer to the Imperial Family.
• Drowning My Sorrows: After his duel with Gilliam and finding out about Lord Mataro's plan to marry him to Anaïs, Hadrian spends the rest of the day in a wine bottle.
• Duel to the Death: Hadrian attempts to defeat Gilliam via Victory by First Blood, but the intus is a much more skilled swordsman than he anticipated, resulting in their fight becoming this.
• Foreshadowing: While awaiting Cat's death, Hadrian tells her a story about the warlord hero, Kharn Sagara and how he infiltrated the Extrasolarians and brought down their kings, the Exalted. This would foreshadow the encounter that Hadrian has with a certain legendary figure in the 2nd book.
• Gilded Cage: How Hadrian sees his time in House Mataro, especially once he learns of Balian's plans to marry him to Anaïs.
• Gladiator Games: The Colosso matches are a popular source of entertainment on both Delos and Emesh. Hadrian enters the Borosevo Colosso and fights as a myrmidon in the third act of the novel.
• I Will Punish Your Friend for Your Failure: Alistair knows that Hadrian asked Gibson to help him flee to the scholiasts instead of joining the chantry, but for the sake of appearances can only punish Gibson. He threatens to have him killed if Hadrian tries to escape again.
• Mugging the Monster: Played with. The muggers who attack Hadrian are able to beat him down pretty easily, but when they see his ring, they realize that they're already dead; nothing in the galaxy is going to stop house Marlowe from hunting down and executing them.
• No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: Hadrian is brutally beaten by the muggers who accost him. Even with the Marlowe's advanced medical technology, he takes weeks to recover.
• No OSHA Compliance: The conditions in Delos' uranium mines are pretty terrible due to Alistair keeping quotas high while being unwilling to purchase needed new equipment such as radiation suits or mining crawlers.
• Noodle Incident: Hadrian protests Valka's accusation that Imperial culture is chauvinistic by pointing out that his mother once fought a duel over a woman. Well, two women. Well, two women and a horse.
• Rock Beats Laser: In his first colosso match, Hadrian and the myrmidons are armed with simple swords and shields and matched against a team of professional gladiators with plasma rifles and energy shields. The myrmidons manage to win, although the do take several losses.
• Riches to Rags: Stranded on the streets of Borosevo, Hadrian is reduced to a life of begging and scrounging for scaps.
• Shout-Out:
  • The first scene of the novel involves Hadrian and Crispin sparring as the narrative explains the mechanics of personal shielding in a homage to a similar scene in Dune.
    • In the same scene, Hadrian muses that in legends, the hero is frequently forced to perform mundane tasks such as cleaning vehicles before he can actually learn to fight.
• Sibling Rivalry: The scholarly, genteel Hadrian often clashed with his brutish, blindly-loyal to their father Crispin. At least, that's how Hadrian writes it. In The Lesser Devil, we get Crispin's slightly different perspective on their relationship.
• Snake Versus Mongoose: Hadrian tells a story at a dinner party of Roban taking him to see a fight between a mongoose and a venomous snake as a thinly-veiled insult against Grand Prior Ligeia Vas.
• Starfish Aliens: The Umandh are far more bizarre than any other alien species seen so far, resembling three-legged sea anemone.
• Super-Soldier: Jaddians aren't subject to Sollan laws against extreme genetic-engineering, so Jaddian swordsmasters are as much a product of a laboratory as they are a combat school.
• Talk to the Fist: Gilliam carries on with his accusations against Valka long enough to push Hadrian over the edge into decking him.
• Throwing Down the Gauntlet: Hadrian punching Gilliam forces him into revealing his own palatine status and retroactively claiming the strike was a formal challenge to a duel.
• Torture Technician: The Chantry inquisitor terrifyingly proficient at her job.
• Underestimating Badassery: Hadrian assumes that Gilliam won't put up much of a challenge. The moment their duel starts, however, he is quickly reminded that despite his birth defects, Vas is still a palatine, and is still from Emesh, not to mention clearly experienced with the sword.
• Waking Up Elsewhere: The first sign that something has gone with Hadrian's journey is him waking up, not on Teukros but in a street clinic on Emesh, blind and coughing up fugue-gel.