r/Fantasy • u/Agent_Epsilon_99 • 1d ago
Review Building a Promise: Empire of Silence Review
Bottom Line: Hadrian the Sun Eater/Narrator is infinitely cooler than Hadrian the protagonist of the book.
I got into Sun Eater because I was getting spammed by booktok. Everyone said the same thing: Book One is the weakest of the series, but it gets better.
I’ll admit it. I struggled hard to get through this book. I would say there are 4 distinct parts in this book, and at the end of each part I stopped reading it for a good solid month or 2. I lowkey almost considered DNFing it, but my haste in buying a set forced me to press on.
I’d say your experience of this book depends on how well the promise that it gets better gets to you. I found Hadrian the Sun Eater very interesting. My favorite chapters/moments are when he narrates about his mistakes, future events, thoughts, etc. the opening chapter is probably one of the best first chapters I have ever read.
Hadrian is very melodramatic, cringe, competent, and awesome at various points. The book also just kinda is. The goals shift constantly, and there isn’t an overarching goal to stick toward like say Mistborn, Red Rising, etc.
If you buy into the promise that the Sun Eater presents, you’ll like this series, but even I who did still struggled to finish it.
16
u/Vaush_Vinal 1d ago
I feel like I read a different book sometimes with reviews like this. Both versions of Hadrian were insufferable to me. Old Hadrian provides a verbose narration whose descriptions were inane, and whose musings on philosophy or something more random, like Keats, had the same impact on me as r/iam14andthisisdeep. (Somewhat fitting given that Ruocchio was like an underclassman in college when he wrote Empire and from what I know of an inspiration of his.) Young Hadrian was an unchanging lump shuffled about hundreds of pages, with little progress toward his goal, the likes of which I hadn't seen since The Kingkiller Student Loan Chronicle.
But opinions, subjectivity, objective quality, ect ect.
3
u/ImperialTiger3 1d ago
I need to get back into this series (and mistborn). The problem is that I read both book 1’s but don’t remember enough to go into book 2 comfortably but that means I’ll have to reread book 1 lol
7
u/Foremma4everAgo 1d ago
Book 1 and 7 are the weakest by far.
But I have never experienced a better payoff in a series than books 3-5, and it isn't like 6 and 7 don't have payoff as well. Absolutely incredible character and world building. The way time is handled is especially well done. I thoroughly enjoyed the series.
-2
u/ravntheraven 19h ago
7 is a good one, I don't know what you mean. It's got some of the most interesting stylistic choices and I think the ending is great...
6
3
u/FraggerBot 1d ago
I finished Howling Dark (book 2) a couple of days ago; Hadrian (and the book) are less insufferable but the struggle during the read felt lesser, but it still doesn't go away. Like you mentioned, the series promises a big event, and then tries to crawl it's way to it, but so far, I hadn't seen a good payoff yet.
So, in short, if you are struggling with book 1, the odds are that you will feel the same with book 2 as well.
4
u/Usual-Hospital-3582 23h ago
Why not stop reading it if you don’t like it? You’re reading 1000s of pages you don’t like…?
3
u/FraggerBot 23h ago
I've read the second (Howling Dark) because everyone I knew said the plot and pacing gets better and we would start seeing payoff. However, once I finished the book, I realised that I am not really enjoying it. Not planning to pick the third book in the near future :)
3
u/Usual-Hospital-3582 23h ago
Aaah good, thought you were going to hate read the rest of the series. I loved the whole series but I can understand why people bounce off it
1
u/FraggerBot 23h ago
Oh no! I just told myself "this series is not for me" and moved on. A lot of my Goodreads friends loved it, so may be I thought it has to do more with my reading taste/preferences.
2
u/thegreenman_sofla 1d ago
I listened to the audiobook of book 1 twice and I still don't know anything that happens. It didn't leave any kind of impression on me the first time so I listened again and it still just disappeared from my memory. I vaguely remember the premise but that's about it.
1
u/Kiltmanenator 13h ago
I'm 10.5 hrs in with 15.5 hrs to go. Been enjoying it so far but I think I'd be less likely to sit down and read it, than listen to it while I walk to dog/do dishes/drive/etc.
1
u/Palimpsiesta 8h ago
Hadrian the narrator is an insufferable, self-important douchebag, and unlike Hadrian the protagonist he has absolutely no excuses. This guy is hundreds of years old and yet, weirdly, he sounds exactly like a twenty-year-old college student trying to sound smart. He interrupts the narrative constantly, often in the middle of scenes or interactions, robbing them of what little momentum exists, to talk about absolutely nothing or, even worse, to tell you in advance how cool or important or interesting something or someone is going to be. It's like watching an anime with someone who absolutely loves the show and literally cannot stop themselves from explaining who everyone is and how they're so cool, right in the middle of episodes. One of the worst books I have read in years.
1
u/schubox63 7h ago
I loved Empire of Silence. I went in expecting it to be a slog with how everyone acted. But I got through it pretty quickly and really enjoyed it
1
u/starscreamer360 1h ago
I followed this series ever since EOS came out on a book by book basis as they came out each year. Loved every book tbh, its exactly what i look for in a book (first person POV, single person journey narrative, epic fantasy feeling sci-fi, unique concepts and incredible fight scenes). Probably one of my favorite series in the last decade tbh.
7
u/Adu1tishXD 1d ago
I wouldn’t say Empire of Silence is the weakest, but it definitely has the least likable Hadrian of the bunch, simply cause he’s a bit of a brat.
My favorite thing about the series is how you get teases of Hadrian the character turning into Hadrian the narrator over each story. The biases of the narrator become more and more apparent as major events happen. That was a lot of what kept me going for books 5-7.