Empire of Silence

Empire of Silence (2018) is the first installment in The Sun Eater, an epic science fiction space opera series by American author Christopher Ruocchio. As the first novel of the series, Empire of Silence recounts protagonist Hadrian Marlowe’s early years as the unwanted son of a cruel imperial vassal. Resisting his inherited role of despot and torturer, Hadrian flees his father’s wrath and finds himself stranded on a strange planet. There, he must survive gladiatorial battle and political intrigue, all while becoming entangled in the centuries-old war of attrition between the human empire and an alien race called the Cielcin. Told from Hadrian’s deeply flawed first-person perspective, the novel wrestles with complex questions of fate and choice, the violence of imperialism and colonialism, and the role of religion and storytelling in shaping history and justifying xenophobia.

This study guide refers to the 2018 mass market paperback edition published by DAW.

Content Warning: The source material and guide feature depictions of illness, emotional abuse, physical abuse, child abuse, graphic violence, death, racism, ableism, and sexual violence.

Plot Summary

Hadrian Marlowe writes an account of his life as he awaits execution for the destruction of the planet Goddodin and its sun, which earned him the title of Sun Eater. Hadrian first sets the scene with the millennia-long reign of the Sollan Empire, which spread when humanity fled the destruction of Earth. He also relates humanity’s 300-year war with the xenobite (alien) Cielcin then begins his own story in earnest.

Hadrian is the eldest son of Alistair Marlowe, the archon (mid-ranked lord) of Meidua, a province on the planet Delos. As a member of the palatine (the aristocracy), Hadrian was engineered from the combined genetic material of his parents. He has a brutish younger brother named Crispin. Hadrian’s only friend and father-figure is his mentor, Tor Gibson, a scholiast (scholar) who fosters Hadrian’s love of knowledge and skill with languages.

When delegates from a powerful corporation visit Alistair to form a trade agreement for the Marlowe family’s uranium production, Hadrian is excluded, and Alistair’s preference for Crispin is revealed. Later, Hadrian is beaten nearly to death when he recklessly wanders outside the family castle alone, and because Alistair views the incident as a disgrace, he officially declares Crispin his heir and announces his plans to send Hadrian to the Chantry seminary. (The Chantry is the official imperial religion, which uses propaganda and torture to control the population.) Hadrian objects, but Alistair overrules him.

Hadrian enlists Gibson’s help to smuggle him off the planet with a letter of introduction to the scholiasts on the planet Teukros. However, Alistair discovers these plans and punishes Gibson by publicly whipping him and banishing him. Hadrian never sees him again. Hadrian’s mother, Lady Liliana, secretly helps him to escape Delos aboard a merchant ship.

On the ship, Hadrian is placed into cryogenic sleep for the 13-year journey to Teukros. When he wakes, he has been abandoned on a strange planet called Emesh. He spends years living in poverty on the streets with an unhoused girl named Cat. When she dies, he joins the Colosso (a form of fighting entertainment that pits enslaved people and volunteers called myrmidons against gladiators).

Hadrian befriends other myrmidons, with a man named Switch becoming his closest friend. They make plans to save their wages and buy a ship so that they can leave Emesh and have adventures. However, when Switch learns Hadrian’s true identity, he rejects him as another cruel aristocrat. Meanwhile, Hadrian hears rumors of a Cielcin prisoner in the Colosso dungeons and sneaks in to speak with it. He is caught by the lord of Emesh, Count Balian, and threatened into taking a new role as a tutor for Balian’s children.

While living in Balian’s household, Hadrian befriends Dr. Valka Onderra, a xenologist and citizen of the Demarchy of Tavros—which is separate from the Sollan Empire. He develops romantic feelings for her and also makes an enemy of Gilliam Vas, a Chantry priest who believes Hadrian to be a spy and a heretic. When Gilliam insults Valka, Hadrian lashes out in her defense. He is forced to reveal his true identity in order to avoid execution by fighting Gilliam in a duel to the death. He kills Gilliam, but Balian then reveals that Alistair has disavowed Hadrian entirely. Wanting to exploit Hadrian’s palatine genetics, Balian forces Hadrian to accept a betrothal to Anais (Balian’s daughter).

While on Emesh, Valka studies a mysterious black stone ruin called Calagah, which she believes was built by a different alien culture called the Quiet. She reveals her hypothesis to Hadrian, arguing that the Chantry’s claim that humans were the first to travel the galaxy is a lie, as the Quiet preceded them by 1 million years and left black stone ruins on many planets.

Hadrian joins Valka on a trip to Calagah. He finds a strange chamber and has a vision of the Cielcin marching across the stars, and a giant ship destroying a star. While he is there, delegates arrive from Jadd, a human group that originated from Earth but broke away from the Sollan Empire, with whom they are now allied in the war against the Cielcin.

Suddenly, a Cielcin vessel is shot down by imperial and Jaddian forces and crashes near Calagah. Hadrian joins the soldiers to capture the crash survivors, offering to negotiate their surrender. To everyone’s surprise, he succeeds. The Cielcin prisoners are taken to the capital of Emesh, where their captain, Uvanari, is interrogated and tortured by the Chantry over Hadrian’s objections. Hadrian is forced to be their translator. From Uvanari, he learns that the Cielcin worship the Quiet. Disgraced, Uvanari asks Hadrian to kill it. Hadrian enlists Valka’s help to do so without being caught. He then convinces Smythe, a commander of the imperial Legion, that it would be better to use the prisoners to negotiate with their clan leader than to torture them. He learns the leader’s name and a clue to their location: a mythical planet called Vorgossos.

Smythe agrees and conscripts Hadrian into her service, ending his betrothal to Anais. She gives him a ship and allows him to choose a crew, putting a lieutenant named Bassander Lin in charge. Hadrian asks Valka to join him and brings his myrmidon friends, including Switch.