I was gifted a Science Fiction book, fat like a brick, and tightly written: The Sun Eater, Book One: Empire of Silence, by Christopher Ruocchio. It is a deep dive into a human Starfaring Empire in a struggle with an alien nation; through the strong personal lense of a guy called Hadrian, who introduces himself right away is a big mover and shaker, a noble, a master, and someone who destroyed a sun. (“Sun Eater”!)

Dune-ish

What is striking is that the author has very obviously read the Dune books closely, or repeatedly, and has been deeply inspired by them; so deeply, in fact, that many of the early passages remind the reader very strongly of Paul Atreides, the Guilds, the Great Houses, body shields, and the weight of responsibility that heirs of planetary rulers have to carry; he has even lifted some passages relatively close to verbatim from Frank Herbert’s masterpieces (the throne room!), and both Paul and Hadrian are heirs to planet rulers who are related to the Emperor of Mankind…

…still, despite these very dominant overlaps from noble houses and house retainers over body shields, doctors with diamond-shaped markings on the forehead and guilds/consortiums, up to the basic story of the rise of a young noble from relative obscurity to mover and shaker of the galaxy … despite so much overlap that it feels like the author is slapping it into the readers’ faces, it is still not a rip-off of Dune; enough is different to set it apart.
And not just the absence of Spice on an important desert planet, or the presence of an alien race at war with the humans, or the tiny detail that the diamond-marking on the doctor’s head are cultural, not profession-related.

Where Dune focuses tightly on the higher strata of society and lets the lower classes fade into background noise, Empire of Silence takes more time with “nobodies”. I would say that Empire of Silence is slower than Dune … which says something, because while I found Dune gripping and intense, I know a lot of people think it could be a couple hundred pages shorter.

That’s how I feel about Empire of Silence, which sometimes really required an effort to keep going, and only really picks up speed when Hadrian decides to ditch his life and go out into the void.

Dune is also very driven toward a particular point in time, while Empire of Silence is more haphazard in its pacing. Which makes sense because Dune is a story told to us as it happens, while Empire of Silence is a reminiscence, and memory does not work very linear.

Privileged Rebel

Regarding the character, while Paul Atreides, despite being schooled in special Arts and singled out as the Chosen One and later the Mahdi, keeps second-guessing himself and musing about his unwilling participation in his “Fate” — the protagonist of Empire of Silence comes across a bit more thick-headed, is deeper steeped in his high birth, and it is felt how different these nobles are from normal people, in every way.

Their main difference, I think, is that Hadrian has grown up shielded from the galaxy and secure in his “rights”. He expects to wield great power but is not prepared for it, and is envious of his brother’s interactions with his quite distant father. That may have to do with the fact itself that he has a brother, and that his father could theoretically let his people grow any number of other heirs in vats whenever he’d feel like it and was displeased with his present sons, whereas Paul truly struggles with his position, and grew up as an only child, the definitive heir, ironclad, and only has a sister when he is already grown into his role, for which he has been prepared much better.

But enough about Dune now. Suffice it to say that there are many parallels.
Let us focus on Empire of Silence.

Christopher Ruocchio succeeds in maintaining the special status of such a highborn as Hadrian, torn between distaste for his lot while being at the same time very deeply coloured by his outstanding privilege that he is hardly able to even comprehend how lucky he is, being too busy whining about the unfairness of the drawbacks of being a highborn.

Much of that is conveyed by the fact that the book is basically an autobiographically tinted re-telling of the life of Hadrian Marlowe; a long time later, slightly filtered through the lens of someone who is a different person now.

Up, up, and away …

Young Hadrian says he would love to be a normal person and avoid a lonely life as a noble, but it is clear in his actions that he very much wants to rule, and in fact needs to, as he does not have the skills to live without servants.

And yet — the nature of stories is change.

Hadrian must leave home, and go out into space. Only that way adventure lies.

… and down

But, as is the nature of story too, and as was foreshadowed in the run-up to his daring start out to the stars, he fumbles, stumbles, and falls.
And all that’s left of his polite, privileged noble upbringing is what he carries in that thick head of his, and he has to find his feet all on his own, work his way out of misfortune, and become more than an heir: a self-made man.

The world is soft the way the ocean is. Ask any sailor what I mean. But even when it is at its most violent, focus on the beauty of it. The ugliness of the world will come at you from all sides. There is no avoiding it. All the schooling of the universe will not stop that. But in most places in the galaxy, nothing is happening. The nature of things is peaceful, and that is a mighty thing.

~ Gibson

In conclusion

Now, what do I think about it?

It takes some time to warm up to, but then it is a good read and shapes up to something like an Origin Story.

Its great strength is the world building, and setting up the pieces: It is a plausible Empire, rich in detail, where you can zoom out and regard the Empire as a whole and the power politics of the elite, and you can zoom in to see a city, and you can zoom in further to street level, and these perspectives are so different that you could just as easily be on a different planet than you could be around the corner.

That is very realistic, for that is how reality is: Given the money we can fly to Madeira or Bali, and discover new places. But even in Bali we discover only a fraction, and in Bali as well as in our home town, there are layers of reality hidden from us, which we can discover if the circumstances will it.

Christopher Ruocchio manages to bring this realness to life and make it feel like a beginning… with lots of foreshadowing for things to come after this first book.

The author is, as I said, deeply inspired by Dune. Denying that would be like a demanding a paternity test for a kid that has the eyes, chin, and ears that look like ripped off your face. But he brings his own style to it, and his book can stand on its own; like a child grows up to be different from its dad – and it is an Origin Story, where Dune 1 tells, in principle, a whole story complete from a beginning to an end.

Yes, Dune continues, but it does not strictly HAVE to.

Empire of Silence MUST continue to complete its story promise.

The philosophical and political grounding feels less deep than Frank Herbert’s, but that’s alright: not every book can be, or even need, or even should be designed to shake up political beliefs.

This one is designed to tell an epic, the story of a man who fell from riches to rock bottom, deeper than Paul Atreides ever fell, to thief, beggar, and nobody, not a chosen one — just a pampered rich-boy with misplaced illusions of his own importance in the galaxy — and who fought back from rags up …. (this is the first book) … and (in later books) to the most horrible war crimes of human history, legend-level atrocities, and to a place of actual importance in the galaxy.

If that sounds interesting to you, go for it.

And if you liked Dune’s story better than its political subtext,

and felt that the pace needs not be faster, then definitely go for it.