Howling Dark Is a Slow-Burn Journey into a Compelling Sci-Fi Universe
Christopher Ruocchio made a splash last year with an impressive science fiction debut in Empire of Silence, the ambitious opening novel of the Sun Eater series. While outwardly presenting as science fiction, that book has the feel of a grimdark fantasy epic—political skullduggery leads to a precipitous fall from grace for the cloistered royal protagonist, who then must rise from the (literal) gutter to rebuild a life for himself, while tragedy stalks him all the while.
Howling Dark (Sun Eater Series #2)
Hardcover $39.00
Howling Dark (Sun Eater Series #2)
In Stock Online
Hardcover $39.00
Without abandoning that air of the epic entirely, the sequel, Howling Dark, moves more firmly into space opera territory, giving the next chapter of the fated life story of fallen prince Hadrian Marlowe a different feel.
Without abandoning that air of the epic entirely, the sequel, Howling Dark, moves more firmly into space opera territory, giving the next chapter of the fated life story of fallen prince Hadrian Marlowe a different feel.
Marlowe, doomed to become one of history’s greatest monsters (or so we’re led to believe) begins Howling Dark in far better circumstances than those in which he spent most of the first book. Years have passed, nearly all of which Hadrian has spent in the fugue of cryosleep. Upon waking, and by way of recap, his fevered mind revisits the twists and turns and betrayals and losses that previously felled him from the top tier of imperial royalty to the status of a beggar, then a gladiator, and later a mercenary. Now he’s Lord Commandant of a company under the auspices of the barbarian Normans, ostensibly fighting in the never-ending war with the alien Cielcin, but in truth carrying members of that xenobite race in hope of using those prisoners as leverage in a bid for peace—if only they can figure out how and where to make contact with the leaders of the Cielcin.
Indeed, almost everything Marlowe has done has been in service to a long-game plan to get closer to the alien leadership on the planet Vorgossos, if only by degrees. Our narrator, an older and presumably wiser Hadrian Marlowe, suggests (unsurprisingly) that things ultimately won’t work out as planned, but in the story’s present, Marlowe sees no threat more dire that the status quo: a brutal war costing entire worlds and billions of lives, and likely to lead to the extinction of both species. When their small fleet is recalled so that they can instead focus more specifically on military operations, Hadrian unsuccessfully tries to convince the other leaders of the flotilla to continue pursuing his mission of peace, aware that a return to the center of civilization would put him back under the power of Count Mataro, who doubtless still has designs on incorporating Hadrian’s noble blood into his own family via an arrangement with his daughter. Soon discovering that the other fleet leaders don’t put much stock in his peace plan—and by this point having grown well-accustomed to setting out on his own—Hadrian sets out with a small group of loyalists to continue his quest. His brief period of respectability over, he’s recast as a fugitive heading into an unwelcoming region of space.
Empire of Silence
Paperback $9.99
Empire of Silence
Paperback $9.99
Through a series of fortunate and unfortunate events, he finds himself in the exotic court of Kharn Sagara, an intermediary who might put Hadrian in contact with the ones he seeks. It’s also where we reconfront the author’s most persistent themes as presented across the two books of the series so far: chiefly, posthumanism and the dangers thereof. In Hadrian Marlowe’s empire, AI, cybernetic implants, and genetic manipulation are curtailed and discouraged where not outright forbidden. It’s in Sagara’s court that Hadrian encounters beings that challenge his entire moral code (there is a beautiful garden that serves as a playground for children being grown for spare parts), though those very same beings are instrumental if his increasingly unlikely plan for peace is ever to succeed. Kharn and the Extrasolarians he represents are something of a middle ground between the familiar (if often cruel) civilization of Hadrian’s birth and the explicitly alien Cielcin. For our narrator, they represent the depths to which humans can sink.
Through a series of fortunate and unfortunate events, he finds himself in the exotic court of Kharn Sagara, an intermediary who might put Hadrian in contact with the ones he seeks. It’s also where we reconfront the author’s most persistent themes as presented across the two books of the series so far: chiefly, posthumanism and the dangers thereof. In Hadrian Marlowe’s empire, AI, cybernetic implants, and genetic manipulation are curtailed and discouraged where not outright forbidden. It’s in Sagara’s court that Hadrian encounters beings that challenge his entire moral code (there is a beautiful garden that serves as a playground for children being grown for spare parts), though those very same beings are instrumental if his increasingly unlikely plan for peace is ever to succeed. Kharn and the Extrasolarians he represents are something of a middle ground between the familiar (if often cruel) civilization of Hadrian’s birth and the explicitly alien Cielcin. For our narrator, they represent the depths to which humans can sink.
As with Empire of Silence, the pacing in Howling Dark is rather deliberate. That is to say, this is an unapologetically long book, sharing a bit of style with some of the chunkiest of epic fantasy novels. Hadrian Marlowe is given to extended interior monologues, and Ruocchio doesn’t spare any of the detail on the elaborately conceived interplanetary society of the Sollan Empire, nor particularly of the Extrasolarians with whom we spend a great deal of time. Readers willing to sink into this genre-bending galaxy and spend time in the mind of its wonderfully compelling—if ill-fated—protagonist will find much to appreciate. The second book in the Sun Eater series is a slow burn into a brilliantly conceived universe.