Christopher Ruocchio: Empire of silence (2018)
612 pages
English language
Published Nov. 20, 2018
It was not his war. On the wrong planet, at the right time, for the best reasons, Hadrian Marlowe started down a path that could only end in fire. The galaxy remembers him as a hero: the man who burned every last alien Cielcin from the sky. They remember him as a monster: the devil who destroyed a sun, casually annihilating four billion human lives--even the Emperor himself--against Imperial orders. But Hadrian was not a hero. He was not a monster. He was not even a soldier. Fleeing his father and a future as a torturer, Hadrian finds himself stranded on a strange, backwater world. Forced to fight as a gladiator and into the intrigues of a foreign planetary court, he will find himself fight a war he did not start, for an Empire he does not love, against an enemy he will never understand.
Loved this book, and am continuing the series. However, I think the narrator frequently is getting himself into his own trouble, and then complaining about the consequences. :) May be part of his character arc, however, because older Hadrian is frequently commenting on his behavior as a young man with some criticism.
