Empire of Silence: The Sun Eater: Book One

This book was great. The characters were excellently written, and the world well expanded. It did have parallels with Dune, but if you want something grounded that is well in the future, it's probably hard not to follow similar lines. I admit this does feel like a book 1 - an opening to something bigger. I would not feel satisfied if the story stopped here. I think the memoire style it is written in lends itself well to this fact though, giving you glimpses of the future to flag important moments and characters and also maintaining interest. That said, I was never bored nor wanting more while I was reading it. I simply enjoyed being led through the story by our protagonist.

This is a competent first book. Outside of a few elements, it does nothing spectacular, but it does everything well. It's an author's first book, it's what you'd expect. Hence the three stars. The second book, Howling Dark, is a five star book. And the series as a whole, which I just finished five minutes ago, is a masterpiece. Do yourself a favor: get this book. Read it. Then go on to see how much better this series gets.

He's very frustrating and ridiculously dumb at times. This could have been much shorter if the author had just gotten on with it. Still, it's a valid story and better written than many.