Reviews - Empire of Silence

3.26k reviews for:

Empire of Silence

Christopher Ruocchio

3.98 AVERAGE

cnnrwlf's review against another edition

4.5

adventurous dark slow-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

nicocaballero's review against another edition

4.0

adventurous slow-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

yammy42069's review against another edition

3.25

slow-paced

keggreads's review against another edition

3.0

Empire of Silence was a good read overall, and I think this series has a lot going for it, but I'm still not totally sold on it yet.

This book definitely wears its inspiration on its sleeve, there's a LOT of Dune and a LOT of Star Wars in this book, intact there was one seen early on that felt almost verbatim from the first Dune book. This isn't entirely a bad thing because so far this book has taken some of the best elements from those other sources and built on them in a very fun way, and because of that I pretty quickly got immersed in Ruocchio's world and wasn't even thinking of the comparisons.

Ruocchios shows skill at writing characters that are fleshed out with their own flaws, weaknesses, and strengths. Many of the characters in this book have already made an impression on me, and I found myself genuinely excited to read more about them. A lot of this anticipation is built from the books expert use of the Journal entry POV that is used to provide dramatic and direct foreshadowing and teases for the future.

A major weakness in this book for me was the writing of the female characters in the first ~75% of the book. Of the handful of named female characters during the majority of the book, 3 of them are love interests for the main character, and 1 Is his mother. SPOILERS FOR THE NEXT SENTENCE: Of these 3 love interests. One of them, the main character accidently takes advantage of and grows from it, and later comes to regret it, and the other dies in order to provide the main character with some cheap character growth through trauma. SPOILERS END. The later part of the book has less of this though and I'm really hopeful it will not be a problem as the series progresses, but it bothered me a bit during my read.

My only other problem with Empire Of Silence was the pacing, there were some parts where I was deeply invested and immersed in the story and other stretches that were slow and felt a bit uninspired. However I think a certain level of that needs to be expected and forgiven in a project of the scale this series sets itself out to tackle.

These truly were my only 2 major gripes with this book, and I am genuinely eager to read more, I've heard nothing but good things! Over all a 4.1 for me I think!