#sun eater

Painted this one cuz #1: I’m insane and #2: these two deserve a renaissance painting

First time trying to incorporate reflected light. Could be better, but I’m pretty happy for a first go at it 😊

Hadrian Marlowe is the oldest son of House Marlowe, but after his father insists he join the corrupt, sadistic Chantry, he'll plot a scheme to run from home and become a scholiast. From there, Hadrian will set out on the first leg of his journey to make a name for himself in the war against the carnivorous, sentient Cielcin. God help us all.

There is a lot about this book that fascinates me, but to start with: this book is told as the first part of a flashback. Hadrian Marlowe is a man who has lived thousands of years and is setting down his own recollection of it in writing, in his mind to set the record straight. From there, what might be spoilers in other books becomes foreshadowing: we know the Cielcin are eventually enslaved by Hadrian's Empire, he destroys a sun and falls in love. None of these things quite happen in this book, but there's signs of what's to come.

But it also makes for a rather intriguing narrative structure: I am never afraid for Hadrian while he's in combat, for I know he's going to survive to the end of the book. There's on notable occasion where he's in a duel to first blood, and I don't know what's going to happen; but as soon as it becomes a duel to the death, I can relax until the battle is over. And truth be told, while there are moments where Hadrian forwards the narrative through combat, most of the plot happens outside of combat, and since Hadrian cannot lose his life he loses other things.

Hadrian is a fascinating protagonist, and especially a first-person protagonist. The disgraced eldest son of a noble family, comprised of genetically-modified superhumans, who has a love of art, knowledge and languages, but tends to the dramatic, angry and impulsive. At any given time, there's multiple perspectives on Hadrian, because not only is the young man learning things about the Empire that were wrong or misleading, the older Hadrian writes about wishing he was better as a young man, and even older Hadrian has things he hasn't outgrown, perspectives that blind him. And while sometimes older Hadrian will tell us when younger Hadrian has misstepped, sometimes things just happen, and because of who and what Hadrian is people will take an interest and start vying for his attention and a hold over him.

For this book is likewise unafraid to take things from him. Something like three or four times over, this book wrenches Hadrian's comfortable life away from him in favor of someone else's plans. Almost every time, it's because of Hadrian's bad decisions, and in only one occasion (and with some clever thinking) is he able to get out from under someone's thumb.

It's also a book that's beautifully written, spinning metaphors out of sci-fi concepts; heat is described as bleeding into the air, a terraforming project is scrambling across a moon, windowpanes weep, skies are bruised by the sun's fire, fat and weakness bleeding from a body, "a warm smile that slicked my face like oil" and "[embalming someone] in darkness". It's a book that uses metaphor freely to get you living in this strange science fiction world, only a couple steps removed from Warhammer 40,000, and yet so full of life and believable. And the colors...! From Hadrian's homeworld in its grays and silvers, to the orange sun of Emesh to the green and pink moons, this is sci-fi that's not afraid to get colorful.

If I may offer one nitpick: knowing who his future wife is from the start makes it hard to watch the two of them disagree and argue. The future wife, Valka (called out as such in the first paragraph she's introduced) comes from a different culture and has a low view of the Empire as a whole. But she also has some personal baggage that forces the two would-be lovebirds apart, and I found myself impatient for them to reconcile. But ultimately, this is a small thing, and more an emotion I felt rather than a flaw of the writing: the book is just uncompromising at showing very human characters, regardless of whether or not they're supposed to be liked.