Ashes of Man is the fifth volume in Ruocchio’s Sun Eater series, a science fiction fantasy spanning the cosmos and featuring one half-mortal Hadrian Marlowe. It would certainly benefit a careful reader to first read the previous volumes, lengthy and epic though each of them be. Although much of the first quarter of the book sets up the action that dominates the remainder of the book, all of the setup is based on the previous books, the characters and relationships established earlier, and a storyline continuing from the previous epic. That said, Ashes of Man is a fully-absorbing tale, grand in its scope and its depth.

Hadrian, having suffered seven years of torture and imprisonment from the Cielcin, and in particular, their leader, the prophet, Syriani Dorayaica. The Cielcin (and if you are still living and breathing, odds are you’ve never encountered them) are a race of giant man-eating cockroaches who know only domination, do not understand peace or treaty, and race across the universe in planet-sized spaceships. They see themselves as gifted by ancient races and long to demolish everything.

Allied with them are breakaway worlds who think that they will be left in peace, not understanding that they are only setting themselves up to be eaten last as they harvest their cities to feed the Cielcin’s voracious appetites.

Hadrian is but a shell of his former self, broken physically and mentally and not sure he wants to serve the Imperium of the Sollan Empire. He is at once the only hope humanity has and feared as someone different who perhaps cannot be killed. The struggle he always seems to face is his loyalty to the Caesar, who has seldom returned that loyalty, and service to his own self. While he struggles with palace intrigue, the universe is closing in and Armageddon is coming with the Cielcin.

As with the other novels in this series, what the reader gets is a rich adventure epic in scale.

I'm glad I got the ARC for this, because I didn't want to wait.

This is book number 5 for The Sun Eater, I will keep things spoiler free, it might sound like something is a spoiler if you haven't started the series, but it is probably something you learn in the first chapter of book 1

Ashes of Man is another fantastic book in The Sun Eater. The protagonist of this series has a life expectancy of several centuries, and by the time we get to this book he is old. And as books only exist if there is conflict, he has been through a lot of crap.


This book does such a fantastic job at having a protagonist who is burnt out. We see it in subtle ways, but Ruocchio has written someone who basically is not in the headspace to be the protagonist of a sci fi novel. Unfortunately for him, he doesn't have a choice. So he has to almost mentally force himself to keep trying to do insane things, but the years, and the losses have worn him down. The well of Hadrian Marlowe is spent.

One thing I would like to address is that this novel was split in 2. This is originally the second half of what was going to be a giant book 4. I know generally what he added, I only learned after I had read most of the book, and I think this book being split was a silver lining of the paper shortage. This book has to deal with the aftermath of Kingdoms of Death. A lot of what got added was breathing room, that I feel originally would not have been in the book because if it was one book, that would make it too long. But I think a lot of the more high octane, crazy stuff could have been exhausting. The split gave me room to breath. It let the book focus on mental recovery, and also some of the political maneuvering. Then when we got to the cool/intense battles it felt like it was earned.

It also helps, that the stuff that got added was really good. I have said before, that I consider the supporting cast of Sun Eater to be a relative weakness. Hadrian is one of my favorite fictional characters, and that is getting more and more true as Ruocchio continues to actually pull of writing a 800 year old recounting his life in a way that actually feels like the narrator is 800, and current Hadrian is whatever his current age is.

However, in this book I believe Ruocchio has leveled up at writing his supportive cast. For the first couple I would say I liked the supporting characters, and they didn't get in the way of the really brilliant characters playing more important roles. However, in this book I also found myself finding substance in a huge amount of the supporting cast.

I would also like to shoutout something about how the frame device is used. In some moments, aspects of the writing will be slightly stylistically different. I think a lot of the time the writing style slightly changes based on what emotional state writer Hadrian was in when writing what we are currently reading. I think you can especially see this in 2 ways. How mentally close we are to Hadrian's emotions, and how much commentary we are getting from current Hadrian. This is a tiny detail, but I think it is super super cool. I might be imagining things, I have not really seen Ruocchio say he does this. But I think he does, and the attention to detail is really really impressive.

Also all the stuff I previously liked in previous books, was still really really really good. I don't feel like repeating it, you can go look at any of those reviews.


Ok, so why isn't it my favorite. Well, one reason is a kinda spoilery reason I can't get into, and the other is not to do with the execution of the book. I thought the idea's, and settings, and really locations for stuff in Kingdoms of Death, Demon In White, and Howling Dark were slightly more cool.

So despite very very impressive writing of a really old protagonist, and what I believe is a technical improvement in writing the supporting cast, this slightly loses out to Demon in White because DiW has the rule of cool factor.

9.4/10

This is not the complete abattoir that is the fourth book, but Hadrian is not the super hero of earlier books. He’s traumatized and impotent. But he’s Hadrian. This is no triumphant sequel to KoD, though this was originally the second half of that book, so that’s fine.

The writing and references are all still there. The book is chock full of quotable lines, or lines already quoted in our day. We get more of the Emperor, Cielcin, and more worlds to see turned to ash and glass.

If Kingdoms of Death is Gethsemane, Ashes of Man is Calvary. I’m eager for the Resurrection, if you catch my meaning.