Sun Eater Read Along #2: Howling Dark
The original plan was to finish this second book in the Sun Eater Read Along in March… but that clearly didn’t work out. Luckily, that doesn’t matter at all in this read along. In Andrew’s Discord you can always look back at your own pace in the discussion channels, and there are always people who read along with you or are willing to answer questions. So it’s a very accessible and relaxed read along, which I mainly use as motivation to dive into the next book in time – so that this series doesn’t slowly sink away on my endless TBR.
According to the plan, I should have been on book three by May, but instead I started book two with high – perhaps too high – expectations.
Christopher Ruocchio – Howling Dark (The Sun Eater #2) ★★★
Genre: Science Fiction
Hadrian Marlowe is lost.
For half a century, he has searched the farther suns for the lost planet of Vorgossos, hoping to find a way to contact the elusive alien Cielcin. He has not succeeded, and for years has wandered among the barbarian Normans as captain of a band of mercenaries.
Determined to make peace and bring an end to nearly four hundred years of war, Hadrian must venture beyond the security of the Sollan Empire and among the Extrasolarians who dwell between the stars. There, he will face not only the aliens he has come to offer peace, but contend with creatures that once were human, with traitors in his midst, and with a meeting that will bring him face to face with no less than the oldest enemy of mankind.
If he succeeds, he will usher in a peace unlike any in recorded history. If he fails…the galaxy will burn.
This second book in the Sun Eater series, unfortunately, didn’t live up to my hopes. I had to push myself to finish Howling Dark before the end of May, because I didn’t want to carry it into June.
“Regret is stronger than fury, and is comparably immortal.”
It’s not that this is a bad book. The overarching story is genuinely compelling, with fascinating revelations and implications for the universe, the characters, and the conflicts still to come. But the reading experience was… rough, exhausting, and unappealing. It truly felt like a struggle. I eventually switched to the audiobook to get through it, but even that sometimes felt like a chore.
“Deep truths there may be, but none is deeper than this: Those lost to us do not return, nor the years turn back. Rather it is that we carry a piece of those lost to us within ourselves, or on our backs. Thus ghosts are real, and we never escape them.”
The beginning is disorienting and dull. There’s quite a big time jump between the end of book one and the start of this one. We’re thrown into a new situation with quite a few characters we either don’t know or barely know. The story seems to seek emotional engagement in certain dynamics—like the relationship between Hadrian and Jinan—but due to a lack of buildup or context, these attempts felt emotionally hollow. The developments didn’t move me at all.
That sharply contrasts with what I expected after book one: a mysterious journey through unknown space, searching for more signs of the Quiet and encountering more Cielcin.
The middle part of the book does introduce many fascinating concepts and questions—such as Vorgossos, Kharn Sagara, and the Brethren—but everything unfolds at such a snail’s pace that it became a real slog. While the core events are actually quite cool, I found myself truly bored due to the slow pacing and overly drawn-out prose.
“We are not always the authors of our own stories. Some of us never are. I think that is what we struggle for: the command of our own lives. We struggle against our families, against the state, against nature, against our own weakness. All that we might choose for ourselves, if only for a moment. If only once.”
Only in the final few hundred pages does the pace finally pick up—with action, revelations, and the long-awaited return of the Cielcin—but by then I was already emotionally drained, and my excitement remained lukewarm.
It’s a strange contradiction: the story itself does intrigue me, and I genuinely want to know what happens next, but I had absolutely no fun reading this. The writing style, while beautiful in places, is often just too bloated. I couldn’t help but feel this book could have been half as long without losing any real substance. The author himself summarizes the plot in a 17-minute YouTube video—for a book of over 650 pages—without omitting anything essential. That says it all.
“Are you always like this?” The Painted Man sneered.
“Melodramatic? Oh yes,” I said with my customary lopsided grin. “Ask anyone who knows me.”
It probably doesn’t help that we only get Hadrian’s perspective, with no other POVs to break things up. You never get a break from his lofty, self-important tone. While it fits his character, it does get tiring after hundreds of pages.
Because of that, few other characters really stand out. I feel like only the characters Hadrian dislikes are given any real depth. The rest feel flat or cartoonish. Jinan is supposedly a great love, but without background, her bond with Hadrian feels empty. Valka—who we already met in book one—remains intriguing, but the way Hadrian talks about her, she doesn’t feel like a real person, more like an idealized figure. His Myrmidon friends are underdeveloped, except perhaps for Switch, though the author takes his storyline in a strange and, to me, unfortunate direction.
“The rightly tuned mind does not deny its emotions, but floats with them. It accepts what it feels and so incorporates that feeling to itself. Thus the mind is not subject, but rules itself.”
After a strong first book and a noticeably weaker second, I will continue the series for now. As mentioned: the story itself is fascinating. But I truly hope the next books find a better balance between depth and readability.
