Sun Eater

Hadrian Marlowe, privileged first son of a Duke, was destined for greatness, and he has become a legend. The Sun-Slayer. The Breaker of Sieges. The Crusher of Civilisations. His is a story which defined the course of worlds. This novel is not that story - not the only laid out in the history books, charting the 300 years of his life. Rather this is Hadrian's story, told in his own worlds.

Crispin Marlowe grew up in his brother’s shadow, but Hadrian is gone, and his grandmother - the Duchess of Delos - is dying. Answering her summons, Crispin takes off on what should be a routine flight to the ducal palace from the castle at Devil’s Rest. But he is flying into a trap. There are whispers of treachery among the duchess’s many daughters, rumors of hidden knives in the planet’s court...if he can even make it there.

It was not his fight. But he will still be the one to end it. The galaxy remembers Hadrian Marlowe as a hero who burned every last alien Cielcin from the sky. The man remembers how he tried to save them - to negotiate with them, to learn more of them - and how his attempts were frustrated by his own side and creatures stranger still than any Cielcin he'd encountered thus far. Hadrian Marlowe's path might have ended in fire...but the road to it was winding and leads through intrigue, and battle, to war.

Hadrian Marlowe is newly a knight of the galaxy-spanning Sollan Empire: a hero who they say slew the alien Prince Aranata Otiolo in single combat; a man they say no man or xenobite can kill. Acting on the Emperor’s orders, Hadrian has come to the desert planet Thagura and driven off the Cielcin invaders, rescuing in the process the Lady Gadar Malyan, Baroness of that entire world. But not all the fighting is ended. 

Hadrian and his Red Company have been serving the Empire in military engagements against the Cielcin, the vicious alien civilisation bent on humanity's destruction. And they've been successful: a cult-like fervour building around Hadrian following a particularly impressive victory. But popularity comes at a price: an assassination attempt, triggered by those within the Imperial government who are scared of his rise to prominence.

Hadrian Marlowe is trapped. For nearly a century, he has been a guest of the Emperor, forced into the role of advisor, a prisoner of his own legend. But the war is changing. Mankind is losing. The Cielcin are spilling into human space from the fringes, picking their targets with cunning precision. The Great Prince Syriani Dorayaica is uniting their clans, forging them into an army and threat the likes of which mankind has never seen. And the Empire stands alone.

With the Cielcin united under one banner, the Sollan Empire stands alone after the betrayal of the Commonwealth. The Prophet-King of the Cielcin has sent its armies to burn the worlds of men, and worse, there are rumours...whispers that Hadrian Marlowe is dead, killed in the fighting. But it is not so. Hadrian survived with the help of the witch, Valka, and together they escaped the net of the enemy having learned a terrible truth: the gods that the Cielcin worship are real and will not rest until the universe is dark and cold. What is more, the Emperor himself is in danger. 

It has been nearly two hundred years since Hadrian Marlowe assaulted the person of the Emperor and walked away from war. From his Empire. His duty. From the will and service of the eldritch being known only as the Quiet. The galaxy lies in the grip of a terrible plague, and worse, the Cielcin have overrun the realms of men. A messenger has come to Jadd, bearing a summons from the Sollan Emperor for the one-time hero. A summons, a pardon, and a plea.

For thousands of years, the planet of Belusha has served the galactic Sollan Empire as its most notorious prison planet. It is here the very worst men in the Empire are locked away: murderers, traitors, deserters—each condemned to toil on the oil rigs and scrapyards of the planet in bitter cold, preyed upon both by the men of the Martian Guard set to watch over them, and by the Outborn reavers whose fathers escaped the work camps to scratch a living from the icy wilderness. It is a hard world. A desperate world. And it is here that Lorian Aristedes finds himself: alone; friendless; betrayed.