Ivy G.’s Reviews > Empire of Silence > Status Update

Hadrian has been homeless and enduring depravity for years now, maybe months. It’s interesting and impressive to me how he has been holding off, that he values the freedom has that he’d rather stay in extreme poverty.

This arc is so interesting because it shows how survival has taken hold from his initial priorities. It’s a humble arc coming from a place of royalty.

I know this is just part of Hadrian’s origin story, that this is probably not his lowest but I feel bad that he couldn’t catch a break, at least a momentary victory for himself. Except maybe for his mother helping him escape but that proved to be short-lived.

Am I also naive to believe that Demetri and his crew didn’t throw Hadrian away? That something had happened?

Hadrian’s mother sets the example, or at least, decent enough to compensate for being an absent one. Even if she’s only doing this in defiance of her husband, at least, I find that she genuinely cares for her son’s well-being.

Also, I thought Crispin is a completely dull character but he is actually trying for Hadrian to bond with him, but it looks like they’re too dissimilar and Hadrian too disinterested.

Just experienced my first heartbreak of this book. It foretells how much suffering and pain this would promise. Considering how self-aware Hadrian is of his position that he acknowledges how he has no one but Gibson and he couldn’t even have that.

Hadrian has such absent parents, with Alistair colder than him. Surprisingly, he is turning out to have the most empathy amongst the living, something that isn’t favorable for their house and power. I’m beginning to find that he was being groomed as a fail safe to serve their house one way or another.

I can see why he seemingly hardened himself in the future.

Hadrian’s resentment for Crispin is ingrained deeply, along with his parents. But I’m very interested of the fact that he talks at the hints of his future self as a genocidal tyrrant. So, to tell the story from a place where he was assaulted by a bunch of kids in an alleyway and almost died just spoke so much of the kind of story that led him to being called the Sun Eater.

It’s interesting!