Demon in White

Written by Christopher Ruocchio

Narrated by Samuel Roukin

For almost a hundred years, Hadrian Marlowe has served the Empire in its war against the Cielcin, a vicious alien
race bent on humanity’s destruction. Rumors of a new king amongst the Cielcin have reached the Imperial throne.
This one is not like the others. It does not raid borderworld territories, preferring precise, strategic attacks on the
humans’ Empire.

To make matters worse, a cult of personality has formed around Hadrian, spurred on by legends of his having
defied death itself. Men call him Halfmortal. Hadrian’s rise to prominence proves dangerous to himself and his team,
as pressures within the Imperial government distrust or resent his new influence.

Caught in the middle, Hadrian must contend with enemies before him—and behind.

And above it all, there is the mystery of the Quiet. Hadrian did defy death. He did return. But the keys to the
only place in the universe where Hadrian might find the answers he seeks lie in the hands of the Emperor himself. …

• Language: English
• Publisher: Recorded Books, Inc.
• Release date: Jul 28, 2020
• ISBN: 9781501991561

Christopher Ruocchio

Christopher Ruocchio is the internationally award-winning author of The Sun Eater, a space opera fantasy series, and the former Junior Editor at Baen Books, where he edited several anthologies. His work has also appeared in Marvel comics. He is a graduate of North Carolina State University, where he studied English Rhetoric and the Classics. Christopher has been writing since he was eight and sold his first novel, Empire of Silence, at twenty-two. His books have appeared in five languages. Christopher lives in Raleigh, North Carolina with his wife, Jenna.

Reviews for Demon in White

[Caleb Roden · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Another great addition in an already fantastic series with an excellent narrator. I can't help but love it!

[antao-3 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Like all controversial statements when we say “all of SF is crap”, there is an element of truth. The fact is that all really shit fiction is genre fiction, because genres can have a formula, and anything written to a formula is shit. Literary fiction, by definition, cannot follow a formula therefore cannot be absolute barrel-scraping shit. And if something original is written in literary fiction that everyone else then follows, creating a formula, it becomes a genre of its own (see misery lit for a recent example). But so much genre fiction does not follow a formula. SF and Fantasy (to my mind, they're the same thing, just the explanations for things are different), when done right (think Christopher Ruocchio, David Mitchell, Iain M. Banks) are masterpieces, giving spectacular insight into how humans think and respond to situations outside our real life experience. I read literary fiction set in real environments unfamiliar to me (e.g. Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche, Jane Austen) to understand something of how people respond to unusual circumstances. I see no difference in reading things where the circumstance is real or imaginary, so long as the characterisation is real.The best Space Operas like “Howling Dark” and “Demon in White” are frequently classed as SF but I'm not so sure; the boundary between both seems to be a bit of grey area. There are aspects of the characters' daily lives in Yevgeny Zamyatin's 'We' which were physically impossible then as they still are now, but the focus is the themes which drive the narrative. To me, that means the 'impossibility' to the reader of a fantastical future life isn't really that important, whereas the humanity of the story is absolutely central. I hope that I'm neither dismissing SF nor being a snob, but setting, in this sense, is more of a 'prop'. And “Demon in White” has got plenty of Humanity.SF and heavy metal music are two genres where the people who create it and the people who consume it are just having a bloody good time, and largely don't care a stuff about what the critics think. And the critics really hate that... SF = Speculative Fiction.