Christopher Ruocchio.
Empire of Silence.
Gollancz. 2018
It was not his war.
On the wrong planet, at the right time, for the best of reasons, Hadrian Marlowe started down a path that could only end in fire.
The galaxy remembers him as a hero: the man who burned every last Cielcin from the sky.
They remember him as a monster: the devil who destroyed a sun, casually annihilating four billion human lives – even the Emperor himself – against Imperial orders.
But Hadrian was not a hero. He was not a monster. He was not even a soldier.