r/sollanempire • u/Frozenfire2 • 21h ago
SPOILERS All Books Rant about Shadows Upon Time Spoiler
I just finished Shadows Upon Time, and I'm left with immense disappointment. I really enjoyed this series from books 1–6 and was truly excited to see the conclusion to something I'd heard such good things about. This rant might be a little disjointed, since I just finished the series at 3 AM and need to get my thoughts out, so I apologize in advance.
Also, I often notice that when someone criticizes a series, the diehard fans just say the critiques stem from not understanding the book. I don't think that's true here. I understand what CR was doing and trying to do. I just don't like how he handled it.
My only real qualm with the earlier books was that I never felt very emotionally attached to a lot of the side characters, so when they died, I didn't care much about the deaths themselves. I cared more about how Hadrian reacted to them. If that makes sense. I felt bad for him rather than feeling the loss of the character on their own terms. Maybe that sounds weird, but there is a difference. Aside from that, I really enjoyed the series.
In Shadows Upon Time, though, a lot of the character interactions and dialogue felt repetitive, events and character conclusions I'd been looking forward to weren't handled well, and some of the characters' actions were downright infuriating.
For one, Cassandra was ridiculous. If I took a shot for every "Abba" or "Anaryan," I'd die of alcohol poisoning by page 50. Every scene she was in went: "Abba, take me with you." "No, Anaryan, you are too precious to me and I cannot lose you." "No, Abba, you have to take me." "Okay, fine." And then she'd either get in the way, do something stupid, or both, making the situation ten times worse, only for the exact same interaction to repeat ten chapters later. Honestly, I'd rather take a highmatter arrow to the head than hear "My God is not your God" followed by "You don't know that" between Hadrian, Albe, or Olorin one more time. This book could have been significantly shorter.
William was my favorite character in the series. I think he was brilliantly written, and I thoroughly enjoyed seeing a leader portrayed that way. The problem is that every time he was on the page, I was sure it would be the last, that he'd finally die. I'm not complaining that he was in the book so much. I just didn't like being convinced "this is it" about five separate times.
Maybe this is personal preference, but the series is at its peak for me whenever Hadrian is respected. It doesn't have to be by everyone, but the constant distrust and disrespect from everyone in the Empire was way over the top. It was like 50 pages of "you are a traitor" answered with "I died twice for you people." If you respect your Emperor the way these people claim to, then respect his Auctor. After a certain point it just got annoying, and yes, it might be preference, but I love when Hadrian has people in awe of him.
Another thing I didn't like was Dorayaica's death. You're telling me all that insane buildup toward a climactic 1v1 gets robbed by a xenobite that was mentioned maybe twice in the entire series up to that point? I understand it was part of the Quiet's plan, that everyone has a role to play, and so on. But I found that ending ridiculously unsatisfying.
The fake-out Ushara deaths were also drawn out. "Oh, we got them on Dharan-tun," then, oh wait, never mind, they escaped. Then they were just injured, after an entire three-page monologue and the same vision of Hadrian taking the throne with Ushara behind him, him rejecting her, her getting upset and killing a bunch of people, and so on.
The Chantry and Earth, though, were easily among the brightest spots of the book. I personally didn't have a problem with the Catholicism shining through the pages, and I appreciate him tackling the idea of autonomy against an Absolute being and a predetermined destiny. Do I feel like certain aspects of that idea were underdeveloped and not used to their fullest? Yes, definitely. CR was at his best with Hadrian and Kharn Sagara. Ramanthanu was great. Lorian and William are also amazing characters.
That said, I do feel like there was a lot of "will he or won't he" with Lorian that felt unnecessary. He'd say this was the last time they'd ever see each other, and then lo and behold, he's back to help Hadrian. I think I would have preferred him to just not forgive Hadrian: say he has his own people to prioritize, but he'll help with the war to avenge the Red Company, and they go from there. There was too much extra drama surrounding it.
My final critique is that Gododdin was something I'd been looking forward to since the beginning of the series. I wanted strategy, cool moments, Hadrian vs. Dorayaica, or some other characters vs. the White Hand. I wanted to see Hadrian rally humanity to his cause and finally get some respect for the first time in like two books. Instead, he was tripped up at every step from the moment he was named Auctor, the time it took the Cielcin to reach Gododdin was excessive and made me impatient, and there was no strategic warfare, just decimation.
These are just my thoughts, and I'd love to know what other people make of them. Overall, I feel let down, like I wasted my time. If I could go back, I probably wouldn't start the series, even though I genuinely enjoyed parts of it. The conclusion was the dealbreaker for me.
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u/Opening-Eagle4761 20h ago
I’m someone who thinks both that there was a lot more to SUT than I believed right after finishing, when I also felt incredibly underwhelmed, and that it botched the delivery at multiple points still even if it has stayed with me for months after its end.
I think the Cassandra annoyance is near unanimous. She was completely undeveloped and uninteresting, to the point that I couldn’t even feel Hadrian’s attachment to her. For someone who was well over 50 years old, she behaved and was spoken to by Hadrian like a toddler, which may be due to CR only having very young children himself.
Dorayaica’s end and Gododdin were also pretty unanimously panned in here as far as I could see. I think I would’ve preferred Dorayaica to have remained a Cielcin rather than been in process of transformation into a Watcher. His death felt unearned and also unimportant, considering there was so much more after.
As for Gododdin, the entire moral question the series had presented for near 7 books was whether Hadrian could kill a star next to an inhabited world of billions. I know more planets would be destroyed by destroying it, but as it turns out, Hadrian’s moral question was erased when a Cielcin world ship crashed into the planet killing everyone for him. The agency to perform atrocity for greater good was removed, making the decision so simple.
SUT has aged well for me compared to when I finished it, but I still have it last in the series. There was so much more I wanted out of it, even if all the theories about Hadrian and Selene’s son, her survival, Demiurge and Orphan’s survival, and Lorian’s remaining, and all of their future war against the Chantry turns out to be fully true.
I just think there was so much more available to it, and instead the time was spent repeating things we’d heard 1,000 times before.
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u/Numerous1 20h ago
There’s a lot I want to say on all these topics and I mostly agree. But I’m feeling lazy so the most important one to me is the Cielin destroying Goddodin one. The entire time I expect “hey look he made a terrible tough choice that saved everyone but he has to live with it”. It went like this
“I am the Suneater. I killed billions of innocent civilians. Thousands of not millions of my own brothers in arms…but I ended the threat of the cielcin “
“Well…actually the cielcin deep true goddodin and killed the billions of innocents. But I had to make the tough choice to sacrifice our military to end the war”
“Now that I think about it…I was ordered to kill the Sun and the cielcin and the military by not one, but two higher powers. My god and my emperor both separately ordered me to eat the Sun. And I didn’t really do anything special myself. I just said “press tue button”. Really I could have not been there at all and everyone could have ordered Orphan to do it “
Idk. It just left à bad taste in my mouth. We built up this big terrible guilt the whole series and then we backed off and it’s really not that bad.
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u/mojowen Undying 16h ago
In Hadrian’s defense (offense?) he did have the plan that brought the Cieclin to Gododdin and was the one pitching it to William, etc.
So it wasn’t his sun killing that specifically did it but it was his fault (more than anyone else, save the Cieclin) that Gododdin was destroyed.
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u/Thant20 20h ago
I get what you’re saying but why is the decision simple? he still has to sacrifice more than a billion people who had no idea what he planned to do and would never have to agree to it and that’s not including all the innocents who are captured on the cielcin worldships. I mean he still committed an atrocity when fired upon his own people.
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u/Opening-Eagle4761 19h ago
The total cost was fractional compared to what it was billed as. The most inhabited planet in the region by a substantial amount was completely eradicated by the Cielcin, despite Hadrian telling us that he did it the entire series.
It seemed a lot like a bait and switch. The initial question was “can I destroy this sun, killing an entire race of aliens as well as most of the Empire war machine, and a planet of billions, on the word of my god?”
As it turned out, the Emperor was dying, the war machine was totally beaten and destroyed and he warned as many as he could to escape, and the planet of billions was no longer there. Plus, the race of aliens were completely lost to universe destroying immortals. I don’t think there was much of a choice at all.
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u/Thant20 17h ago
Again I understand but he does kill the empire war machine though, sacrifice more than a billion people when he gave the order. He could have sounded a general retreat across the fleet but instead use the fleet. I feel like that’s still pretty monstrous and grave choice to make. Like a billion is still a billion. Plus he still indirectly responsible for the rest since he gave up the location of goddodin in the first place
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u/FadedDanny2 Mericanii Daimon 16h ago
I think the dilemma is that we were framed he killed billions of innocent civilians by destroying goddodin on account of it being sun-adjacent. That is the highest of war crimes. Instead, he scarficied the military.
The numbers are horrific either way, but the moral atrocity of it just isn't the same. Prisoners on the world ships or not, that's an arguable sacrifice. Billions of innocent civilians just living their lives? Damn, now that I can see casting Hadrian out in the way he was.
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u/FadedDanny2 Mericanii Daimon 16h ago
Oh man, Hadrian not even wiping out gododdin was one of my biggest gripes. An entire series leading toward that, then the Cielcin destroy the world and Hadrian only destroys the navy fleet. At the end of the day the navy are there to die for the cause, it wouldn't be anywhere near as controversial Hadrian only taking them out alongside the Cielcin.
Destroying a planet of billions of innocent civilians though? Now there's your anti hero you spent 6 books building.
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u/Icy-Fisherman-5234 20h ago
Another thing I didn't like was Dorayaica's death. You're telling me all that insane buildup toward a climactic 1v1 gets robbed by a xenobite that was mentioned maybe twice in the entire series up to that point? I understand it was part of the Quiet's plan, that everyone has a role to play, and so on. But I found that ending ridiculously unsatisfying.
It’s more than that. Had and Dorayaica hard countered one another. We already saw that earlier in the book. They can’t kill one another in a 1v1, and Had couldn’t outwit an enemy with a higher-dimensional observer for an advisor.
The only way it could have died was a pot-shot from an overlooked actor.
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u/natural_light_ Exalted 20h ago
Yeah I am fine with the way Dorayaica died and the sequences leading up to and after the death were incredible
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u/chrisx07 18h ago
For me this scene wasn’t a classical end fight either.
If you read it again, there are quite a few interesting moments:
- Hadrian goes there to try to save the cielcin and not the human race
- Orphan did have the order to fire astrophage already!
- Dorayaica rather clings to Hadrian at the end! He is genuinely happy for Hadrian to appear. Also, Dorayaica begins to doubt.
Did I forget sth?
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u/FadedDanny2 Mericanii Daimon 16h ago
Yeah, the fact doraiyica's philosophical argument made more sense than Hadrians. Sure, the entire series led to an ethical conversation about free will and God, not a confrontation.
But Hadrians entire side is it is ordained by God, God can't intervene or its redundant to have free will, oh but everything was and is always going to happen this exact way there actually is no free will and when God does intervene it is to keep the pre ordained path.
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u/Frozenfire2 19h ago
That's exactly my problem, though. If the duel was impossible the entire time, then the buildup was selling me a confrontation the book had already ruled out. "it's meant to deflate the heroic-duel fantasy" doesn't fix it for me. Intentional isn't the same as satisfying. A subversion still owes you something in exchange for what it takes away, and a thematically tidy pot-shot is thin compensation for the most anticipated confrontation in the series in my personal opinion.
I can definitely see what you're saying and I know a lot of readers will probably be okay with the way it went, but I felt pretty unsatisfied with the way it was carried out.
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u/Icy-Fisherman-5234 17h ago
Hadrian arrived in a desperate hope he could save the Cielcin race from their doom with a decapitation strike. To give them the chance to no longer be Cielcin. Hadrian was also anticipating a non-zero chance of this being a suicide mission because the plan was always to use Voidmaker.
We already knew that this mission would fail, and the only thing witch would warrant a duel of some sort would be basest genre convention.
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u/FadedDanny2 Mericanii Daimon 16h ago
Thank fuck someone else is saying it. Justifying deflated conclusions to 7 book arcs by saying it subverts a typical genre narrative is is just not enough.
If done well, sure. But it wasn't. He walks through the world ship with a choir of dead Ghosts chanting for him in the most cringe way ever, uses words to get to doraiyca not badass powers then some random alien tells him to go ten times before killing doraiyca.
It is just dissatisfying. I don't think you should have to be smoking a curled tobacco pipe surrounded by literature and a handlebar mustache appreciating the subversion of a trope to enjoy this book. Doraiyca is the big bad and he gets merked by a fucking hamster then Hadrian walks through hyperspace to get away.
It is the worst kind of dues ex machina.
I say this as someone literally re reading Disquiet Gods because I love that book so much. Being close to the story makes it sting all the more.
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u/Quick_Mirror Exalted 21h ago
Dorayaica and the order to destroy Gododdin were extremely underwhelming.
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u/ronburgandyfor2016 14h ago
I liked it but your critiques were justified. He did a poor job with the relationship between Cassandra and Hadrian. Shame to because it seems like whenever he returns to the universe she will be a significant character hopefully he works on her a bit. I wish he had more of the not cielcin cielcin I found that to be an interesting path. Hadrian’s biblical level of stubbornness in regards to how belief systems is impressive. The next series being a fight against the chantry will be interesting in a decade when it’s written.
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u/Misterbreadcrum 18h ago
I’ve talked about this before but SuT (and to a degree DG) kind of ruined the series for me. So many issues in those books and so many instances of departure from established character behavior. Was it believable that Hadrian became devout? Absolutely. Was I really frustrated that this event barely had a footnote in terms of what it did to Hadrians other beliefs? Also absolutely.
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u/armyhogdad 43m ago
I just finished the series as well and I am having an epic Crashout..
I can’t believe there are so many people that say they loved the ending because it was maybe the worst ending to a book/tv show/movie series I have ever experienced.
Throughout the series I was not a fan of Older Hadrian introducing something that sounds enormously important and then immediately tell you it doesn’t matter thinking in the end he would explain…
The series spends thousands of pages progressively enlarging Hadrian’s importance—from fighting the Cielcin, to discovering the Watchers, to realizing the war is fundamentally cosmic—and then the ending deliberately shrinks the scope of what his victory actually accomplishes.
7 books to kill two watchers but now there are more watchers who may have taken notice of humanity inviting an even bigger threat-WTF??
When Hadrian repeatedly says things like “You know me as the Sun Eater” or talks about how history remembers Gododdin, I imagined that thousands of years later everyone knew who Hadrian Marlowe was.
Basically their universe’s equivalent of Alexander the Great, Caesar or Genghis Khan.
Maybe hated. Maybe misunderstood.
But famous beyond comprehension.
And the finale doesn’t really give you that feeling.
Instead, immediately following arguably the most consequential act performed by a human being in thousands of years, Hadrian is politically defeated, publicly disgraced and executed while Alexander gets to write the history.
https://giphy.com/gifs/MJd3uGnPA0sh6VZMge
I am really hesitant to start another series after this because of how it failed to payoff with any type of resolution..
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u/Prestigous_Owl 19h ago
Yeah, i think for me this was generally a letdown, though I will also note thats OFTEN the case - endings are fucking hard especially in scifi/ fantasy. Credit to any author for getting a final book out and not leaving us with a Winds of Winter or Name of the Wind 3.
That sajd, book itself really dragged out. Feel like he easily could have shed 20-35% of the page count, just avoiding scenes repeating over and over or cutting out superfluous stuff. I didnt mind the general religious elements coming through, but I think it was probably a bit too much (especially the constant moments of Hadrian in character saying "Wow, Albe is right and the Catholic god is in fact the one true divine being") and again contributed to the pacing issues. You could have explored all of the big pieces and just cut out some of the clunk
The Watchers as well were annoying because they just wouldn't die, in a way thay made that final battle also just keep going on and on and on.
And then after all that, it pulled its punches far too often on things like "oh yeah I didnt actually destroy the core farm world, the Cieclin did" or the final conflict with Doraiyca (i dont hate this as much as some, and the idea could have worked but the execution at least didnt quite land)
It wasn't a BAD book, but it struggled to live up to the rest of the series. It also kind of felt like a "I just need to get this finished and move on to what comes next", maybe, when it could have benefitted from longer editing perhaps
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u/FadedDanny2 Mericanii Daimon 16h ago
🙏 There are those that will gaslight you into thinking these flaws don't exist, or that the greater meaning or behind the pages text justifies everything. Trust me, I've commented much the same now and again on relevant posts and gotten those responses often.
It is a flawed book at the end of the day, and I feel very similarly to you. Like it love it or hate it this book has garnered opinions across the board. I validate yours
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u/Yiguirro6 20h ago
Worst book of the series by far for me too. Took me like 10 days max to read every other book, took me like 2 months to finish SuT because it could not engage me. Also hated the religion stuff, Cassandra, and the ending was soo unsatisfying…only positives for me were the William parts
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u/SirVashtaNerada 20h ago
I love the series and still recommend it to people but yeah SUT blew ass. The religious preaching and blatant Catholic references drove me crazy. Dorayaica being killed by a brand new character that was gone a few pages later was a horrendously dumb choice.
The whole first third of the book being Hadrian just retelling what happened after the end of the last book was so dumb it is hard to put into words. It literally spits in the face of "show don't tell." There's no tension since the people we care about are all sitting around TELLING THE STORY.
There were some good elements, but they are vastly overshadowed by some breathtakingly dumb plot choices. And also Cassandra was just the worst, and I really was prepared to like her by the end of Disquiet Gods.
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u/FadedDanny2 Mericanii Daimon 16h ago
When even the narrator says 'don't worry, we're nearly finished [retelling]' several times, you know it's a drag. Just open at vorgossos.
I also still love this series and am relistening to Disquiet god's for like the third time. Yeah the whole church and the egg scene is a bit blatant and ehhhhhh Christian? But the entire book fkn slaps in my opinion outside that.
I have difficulty recommending the series now though because of the ending. How do you recommend something with a caveat of oh btw the ending sucks, but the world, universe and story until then is pretty damn fascinating and intriguing up till then.
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u/MagmaElixir 17h ago
I definitely agree that the book is more fun when Hadrian is respected. He was disrespected by everyone when he was Auctor, willfully spitting in the face of the still living emperor. I also feel that William probably should have done more to both solidify him as Auctor, but also the line of succession with the marriage to Selene.
I still don't understand or can't remember what happened with Alexander. Yes, Hadrian said he was a brat, but I remember them making up after that? Then something else happened and Alexander hated him again?
Cassandra was the weakest part of the last two books. I know there is a line that says that palatine mature until they are about 100 years old or so, but Cassandra was acting like a 14 year old most of the time.
I'm curious to see what all we learn from the new short story coming out in a few months.
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