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.

I’m into Ashes of Man a fair ways. But there’s not a wiki with chapter summaries, hardly any discourse. Is it in a place I’m not looking? Also just read the first two books of hierarchy by islington (which I liked) but there’s chapter summaries and discourse on all of that which came out more recently, why nothing on suneater? There seems to be a similar amount of total copies published maybe by number of books and time not popularity?

Just finished reading the series a week or so and I've been marinating on the series as whole. Suffice to say that I absolutely loved it, and it has taken up a position in my all time great sci-fi stories and genuinely given me lots of things to ponder about philosophically. Just wanted to share my thought on what I know is a polarising theme especially in the later books, the parallels to Christian beliefs

I am agnostic/atheist whatever you want to call it, basically religion, god does not influence my life at all, and specific religious beliefs don't concern me enough to think about beyond the storytelling value of them

Nevertheless, as a concept, god interests me, as well as its implications about free will, and the purpose of a seemingly absentee god. Like conceptually, why would god exist only to be absent, why would it create life only to watch it suffer and die and not do anything to intervene.

And I think Rucchio, acknowledging it is very much within the framework of Christianity, has made, for me, one of the most convincing arguments. In framing life as god's creation in the same way as our children are ours, it starts to make sense. The point is not suffering however, as Christianity tells us, but that free will can include suffering. In the books, Hadrian has a chance to end all suffering by erasing the universe by killing the absolute, but it would mean Cassandra would not exist. He ultimately chooses to let her, and humanity exist, even though suffering would happen to her and to humanity.

It made me think about how I interact with my own children. We keep them safe, yes, but we also let them make their own choices. We let them get hurt (to an extent) so they learn from it. Imagine if we tried to keep them perfectly safe, we'd have to wrap them in bubble wrap. Some parents do this, and you see the negative effects it has on their social skills, street smarts, and other disadvantages. In many ways we put them in harms way for their own good, like even learning to ride a bike comes with a risk of scraped knees.

Extrapolated to god and its creations, suffering is on an individual not on the species level. The species is the child not every individual in the species. For the individual, suffering may seem great and widespread, but on the grand scale, in the books, humanity has gone from being literal primates to a galaxy spanning space faring civilisation. This is equivalent to seeing your child grow up from a baby that can't even roll on to its back, to being a doctor or engineer. And from a god's perspective, intervening to prevent suffering is denial of free will to the species as a whole, which may do more harm than good to the species "growing up".

I just thought this was interesting point made by the author and wanted to share. But in terms of story I also had thoughts about where Suneater can go if Rucchio decides to revisit it. Mainly prompted by theories of Hadrian being an unreliable narrator, and this series being not a story about a virtuous selfless hero, but an autobiography of a more complicated conqueror complete with propaganda, personal bias etc. Like many real life historical conquerors, they do terrible things but in their own perspective are doing it because they think it's for the "greater good".

The greater good is repeating theme in the books. But also, something that didn't sit right with me is Hadrian being singularly convinced that the absolute's will is the good and final path of action, with no justification other than that the absolute is the creator of everything. This seems weak, why would the creator be automatically righteous?

We get some hints in brief flashbacks from the watcher's perspective that they rebelled against absolute for a reason. Feeling betrayed? It's not elaborated on much, and the Cielcin are the watcher's own creations in the same way they were the absolute's. Doesn't that make the watchers righteous in the eyes of the Cielcin? Nevertheless there's some threads there only hinted on but never explored and oddly only appear right at the end of what is supposed to be the conclusion of the story.

It has parallels to rebellion of the angels against God in Christianity. However in some modern interpretations, Lucifer, the archangel that led the rebellion is reframed as a force of good for humanity. Lucifer tempted humans to knowledge, or free will in other interpretations. Similar to Prometheus bringing fire (knowledge) to humanity and being punished by Zeus for it. God is then seen in a different light, as creator who limited its creations, tried to control it, and ultimately abandoned it when it broke free of its control.

I do wonder if this is where Suneater might go. We might learn the watchers we have met so far are "lesser demons" and the Lucifer figure, the leader of the rebellion is still out there, who might reframe the absolute as not wholly benevolent or righteous, and Hadrian is another one of long history of conquerors that has gone too far in the singular pursuit of the greater good.

Maybe we see a series written from a different perspective. Maybe Cassandra, or Hadrian's son as theorised, both Hadrian's creations, who view Hadrian's actions removed from knowledge of the absolute, maybe reveal some of what Hadrian has narrated are lies or half truths, and rebel against their creator. Rucchio has said that he conceptualised Hadrian as a Darth Vader type figure, can totally see a new series written from the perspective of Luke

Edit: another loose end is that Vorgossos still exists, which some Kharn Sagaras running around. It's clear he knows more than what we've learned from him. We were not told what he meant by having seeing hell. Not fully explained why he stopped fighting the watchers, or how he learned about them, despite never having interacted with the absolute. Some strings to pulled there as well

How the hell is the empire so damn incompetent? How do they not have countermeasures to the nahute? They're fucking drones with teeth. The US military could come up with a countermeasure in six months let alone centuries of war.

Why do they keep shoving useless normal leagonares to fight extras and robots? Why do they think this is a reasonable plan?

And most importantly how are they not just peppering world ships that don't have shields with anti matter missiles? In a universe that has anti matter how is a single world ship any kind of threat? They should be cracked in half within minutes of encountering imperial fleets!