PAR’s Reviews > Demon in White > Status Update

Such an epic series. You could combine all SF stories you’ve ever read, and what you’d end up with is The Sun Eater. It has everything.

“Silence. The great empire of silence: higher than all stars, deeper than the kingdom of death! It alone is great; all else is small.. She stood beside me, each of us a piece of that silence, small ourselves. But even the very small can challenge empires, or hold them in their hands.”

“Grief is deep water, they say. But not all tears are grief.. I sometimes think we do more harm than good, teaching what we teach. Reason. Reason is such a small part of being human. We scholiasts climb our towers, look at the sky, and forget the world. So often we don't see the truth because we won't look low enough. Chasing reason, chasing facts.. we forget to be human. To be human is the greater thing.”

“Time cycles. Moments return. We cannot escape our patterns. The same choices—the same sins—return us to the same places.. To fight again, to pay in blood for the same sin: rage.. Was it rage?. Or pride?”

“It was not grief that pained me then, but love.. Love consumes, so the aphorism goes.. I have not found it to be so. Love is not a burden—though it is a responsibility. A duty. Love is an honor—an office we hold. An oath.. I swore an oath, then. ‘Men will die for this.’”

“And if you burn long enough and bright as I have done, you come back to that simple truth of childhood: the world of the scientists, of engineers and mathematicians, does not exist. We live in stories, in the demon-haunted world of myth. We are heroes and dragons. Evil and divine.”

“As a child, we believe the world enchanted because age has not killed the magic we are born with. As we grow, the simple spells of new sights and far-oft places no longer work on us, and we grow cynical and cold. But in age once more the magic returns, if you are willing and open to it…”

“Your blood and your name do not make you more than other people. Those things belong to your ancestors, and if you are to inherit them properly, you will honor those ancestors by being a good man… Our ancestors became palatine because they did great things. But we are not them, and must do our own great things… To be a good man you must judge a person by his or her actions. By their character.”

“Your blood and your name do not make you more than other people. Those things belong to your ancestors, and if you are to inherit them properly, you will honor those ancestors by being a good man… Our ancestors became palatine because they did great things. But we are not them, and must do our own great things… To be a good man you must judge a person by his or her actions. By their character.”

“The privilege of one’s birth is no privilege at all. Only another kind of cage.”