The Lesser Devil

By: Christopher Ruocchio

Narrated by: Samuel Roukin

Length: 5 hrs and 46 mins

Publisher's summary

Can the youngest son of a noble house save his family from a plot generations in the making?

Crispin Marlowe grew up in his brother’s shadow, but Hadrian is gone, and his grandmother - the Duchess of Delos - is dying.

Answering her summons, Crispin takes off on what should be a routine flight to the ducal palace from the castle at Devil’s Rest. But he is flying into a trap. There are whispers of treachery among the duchess’s many daughters, rumors of hidden knives in the planet’s court...if he can even make it there.

With no one coming to save him and only his sister, Sabine, and a few injured guardsmen to protect him, House Marlowe’s least famous son must make his heroic stand, and contend not only the foes arrayed against his house, but with the cultists who dwell in the mountains above his family’s ancestral home....

©2020 Christopher Ruocchio (P)2020 Recorded Books

Love the details and references

I really enjoyed the injection of the museum serfs to the Sun Eater universe. I had just finished a casual study of the Crusades and everything about the Priest and the village became so interesting and made the references so much richer for me.

Great story

I was not a huge fan of book one, but this was very enjoyable.

Great story

I love that this story exists. Well told and it gives crispin a lot of depth

Excellent

Such a good story and excellent view into the other side after Hadrian ran away. It was heartwarming, Chris does such a good job at character development, without rushing that I am used to, I cared about so many of these characters and felt loss as each of them died or were wounded. Beautifully done, never stop writing books!

Amazing Characterization

Redeemed the main character of this book from an annoying little brother to someone i could understand and sympathize with.

A great improvement and addition to the much slower first book to a more fast paced plot.

This Novella officially locked me into this series. This was sooooo good.

Crispin being a minor character in the first book that I despised, didn't even occur to me of being a returning character yet. Actually adoring Crispin, maybe even more then Hadrian, was especially not on my mind either. This novella however absolutely got me enjoying Crispin and his complex character as well, seeing him grow and mature was really interesting to see what time was able to do to him.

The plot was especially engaging here and started right away, although short, was incredibly well written. I really liked the great work this author did in re-introducing and building characters to quickly shift to get a compelling plot together. The great descriptive writing at times made me feel like I was watching a movie.

I really can't wait until this character is revisited, I hope, in the main series. This was such a great book to read in an afternoon and a great pallete cleanser from the overly slow full size novel that the first book was.

Story was weak for the series

I wanted more of this universe and more of the characters while I wait for book three of the main sun eater to come out. It was disappointing. The performance was first rate, as is par for this narrator. I just felt like the author confused Crispin and Hadrian and there wasn't much of a reason for it other than at one brief point, he ruminates that "he must have remembered more than he thought," of what his tutor, Gibson, had taught him. Meh.

3.5 stars

Short story and some what interesting. I like the characters but this installment was a little “meh” for me. However I will continue in the series.

Awesome - Wish This Were In Book 1!

I really enjoyed this much more than book 1. I wish it were integrated into book one somehow. Crispin is more endearing than Hadrian, and everything about this story was compelling. The setting was beautiful, and there's a freakin lightsaber. Common!

More Than Game of Dune

This was a great read. Picasso once said that good artists borrow, but great artists steal. Ruocchio steals from Dune and GoT in the way that Herbert stole from Heinlein, or GGRM stole from Stan Lee (or Tolkien); he appropriates and extends the literary grammar he has inherited.
In this pullout of the Sun Eater series, we explore the consequences of a devastating war between great houses far in the future. As in GoT, there are often unexpected consequences to war, because you can’t kill them all, and the losers stay angry long after the winners have forgotten the brutality that led to their victory. But, unlike the original Dune, where character was mostly a function of class, here, class is a function of character.
Ruocchio understands that the most satisfying stories involve characters challenging their own limits. His books also bring us the joy of having minor characters emerge as fully formed, with independent motivations. Ruocchio is next big thing in SciFi, and the Sun Eater series more than fills the void created while waiting for both the new Dune movie, and WoW.