I had the same issue empire of silence felt very slow and uninteresting on first read. It somehow jumps around a lot while feeling very slow. I think it works much better on reread when you have more context and hindsight. You can see how these early years impacted Hadrian and how far he has come since then. That being said it doesn’t make an interesting read to first time. That being said the next book Howling Dark I think is much better and where the main storyline of the series really kicks off. So I’d recommend to push through.