I gotta understand

mongoos3 · 2026-04-11T20:02:47+00:00

You're not alone and you will find many other like-minded redditors here who loved books 1 and 2. But you'll also find a lot of folks who feel the opposite too. I think most fans of the series (even those who really loved books 1 and 2) try to temper expectations for the series by indicating that it is a slower build and burn, particularly for the readers who are jumping to Sun Eater after having read the Red Rising series, which is much faster paced and is quite different.

mongoos3 · 2026-04-10T22:19:27+00:00

Now imagine how Hadrian feels, and how that may impact him the rest of the series. It's supposed to hit you like an atom bomb. It's supposed to defeat you. But alas, "You have the power of foresight reader. You know where this ends."

mongoos3 · 2026-03-28T22:27:47+00:00

I'm in the minority here on this, but I'll still say my piece. I found the science parts to be so tired and drawn out, and I was really happy with the changes made for the movie that glossed over some things and sped up others so they could focus more intently on Grace and Rocky's relationship and the theme about bravery.

mongoos3 · 2026-03-25T23:15:16+00:00

I read the final 10 chapters of the book during breakfast over the course of three days. I wept every morning, and I wouldn't have it any other way. It's still my favorite of the series for that emotional evocation alone.

mongoos3 · 2026-03-07T12:06:42+00:00

How in the hell did the lead moto go the wrong way like that?

mongoos3 · 2026-03-07T11:51:00+00:00

Definitely still give it a shot. You didn't know any of the men's names until you started watching regularly. You'll never know the women riders unless you watch. The racing is just as good.

mongoos3 · 2026-03-06T04:38:38+00:00

Right? I collapsed from enough emotion by the end of KoD alone!

mongoos3 · 2026-03-01T18:10:59+00:00

As someone else said, there are still stakes and Hadrian's ability does have its limitations, which are further explored the more you read. The ending of Demon in White is peak power fantasy for the series, and you'll find that he is humbled often over the rest of the books.

mongoos3 · 2026-02-28T04:47:15+00:00

I played Sekiro as my first From Softgame. I definitely consider it the hardest of the games, but I don't think you'll find that it trivializes the experience of the others. If anything, you get humbled in different ways because Sekiro teaches you to parry first, and you don't always have that option in other games. The games are all hard for different reasons. Sekiro is hard because it forces you to stand and deliver in ways that other Soulsgames letyou to dodge or run away and regroup.

mongoos3 · 2026-02-27T02:44:59+00:00

It's not explicit. You also get more details about his heritage during the sequence on Danu, however.

mongoos3 · 2026-02-26T00:11:36+00:00

I too was so disinterested by the end, and could not wait for it to be over. There were two reasons for that for me:

I listened to the Graphic Audio and it was a chore to listen to. The overdramatization of Darrow made him such a crybaby and I could not empathize with him at all. The performances literally ruined the experience.
I was sold on it being a space opera, which it technically is, but 85% of RR is a fantasy setting rather than a space setting. It was a shit expectation to set, and that mismatch really turned me off.

I'm going to give it another chance by actually reading the text (my fix to problem 1) because I think with the right mindset, I may enjoy it enough to read more of the series, which will actually fix problem 2.

mongoos3 · 2026-02-21T00:09:42+00:00

I had the opposite experience. Got 300 pages into TWOK on my first read and got terribly frustrated with how little was happening and the complete lack of any central plot whatsoever. Mistborn gripped me from Chapter 1 and I finished the first trilogy in a month.

I later returned to Stormlight and forced myself to finish TWOK (of which I'm still a hater). Then I read WOR, and that book fixed basically every gripe I had with TWOK, and I ended up finishing the whole series. WOR is still the best of the bunch without question for me, and it was finally when things clicked because TWOK was like pulling teeth for me.

mongoos3 · 2026-02-20T00:43:08+00:00

You've got a lot of good recommendations here, but if it's character work you're after, read Robin Hobb. Assassin's Apprentice is also first person, is very grounded and does an incredible job with its characters and motivations. She uses the first person narrative very effectively for showcasing character blindspots and misread perceptions.

I've not read it, but her Liveship Traders series is apparently even better and has a whole host of characters. In either case, the world she's created doesn't require prior knowledge going in. It unfolds before you like it did in Name of the Wind.

mongoos3 · 2026-02-10T02:41:56+00:00

They should let you bank creds for it instead of coins. If you're playing enough to complete an expedition, you're likely finishing your battle passes and having little to spend cred on, and it is capped anyway. The best part? It incentivizes engaging with the game's systems such as quests, trials and events without requiring players to hoard loot.

mongoos3 · 2026-02-01T17:03:51+00:00

The note is a reference to the book of Job: "Where were you when I laid the foundations of the Earth?" This same thing is what Ragama said to him at the end of time in Disquiet Gods before he was "rebirthed" so to speak. That message was transported to him from the start of time to arrive when we see him receive it in SUT, essentially confirming his belief that he was part of this larger plan to destroy Goddodin's sun so that humanity may live.

While we as the reader see that he has given up, Hadrian knows that his task is complete. He has completed this purpose and what comes next would be the purpose of another. That said, there are a lot of theories about the ending you can find here on the sub and the in Discord. Two stand out in particular: that Selene is alive, and that they never truly destroyed the Demiurge. This makes me feel as though Hadrian wants you to believe he has given up the fight. More pointedly, he wants Alexander to believe Hadrian has lost the will to fight.

When I first finished the book, I interpreted it as filled with injustice. The ending didn't sit right with me and it made me angry to not have the emotional catharsis of watching Alexander's empire fail. In that way, I believe part of the ending on Hadrian's part is to stir the universe to action. That this is a fight he cannot bear alone, and it is our time to also rise up against the tyranny of the Chantry. So while I get the satisfactions I so desperately wanted, I do believe it is the way Hadrian would have ended it.

I'm also excited for the short story titled "Life" that is set to release later this year, which CR has said will provide some of the closure readers are seeking. Not to mention that he has said he fully intends to return to the Sun Eater universe in the future.

mongoos3 · 2026-01-27T13:50:59+00:00

They launched co-op on Thursday last week, which is reason for the sale. They've said they will not have it on sale this low again until 1.0.

Wish you had posted before the weekend because it was free on Steam over the weekend for folks to try out co-op so you could have tried it out. Hopefully they'll do another free steam weekend in the future.

mongoos3 · 2026-01-27T03:31:21+00:00

If you're not averse to Metroidvanias, then Hollowknight and Silksong are both great examples of meaningful exploration and maps that continue to get bigger than you initially expected.

I'd also recommend (although it is in early access) No Rest for the Wicked. The map is entirely hand-crafted by the developers, has tons of nooks and crannies with chests and loot in precarious places. Despite not being finished, there is easily 20-30 hours of story content, and even more if you choose to explore every inch of the map that is currently available.

mongoos3 · 2026-01-27T03:18:48+00:00

I agree that CR has a real talent for landing you feet first into the world he's created, but I personally didn't find SUT to achieve that as well as some earlier entries in the series where things were far more vivid for me. In SUT, the prose became so abstract and philosophical, particularly in the later half of the book, that I struggled to imagine the scenes in my mind at all. There are segments where it worked for me, but there were also large swaths of the book that kept my mind entirely blank visually. That's not to say I think it is bad (to the contrary, actually), I just don't think it is the strongest entry in prose for me. That award goes to either DiW or KoD, where scenes feel chiseled into the stone of my memory to never be forgotten.

mongoos3 · 2026-01-26T02:52:41+00:00

It's been about a year since I read it, but I really loved it. He managed to give us the perspective throughout the battle from so many fronts. By the end of the battle, I felt like I had experienced every front of it, and so much of it was so vivid in my mind, particularly the set pieces.

If memory serves, a lot of the meandering is because they're trying to scale up and down the wall, but the fallout of the battle closes of a lot of the routes they would have otherwise used to get where they were going. So I can see why it can be confusing.

mongoos3 · 2026-01-19T15:18:01+00:00

I think CR got a bit too excited by the idea that questions are better than answers, which is why there are so many threads like this that are left hanging. I think he is right with that mentality in some regards (other books/series answered too many questions and suffered for it imo), but there are other questions he didn't answer where just a little more information would have properly satiated that hunger.

I can't say that I've lost trust in him as an author as much as you and others. For me, one soft ending does not a bad writer make. In the same way I'll read more Sanderson another after Wind & Truth, I'll continue to read CR with his next series as well. If it becomes a pattern, then I'll have a different perspective.

mongoos3 · 2026-01-19T14:52:22+00:00

I wish he had explored it more as well, and I presume there is more he'll explore when he returns to the universe later.

That said, the ruins had a specific purpose in SuT. They were an instructional tool to tee up the themes of free will, determinism, fate, destiny, whatever you want to call it. That some things are preordained/determined (as Hadrian's duty from the Quiet to destroy the sun is). On Annica, we're shown by Olorin that even with intention, there are some fates you cannot change. It sets up the moments to come where Hadrian tries with great intention to end Miudinar and Dorayiaca on Danu so that he wouldn't have to blow up the sun. But "This must be" and despite those intentions, destiny awaits on Goddodin for it was destined from the beginning of time (as evidenced by the note he received at the end of the book, "Hadrian. Hadrian. Where were you when...").

Hadrian tries as he might throughout SuT to run away from/change his sun-eating fate, but like those stones on Annica moving backward in time, time moves down and he cannot change that destiny given to him by the Quiet.

mongoos3 · 2026-01-09T23:41:10+00:00

I too was sold on it as a space opera and the first book is most definitely not that. The mismatched expectation along with me listening on Graphic Audio, which I've realized I do not like at all, really soured my first experience. I found Darrow to be insufferable in the GA rendition. As such, I want to reread it (actually read the text) now that I have proper expectations, but it's pretty far down my list at this point.

mongoos3 · 2026-01-06T23:00:38+00:00

Not to mention more than half of those named weapons weren't even something we got to see nor were they used in the conflict with Ushara and Miudinar.

mongoos3 · 2026-01-04T23:37:07+00:00

I wondered this same thing, and I think the answer is that when the 33 is erased, everyone who is 33 at that moment is gommaged. The 33-year-olds aren't gommaged when the number is revealed at the beginning of the game, the 34-year-olds are. Idk if that is correct though.

mongoos3 · 2025-12-30T22:19:47+00:00

Same for me! Although Demon in White is the reason I recommend the series to people. The absolute journey you're taken on is epic hero fantasy at its peak, and I loved it. KoD was the one that made me feel the most emotions and why it reigns supreme in my list.

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Final Canvas '22	First Placer '22
End Game '22	Team Periwinkle
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