Empire of Silence
It tells a story. Hardcover files this book as fiction, and its readers there call it adventurous, dark and mysterious. Facts, not factors: neither plays any part in our call.
Read it
Audio is doing this one no favours: 51 readers call it slow. That is a book that wants a page you can turn back to.
Length does not decide this
25h 58m to listen, at 1×20h 46m to listen, at 1.25×17h 19m to listen, at 1.5×14h 50m to listen, at 1.75×12h 59m to listen, at 2×about 25 hours to readabout 19 hours to readabout 15 hours to readabout 12 hours to readabout 9 hours to read
The runtime is Audible’s own, shown at the speed beside it. The reading time is our estimate: 753 pages at 30 pages an hour, the pace you told us. Ours is 50, about 300 words a page, read at 250 a minute.The runtime is Audible’s own, shown at the speed beside it. The reading time is our estimate: 753 pages at 40 pages an hour, the pace you told us. Ours is 50, about 300 words a page, read at 250 a minute.The runtime is Audible’s own, shown at the speed beside it. The reading time is our estimate: 753 pages at 50 pages an hour, which is about 300 words a page, read at 250 a minute.The runtime is Audible’s own, shown at the speed beside it. The reading time is our estimate: 753 pages at 65 pages an hour, the pace you told us. Ours is 50, about 300 words a page, read at 250 a minute.The runtime is Audible’s own, shown at the speed beside it. The reading time is our estimate: 753 pages at 80 pages an hour, the pace you told us. Ours is 50, about 300 words a page, read at 250 a minute.
If you must listen → dedicated listening only
About as demanding in audio as The Handmaid's Tale.
Harder work in audio than 83% of the books we hold.
Harder work in audio than 82% of the fiction we hold.
About as much work in audio as most of the doorstoppers we hold.
Reading load against listening load
Where that puts this one among the books we hold: in the middle 40% of our shelf of books for effort on the page and in the top 30% of our shelf of books for effort in your ears. The middle of the scale is not the middle of the shelf (most books sit below the average on both), so a book at 0.00 is already in the top 43% for effort on the page. Each of the three is measured against the whole shelf separately, so the bottom figure is not the top two subtracted. It is this book’s own distance from the middle.
What the audio disadvantage is made of. Two things and no others: how fast readers say this one moves, and how demanding the reviews we read found it. There is no third: the structural one has no data source, so it contributes nothing rather than being guessed at. Both directions are declared priors we have never fitted against a real verdict, which is the weakest-evidenced part of the whole model.
How the call was made
Where a bar carries ticks, the grey one is the middle of our shelf and a coloured one is a line we publish, cool where we start backing the page, warm where we start backing the recording. The evidence squares at the foot are a different thing: how far each of our four sources went, hatched where there was nothing to measure at all.
- The audio case
- −0.58It sits in the bottom 24% of our shelf of books for how far the recording outruns the page. Past the line where we start backing the page.
- Narration payoff
- 0.33John Lee’s reading and the book are received about equally well: in the middle 40% of our shelf of books, on 695 ratings of the narration. This is a difference, not a score: it sets the reading against its own book, so a much-loved book with a merely good reading sits low on this shelf even where nobody disliked either. Asked the other way (how the reading stands against what the book’s own readers made of it, which is a different crowd rating a different thing), it comes out 0.63. We report that one and never score it: two crowds that do not overlap are held together by nothing but the standardising, which is a cost the figure above does not pay.
- What is at stake
- −1.00It sits in the bottom 13% of our shelf of books for how well the print crowds think of a book: not a book the crowds are precious about, so there is less to protect and we can be relaxed about it. Blended across 67,401 Goodreads ratings and 693 on Hardcover, each scored inside its own population first, and never added together.
For the page
- A hard text to follow by ear
- The crowds’ regard did not reach the line where we protect a first read, this reason did not apply
For the recording
- The voice and the book are received about level
- 695 listeners behind it
So the case for the page won it, but only just.
A bigger dot counted for more: the voice and the ear are sized by their share of the sum above, the other two by how much stands behind them. A hatched square is a reason that did not apply here, which is not the same as one that counted for little.
- Evidence
- 1.00How much of the picture we actually have, out of 1.00: four questions, each answered as far as the source could answer it, less anything taken off for reading fewer reviews than we aim to.The reading695 people have rated this reading: as good as it getsThe second sourceHardcover knows this book, with 693 readers there: as good as it getsThe matchHow sure we are that the recording we scored is this book: as good as it getsThe reviewsWe read 300 reviews to judge how demanding it is: as good as it gets
What each crowd complains about
In the reviews we read, how often readers brought it up and how often listeners did, each against what is usual for that same crowd across our whole shelf, which is the grey tick. The track stops at 4×. Listeners are only ever compared with listeners.
Listeners of this book bring up the pace about two and a half times as often as listeners usually do, while readers of it bring it up about 3.2 times as often as readers usually do.
What the two crowds said
Showing the stars as each shop prints them. The two crowds are not measured from the same place: on our shelf Audible’s listeners average 0.35 of a star above Goodreads’ readers, so a recording that is ordinary for Audible can still out-star a book that is genuinely well liked for Goodreads. Switch the toggle to take that difference off.Showing each figure as its distance from its own crowd’s middle on our shelf, in standard deviations, so 0 is a typical book for that crowd. Listeners start 0.35 of a star up, partly because anyone who finishes a twenty-five-hour recording chose it deliberately, and this takes that off. It is not a claim that audio is better, the story figure is still Audible’s own (people rating a story they heard), and none of it moves the verdict above.
overallAudible
overall, pooled by the shop, so we hold no ruler for it
807 ratings · performance and story, as the shop pools them
the performanceAudible
the performance, against Audible’s own crowd
How often this goes badly3.7% of the people who rated the performance gave it one or two stars. More than most recordings here. The middle of our shelf is 2.0%, and half of it falls between 1.0% and 3.1%.
26 of 695 listeners gave the performance one or two stars
The shape of the room
- United
- Warm, this one
- Split
- Lukewarm
A warm room: most listeners are happy with the performance, and a small group are not.
695 ratings
the story, as heardAudible
the story, as heard, against Audible’s own crowd
695 ratings
the book itselfGoodreads
the book itself, against Goodreads’ own crowd
67,401 ratings
The series
The Sun Eater
Still running · The reading changes hands
7 books numbered on Goodreads’ list, with 4 novellas or companions filed between them. Songs of the Sun Eater: Tales From The Sun Eater Universe is due in 2026.
The reading changes hands across the 4 volumes Audible names in our records: John Lee reads book 1, Saul Reichlin book 3, Samuel Roukin books 5 and 7.
From Goodreads’ own series index, checked on 11 September 2026.
Every reading we hold
One complete reading of this book, and it is the reading every audio figure above is measured on. If there is another, we have not found it. The shelf grows in reviewed batches, never because somebody searched for a book.
- John Leeour pick25h 58m20h 46m17h 19m14h 50m12h 59m · One voice · Audible UK and US
Performance 4.50 · Story 4.23 · 695 rated the reading · 3.7% of the people who rated the performance gave it one or two stars
Hear it · Audible’s clip, its length read from them on load
The recording we mean
- Runtime
- 25h 58m at 1×
- Read by
- John Lee
- Kind
- One voice
- ASIN
- B07BGZGGW3 · Audible UK
- Rated in
- Audible UK and US · 518 + 177 ratings of the performance
- Judged on
- 695 ratings of the narration
- Published
- Gollancz · 2018
Audible sorts a search by newest, so ours may not be the first one you are offered. The runtime is the check: if the one in front of you says 25h 58m, that is the reading these numbers describe. “Judged on” is the crowd behind every judgement we make about this reading: the smaller of the performance and story counts, which is why it is a little under the two shop counts added. We do not link out to a shop, and we take nothing if you buy there.