Review - The Vow of Silence by Elion Marr

The Vow of Silence

by Elion Marr

My rating:

Volume 1 of The Last Eunuch

Tags: Fantasy Historical

Posted in Book Reviews on 9 August, 2026

Aeren is finally ready to enter service in the Silent Court, a group of eunuchs that serves the royal family. They are trained and selected for their ability to be useful without being seen. Aeren is assigned to serve the crown prince, Irenus. Aeren performs his duties, perhaps a little too well. Irenus notices him. The court notices Irenus’ regard for Aeren and sees it as a threat. The Faith is the true power behind the throne and will not allow even the possibility that someone else is close enough to exert any influence over events.

“The Silent Vow” is set in a mythical kingdom clearly inspired by imperial China, but with some other cultures mixed in. As in most Asian empires, the royal palace is a vast enclave, a city within a city. It houses all the civil, military and religious machinery of state. In this story, as in China, only eunuchs are allowed in the inner court, the sanctum of the royal family. This is precisely because they have no family, no connections, in this story, they don’t even have a name. They are simply there to be useful, like the furniture.

The point of view stays mostly on Aeren, but sometimes switches to Irenus. Aeren is a completely blank slate. We know absolutely nothing about him before he is assigned to the crown prince. There can be little doubt this was a conscious decision on the author’s part, but it doesn’t feel right to me. Aeren seems to have chosen to become a eunuch and enter service. It feels like the motivation for that decision, and some idea of the extensive training he must have had to learn to move silently and school his features, would help us understand him better.

Aeren doesn’t speak for much of this story. Even when given permission to speak, even when ordered to, silence is often his only answer. This is not a story told through dialog. Conversations are had through the smallest of gestures, the placement of a glass on a table, tea that is served but not drunk. Great importance is placed on the most insignificant of items, such as a scrap of cloth.

The palace building itself is effectively a character in its own right. Rooms have personalities that decide what they’ll allow. Halls have memories. The palace has existed long before the current occupants were born and will exist long after. It knows how to measure the men who inhabit it.

We don’t get to know Irenus very well either, but he at least can speak and we can more easily understand his situation. Tradition has demanded the young man be effectively isolated. It seems natural that Aeren’s tiniest gestures of comfort affect him greatly.

I had a hard time getting into this story. The writing is beautifully evocative, describing the weight of silence or the meaning a gesture, but in all that it was hard to understand the point of it all. Despite all the inner dialog we get of both men, they never express their feelings, even internally, until well into the last half of the book. There’s also some choppiness in parts, with bits feeling like they’re out of sequence, and near the end, passages are even repeated. Note that the plot of the story doesn’t match the blurb on the book sites. The summary mentions events that don’t occur in this book, but may be from later volumes.

“The Vow of Silence” is available from Smashwords or see Bookshop.org to purchase from an independent bookseller.