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OKAY SO, I simply blasted through the last two books of Elizabeth Wein’s Lion Hunters series, since The Lion Hunter and The Empty Kingdom are not really two books at all but one big book split in half for, I presume, publication reasons. (The title of the book as a whole is The Mark of Solomon)
You may have imagined that Wein plumbed the depths of whump in The Sunbird, when Telemakos is enslaved at a salt mine, where he carries waterskins slung over his shoulders while blindfolded! with his hands tied at his sides! allowed only a few swallows of water each day!!!, and - okay, actually, that particular vein of whump is tapped. But never fear! Wein finds rich new sources of whump in The Mark of Solomon, not least of which is Telemakos’s ongoing PTSD from, you know, the whole salt mine incident.
However, PTSD on its own is simply insufficient whump for the Lion Hunters series, so the book also explores uncharted new whump territories, not least of which is “my adversary might kill me any day now but is extremely tender to me in the meantime,” A++ absolute catnip I love it.
That’s mostly in The Empty Kingdom. In The Lion Hunter, we kick off with ( spoilers )
You may have imagined that Wein plumbed the depths of whump in The Sunbird, when Telemakos is enslaved at a salt mine, where he carries waterskins slung over his shoulders while blindfolded! with his hands tied at his sides! allowed only a few swallows of water each day!!!, and - okay, actually, that particular vein of whump is tapped. But never fear! Wein finds rich new sources of whump in The Mark of Solomon, not least of which is Telemakos’s ongoing PTSD from, you know, the whole salt mine incident.
However, PTSD on its own is simply insufficient whump for the Lion Hunters series, so the book also explores uncharted new whump territories, not least of which is “my adversary might kill me any day now but is extremely tender to me in the meantime,” A++ absolute catnip I love it.
That’s mostly in The Empty Kingdom. In The Lion Hunter, we kick off with ( spoilers )
