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osprey_archer) wrote2022-08-21 09:07 am
osprey_archer) wrote2022-08-21 09:07 am
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Book Review: The Lion Hunter and the Empty Kingdom
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 Telemakos getting mauled by a lion. You see, he’s visiting his friends the emperor’s pet lions Solomon and Sheba when he receives news that his new baby sister has been born, and he’s so excited that he runs to climb out of the lion pit, only this activates Solomon’s predatory instincts so he pounces on Telemakos and mauls him so severely that Telemakos ends up losing his left arm! (Extremely belatedly I realize that this is one meaning of the title “mark of Solomon.”)
Meanwhile, someone remains deeply unhappy about Telemakos’s spying activities in the previous book. These people probably don’t know Telemakos was the spy, but they do know the spy’s name was sunbird, so they start nailing sunbirds to the door as a threat… so once Telemakos is healed from the mauling and amputation, he is sent over to Himyar with his baby sister Athena.
(Extra whump: his parents are both so upset by Telemakos’s injury that they all but reject Telemakos’s baby sister. Medraut is doing his best as a dad but his best is actually pretty terrible, as befits the Whumpiest Prince in Whumpland. Once Telemakos is healed he more or less appoints himself Athena’s nurse and guardian. And also is the one who chooses her name because no one has bothered to name her hitherto.)
Unfortunately for everyone it turns out that the center of the smuggling ring that Telemakos busted during the plague is, in fact, in Himyar. Not only that, but it was centered in the person of Abreha, leader of Himyar, frenemy of Aksum, and Telemakos’s host! At the end of The Lion Hunter, Telemakos discovers this fact… and is almost instantly caught in the act of spying by Abreha!
This kicks off the game of extremely tender cat-and-mouse to which I earlier alluded, which includes such gems as:
1. Abreha pressing his hand over Telemakos’s heart as a makeshift lie-detector test while interrogating Telemakos about his spy activities;
2. Abreha assigning Telemakos to train with his soldiers, which means learning to ride horseback blindfolded only OH NO, being blindfolded gives Telemakos salt mine flashbacks;
3. Abreha branding the back of Telemakos’s neck with his signet ring, which is said to be the ring of the Biblical King Solomon (that mark of Solomon again!)
As it turns out (DOUBLE spoilers for the ending), Abreha actually has his eye on Telemakos as a possible heir to his kingdom, and this is his way of testing him. Is that weird? Oh yes it’s weird, but then Abreha’s own upbringing was bizarre and terrible: as one of the sons of the Aksumite monarch (yes, he’s Aksumite by birth) he was raised in a remote monastery where the boys were chained up whenever they tried to escape. The eldest brother was kept in chains so continuously he eventually went mad. So, you know, like Medraut, Abreha is doing better than he was done by! But still pretty terrible.
ALSO, Telemakos is now the heir of Britain! Which means he has become heir of two separate kingdoms, four thousand miles apart, which might be a trifle difficult to juggle in those days before air travel…
However, had the series continued, apparently Lleu would have turned out to be alive after all, and presumably he would have become heir to Britain again, thus leaving Telemakos to devote his full attention to Himyar. If he decides he wants Himyar, that is. After this whole bait and switch with Abreha, Telemakos mostly wants to wash his feet of the dust of Himyar, and who can blame him?
And we’ll never know if he changes his mind, or if Goewin ever goes back to Britain and reunites with Priamos, or if Medraut will ever get his head out of his ass (well, okay, I can prognosticate on that one: no). This is the last published book in the series, so all these questions will remain unanswered, and are likely to remain so.
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 Telemakos getting mauled by a lion. You see, he’s visiting his friends the emperor’s pet lions Solomon and Sheba when he receives news that his new baby sister has been born, and he’s so excited that he runs to climb out of the lion pit, only this activates Solomon’s predatory instincts so he pounces on Telemakos and mauls him so severely that Telemakos ends up losing his left arm! (Extremely belatedly I realize that this is one meaning of the title “mark of Solomon.”)
Meanwhile, someone remains deeply unhappy about Telemakos’s spying activities in the previous book. These people probably don’t know Telemakos was the spy, but they do know the spy’s name was sunbird, so they start nailing sunbirds to the door as a threat… so once Telemakos is healed from the mauling and amputation, he is sent over to Himyar with his baby sister Athena.
(Extra whump: his parents are both so upset by Telemakos’s injury that they all but reject Telemakos’s baby sister. Medraut is doing his best as a dad but his best is actually pretty terrible, as befits the Whumpiest Prince in Whumpland. Once Telemakos is healed he more or less appoints himself Athena’s nurse and guardian. And also is the one who chooses her name because no one has bothered to name her hitherto.)
Unfortunately for everyone it turns out that the center of the smuggling ring that Telemakos busted during the plague is, in fact, in Himyar. Not only that, but it was centered in the person of Abreha, leader of Himyar, frenemy of Aksum, and Telemakos’s host! At the end of The Lion Hunter, Telemakos discovers this fact… and is almost instantly caught in the act of spying by Abreha!
This kicks off the game of extremely tender cat-and-mouse to which I earlier alluded, which includes such gems as:
1. Abreha pressing his hand over Telemakos’s heart as a makeshift lie-detector test while interrogating Telemakos about his spy activities;
2. Abreha assigning Telemakos to train with his soldiers, which means learning to ride horseback blindfolded only OH NO, being blindfolded gives Telemakos salt mine flashbacks;
3. Abreha branding the back of Telemakos’s neck with his signet ring, which is said to be the ring of the Biblical King Solomon (that mark of Solomon again!)
As it turns out (DOUBLE spoilers for the ending), Abreha actually has his eye on Telemakos as a possible heir to his kingdom, and this is his way of testing him. Is that weird? Oh yes it’s weird, but then Abreha’s own upbringing was bizarre and terrible: as one of the sons of the Aksumite monarch (yes, he’s Aksumite by birth) he was raised in a remote monastery where the boys were chained up whenever they tried to escape. The eldest brother was kept in chains so continuously he eventually went mad. So, you know, like Medraut, Abreha is doing better than he was done by! But still pretty terrible.
ALSO, Telemakos is now the heir of Britain! Which means he has become heir of two separate kingdoms, four thousand miles apart, which might be a trifle difficult to juggle in those days before air travel…
However, had the series continued, apparently Lleu would have turned out to be alive after all, and presumably he would have become heir to Britain again, thus leaving Telemakos to devote his full attention to Himyar. If he decides he wants Himyar, that is. After this whole bait and switch with Abreha, Telemakos mostly wants to wash his feet of the dust of Himyar, and who can blame him?
And we’ll never know if he changes his mind, or if Goewin ever goes back to Britain and reunites with Priamos, or if Medraut will ever get his head out of his ass (well, okay, I can prognosticate on that one: no). This is the last published book in the series, so all these questions will remain unanswered, and are likely to remain so.