The Empty Kingdom (Mark of Solomon) [Hardcover]

what a powerful, exquisitely crafted conclusion to the mark of solomon arc. what i find most remarkable about telemakos is not necessarily his growth into a formidable, unforgettable young man so much as the path he takes in the process, all that ferocious courage and fear and unswerving loyalty for those he loves. it is heartbreaking, how he must pay for his experiences with scars. it is also utterly believable, and i would demand nothing less than that in my heroes. i loved too the way in which wein handles athena's own growth, both physical and not, and that tricky negotiation between mutual support and overdependence. the prose was, as always, beautifully measured, and i can't wait to see more of telemakos and co. in the future.

also, can i say how NICE it is to read arthurian-related stories that go beyond the (physical and racial) borders of england?? more please!

I raced through this book in a day and evening after the cliff hanger of the previous book, The Lion Hunter. The two books are meant to be read together but they fit with the previous series of three beginning with The Winter Prince. Perhaps they could be read out of order but I would not recommend it. Upon finishing I just sat with a smile on my face when I closed the last page. So many twists and turns and such a beautiful ending that began five books ago with The Winter Prince which is a very different variation of the Arthurian legend. This amazing author began a book where Medraut (her version of Mordred) is writing the story to his evil mother, Morgana. Through the next two books we enter the story of his son conceived in Ethiopia and named Telemakos. Telemakos is the grandson of two kings, one of Britain (Artos/Arthur) and the other of his homeland. He has dark skin and his father's almost white hair. Medraut is an unforgettable book character as written in these books, but the first book is truly his own. He is wound into the books from beginning to end, but the story becomes Telemakos journey.

I can not even explain why these books are so wonderful. The characters for sure, the intrigue that is subtle at times, and slams you in the face at others. I honestly would not have been interested in reading a series that for much of the time is about a young boy and his even younger sister. It's just not my thing. Yet here I am a couple of weeks after I read the second book, A Coalition of Lions, naming this a favorite series. I read the first book in October of 2012 and somehow was satisfied to stop there. Yet I could not get the astounding trip through the snow where Medraut and his brother Lleu were determined to kill each other and their love/hate relationship during that terrible time. I decided I wanted to know more and got the second book.

Through most of this book Telemakos is a boy of 12 although it covers the next three years. A very clever boy indeed as he and his beloved baby sister are sent to the Kingdom of a rival for their protection, but also with the intention of spying. The relationship that grows between Abreha, the ruler, and Telemakos is complicated. I found it as well written as the love/hate relationship between Medraut and Lleu was in the initial book. The bond between this boy and his sister is beautiful, and I love that she refuses to call him anything other than "Boy" even though he is the most important person in her life.

I honestly can not do these books justice in a review. How do you describe the writing that just draws you in like this to books that I probably would not have tried if not highly recommended by a Goodreads friend, Chachic. THANKS!

I purchased this and another book from Wein's list. I thought she was going to do a fair job. Instead I discovered an extremely sloppy storyline and even worse facts. Wein seems to be running interference for the recent Ethio Eritrean war and on the Eritrean side. Everyone that is familiar with Ethiopian history knows that the region that we know today as Ethiopia is but a shadow of what those ancient Ethiopians and Axumites ruled. Yet Wein repeatedly misses this. She insists on a dubious and outright falsified peering of the Axumite Empire with what at that was Roman and Byzantine ruled Brittania. Axumite's contemporaries of Byzantine and numbered only 3rd in power next to the Persians and Chinese are reduced to entertaining with the barbarians from Brittania to the extent of intermarrying with them.

The ridiculousness doesn't stop there. Wein insults the history she writes about by not even respecting the hard facts that remain of it. When taken to task she argues her work is a work of fiction not history, but then rounds about and testily remarks that it is as factual as the records of that time allow it to be. Not so fast.

There was no record, NONE, of any interruption between the reign of Kaleb(Ella Asbeha) and Wazeb(Ella Gebre Meskel). She creates one just to insert her British caricature and gives him the title Ella Amida, yet another of Axum's kings. Is she trying to tell us in her non-historical history that no Ethiopian could suffice and we had to, alas and alack, rely on a barbarian to rule us.

So after all the claim of Ethipians never to have been colonized is false, after all Elizabeth Wein says so.

But not so fast. The entire Britanic saga is not just unlikely but impossible. Axumite coins may be found in britain for a number of reasons including commerce, but Britannic journey's to Axum were impossible. None were made. There were no records of "white hairs or blue eyes" anywhere in Axum's hagiography until well after the Solomonic restoration.

Finally Wein's politics gets in the way of her story telling, she seeks to give Eritrea, the 19th century Italian creation footing in 4th Century Ethiopia. This may be done to give the Eritreans a sense that this is their history too. Admirable but the story should not suffer for such political ambition. The contrivance of Telemakos as a white haired child is insulting to say the least. And the choice of names for people, "Ras Meder", "House of Neber" is inexcusably in its sloppiness. Those are not Axumite names or even names people would give to people. And Ethiopian monarchy are not organized by "houses". This is an imposition of a British mindset on a poor attempt at an Ethiopian story. Finally the contrivance of Goewin as a British Ambassadress that defies the age old customs forbidding females from entering monasteries is perhaps the most damning. Such thing would be punished by immediate and instant death to the offender. Axumites then were fervent about their rules. It is telling how disrespectful Wein is to the people she writes about, typical of the inculcation British education had one her, that she choses their most sacred institutions as the battleground for ancient feminism. Such acts would not have occurred and again had they occurred the Emperor or king would have been powerless to stop the guardians of the holy places from exacting swift and terrible retribution.

Overall while Wein writes well in general, she writes badly about Axum and overall about the Ethiopian Empire. She chooses to weave her own unfulfilled fantasy into the stories than to subsume her ego and her politics to the deserving and demanding story that needed to be told.