Empires of Bronze

Dawn of War

By: Gordon Doherty

Narrated by: Jonathan Keeble

Two great empires on the brink of war, one last hope for peace....

1294 BC: The fragile accord between the Hittite and Egyptian empires is crumbling. The ancient world braces itself for war on an unprecedented scale. Prince Hattu, the greatest of the Hittite generals, suffers dreams of terrible consequences–conjured by the Goddess Ishtar. But Hattu refuses to accept her prophecies, adamant that there is one last chance for peace. This fragile hope lies in the borderlands of the east, where the two rival empires touch. Hattu gathers a chosen band and sets out for this distant, blistering desert land, determined and defiant.

Yet the further he ventures, the darker and more twisted his mission becomes. Old ghosts rise around him and Ishtar haunts his every move. The Goddess' divinations cannot be avoided, men say. Hattu will walk through fire to prove them wrong.

©2017 Gordon Doherty (P)2020 W. F. Howes Ltd

The earth will shake and fall to dust

This is an incredible listen continuing on from the previous book and tying up threads from it while continuing the narrative and giving further depth to the ever shrinking hatti world. There is a sense of doom in the world. The earth shakes crops wither and neighbors grow restless and warlike. An square in the middle of it Hattusili attempts to save his world and must take an odyssey of his own to return to the ones he loves in their time of greatest peril. Also Jonathon Keeble does this book the justice it deserves as always it may be because he’s my favorite narrator or the book is just amazing but parring the two will take you back 3,000 years and introduce you to a world shared but not oft experienced or spoken of in modern perception.

great series wish there was more

really enjoyed the series. hope there are more books to come. narrator did a superb job as well.

Exciting tale with a less than satifying ending

I have been looking forward to this for months. I loved the first novel in this series. The characters are admirable, noble, loyal and brave. The author can certainly make battle scenes come alive. The relationships among the characters is finely drawn and the setting very exciting. I wonder if the novel has a map of the area. I think of Egypt to the west of the Hittite lands but the author describes them as east. However, I find the villain too much of a caricature of someone who is barely human and the ending was disappointing. At least we know there will be a third installment and that is surely good news.

Another Great Book

Great Story, Great Book..love this historical era, doesn't seem to be covered a lot in recent historical fiction novels.
Jonathan Keeble should do all audiobolks!

Biggest issue with first 2 Empire of Bronze Books

The characters are fine, detail is good, setting is different which I like, but my one issue with both the first and second book is that the bad guys are far more cleaver, smarter, faster, hold all the cards all the time. The books basically plays out like this: Bad guys win, bad guys win, bad guys win, good guys win at high cost and actually makes things worse, bad guys win, bad guys win, good guys pull last ditch hail Mary miraculous luckier than a lotto winner win and defeat the bad guys. When the good guys do win, it's blind luck where the bad guys have already planned three steps ahead. I'm going to read the third one to see what happens but I'm not a fan of constant overwhelming odds all the time.
PS: I'm writing this on my phone so please excuse typos.