Emperor of Thorns: The Broken Empire, Book 3 Audible Audiobook – Unabridged

Mark Lawrence (Author), Joe Jameson (Narrator), HarperCollins Publishers Limited (Publisher)

2,227 ratings

See all formats and editions

Amazon Price

New from

Used from

Kindle

"Please retry"

$11.99

—

Audible Audiobook, Unabridged

"Please retry"

$0.00

Free with your Audible trial

Hardcover

"Please retry"

—

$145.00

Paperback

"Please retry"

$18.99

—

Mass Market Paperback, Illustrated

"Please retry"

—

$16.82

$13.42

Audio CD

"Please retry"

$70.74

—

Lawrence brings the Broken Empire series to its devastating conclusion.

The path to the throne is broken - only the broken can walk it. The world is cracked and time has run through, leaving us clutching at the end days. These are the days that have waited for us all our lives. These are my days. I will stand before the Hundred and they will listen. I will take the throne no matter who stands against me, living or dead, and if I must be the last emperor then I will make of it such an ending.

This is where the wise man turns away. This is where the holy kneel and call on God. These are the last miles, my brothers. Don't look to me to save you. Run if you have the wit. Pray if you have the soul. Stand your ground if courage is yours. But don't follow me. Follow me, and I will break your heart.

Listening Length

15 hours and 4 minutes
Author

Mark Lawrence
Narrator

Joe Jameson
Audible release date

3 October 2013
Language

English
Publisher

HarperCollins Publishers Limited
ASIN

B00NWIKZ34
Version

Unabridged
Program Type

Audiobook
See all details

Read & Listen

Switch between reading the Kindle book & listening to the Audible narration with Whispersync for Voice.
Get the Audible audiobook for the reduced price of $12.49 after you buy the Kindle book.

Get this audiobook free then 1 credit each month, good for any title you like - yours to keep, even if you cancel
Listen all you want to the Plus Catalogue—a selection of thousands of Audible Originals, audiobooks and podcasts, including exclusive series
Exclusive member-only deals
$16.45 a month after 30 days. Cancel anytime

Learn more about membership

By completing your purchase, you agree to Audible’s Conditions Of Use and Privacy Notice.

Sold and delivered by Audible, an Amazon company

People who viewed this also viewed

Page 1 of 1Start OverPage 1 of 1

King of Thorns: Broken Empire 2
Mark Lawrence
2
Audible Audiobook
$0.00 Free with Audible trial
Prince of Thorns: Broken Empire 1
Mark Lawrence
3
Audible Audiobook
$0.00 Free with Audible trial
Prince of Fools: Red Queen's War, Book 1
Mark Lawrence
1
Audible Audiobook
$0.00 Free with Audible trial
The Liar's Key: Red Queen's War, Book 2
Mark Lawrence
1,143
Audible Audiobook
$0.00 Free with Audible trial
The Wheel of Osheim: Red Queen's War, Book 3
Mark Lawrence
1,167
Audible Audiobook
$0.00 Free with Audible trial

Product details

Listening Length	15 hours and 4 minutes
Author	Mark Lawrence
Narrator	Joe Jameson
Whispersync for Voice	Ready
Audible.com.au Release Date	03 October 2013
Publisher	HarperCollins Publishers Limited
Program Type	Audiobook
Version	Unabridged
Language	English
ASIN	B00NWIKZ34
Best Sellers Rank	7,216 in Audible Books & Originals (See Top 100 in Audible Books & Originals) 209 in Classic Literature 453 in Classic Literature & Fiction 512 in Epic Fantasy (Audible Books & Originals)

Customer reviews

5 star		70%
4 star		22%
3 star		6%
2 star		1%
1 star		1%

How are ratings calculated?

Review this product

Write a customer review

Top reviews from Australia

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.

Lazy Dai

Spectacular finale to an epic trilogy

Reviewed in Australia on 24 July 2015

Verified Purchase

As the Hundred rulers of the Broken Empire squabble amongst themselves at the Congression in Vyene to elect an Emperor, the Dead King and his legions enter the city, while the data-ghosts of the Builders decide whether or not to exterminate humanity. Jorg Ancrath, the disinherited Prince (and now King) of Thorns is the only one who can save the Broken Empire. Mark Lawrence does not disappoint readers in this excellent final book of the trilogy as the story twists and turns before reaching an unexpected yet very fitting conclusion. And no, Mark Lawrence, you won’t have to eat cold tinned catfood any time soon (you’ll need to read the epilogue for an explanation!) ;-)

Helpful

Coggsa

You wont want to put it down

Reviewed in Australia on 4 August 2019

Verified Purchase

Wonderful book, and really enjoyable world building for this series! Amazing story and very well written.

Helpful

Allan

Great book

Reviewed in Australia on 6 May 2014

Verified Purchase

Unexpected conclusion and keeps the suspense till the last chapter. Great read anytime but especially around a pool on a lazy holiday.

Helpful

ifr33

From strength to strength

Reviewed in Australia on 11 February 2014

Verified Purchase

The depth of this trilogy has built with each book and even though this conclusion is somewhat inevitable, it still seals the deal.

One person found this helpful

Helpful

ajmgb

great read

Reviewed in Australia on 18 April 2019

Verified Purchase

great read love the series

Helpful

Amazon Customer

Five Stars

Reviewed in Australia on 18 April 2016

Verified Purchase

Abrupt albeit good ending, fantastic series

Helpful

Oh no! It’s finished!

Reviewed in Australia on 22 October 2018

Being honest, I’m not always the biggest fan of Grimdark, but this was great. The MC, Jorg is unique. I doubt we will see his like again. He inspires the full gamut of emotions in the reader as he forges his own path in this dark, Broken world. Read this!

Helpful

Keithscossie

Dark but thrilling

Reviewed in Australia on 26 July 2014

In read the first book on a recommendation off the net and was hooked, this second one just carries on perfectly.

Helpful

Top reviews from other countries

Farhad Shawkat

Loved the trilogy

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 15 July 2022

Verified Purchase

Mark Lawrence continues to impress me with his clever writing, juggling plot threads, timelines, flashbacks and all. The concept of the Builders and their tools I loved as well, another example of his intelligent storytelling. I almost feel like this was a bit rushed though, though the author does comment on this, saying he realises he could’ve turned this into a 5-6 book series, but chose to end it as a trilogy. Always a tricky decision as an author, but it’s better to end a series so that people ask ‘why?’ rather than ‘when?’

Jorg’s adventures take him far and wide, and two scenes in particular were a delight to read. One in the Caliph’s palace in Liba, the other his meeting with the Pope.

Overall, loved the trilogy, strongly recommend it, and do not be put off by most people’s description of Jorg. He’s not as bad as they say, just absolutely ruthless. I went on to buy Road Brothers, a collection of short stories which will fill in more background on his band of ‘brothers.’ I finished the trilogy wanting to know more about these characters, and was glad to find there’s more.

adam

What happened?

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 16 September 2018

Verified Purchase

Sat down to read the trilogy in the space of a couple of days after they sat on my Kindle gathering dust for a while..

Prince of Thorns was a pretty decent read, King of Thorns started to lead down a path I feel this series shouldn't have gone down and Emperor of Thorns just let the horse bolt through the door KoT opened.

The book was a half decent read, up until the point of a robot man (Spoilers? Meh), thinnly veiled attempts at hiding who the antagonist was after halfway through this book (If it wasn't entirely obvious?) and just questionable usage of different timelines (and text to go along with it).

Gone are the majority of the 'brothers' from previous books, Rike's still going strong, as is Makin. But the rest seem to have pretty much bitten the bullet, and with them, most of the semblance of a series from the beginning.

One of the main antagonists from the previous books comes back with something less of a vengeance in as much as a sidekick to the Dead king.

One of the massive grudges I held with this book, and the previous, were the usage of "4 Years earlier", and "5 Years earlier", I figured it'd be a passing phase, telling a story alongside a second story, but it all just seems far too much of a coincidence as the story drudged along through the reeds of Jorg's history. And this, along with 'the builders' ruined this book, and verged upon the series, for me.

One person found this helpful

Tony Walsh

Fantastic

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 5 August 2018

Verified Purchase

I won't lie to you my extent of fantasy reading was limited to the big guns (Tolkien & Martin) before this, but Lawrence has opened my eyes to truly great reading outside my normal genre, historical fiction. Now some say that the leap from fiction to fantasy isn't that far especially when historical fiction can be based on myth and legend rather than fact and normally they would be right. But this series, this is something completely different. Lawrence has brought fact, fiction and fantasy together in a way nobody else does. His ability to create a whole new world out of the world we live in now is like nothing I've read before. Put that with his amazing ability to create a character that is both evil and is someone you want to see succeed and what you get is a recipe for a mind blowing read. Since reading this series I have read his other series set in the Broken Empire (The Red Queens War) and I am in the middle of following the adventures of Nona Grey in The Book of the Ancestor series. Mark Lawrence is fast becoming one of my favourite authors.

3 people found this helpful

Carrick

Great conclusion to the Thorn trilogy

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 17 July 2019

Verified Purchase

Rich, mature, intelligent and complex. Great writer with this complex world, manages to keep the developments coming. The challenges are as clever and twists are as rich as ever. Less dark than the other books, perhaps because we're more used to it, also because there are more and varied characters and family. Here we look also at more 'future'. There is a coherent if not perfectly satisfying conclusion (nice twist).

I'd read this series before the Red Prince trilogy, though there is minor overlap and you can read them independently. This is a mature and serious writer at the toip of his game. All his stuff has a much higher calibre of wrtting and imagination tan anything else being written at the momemnnt. This is the work of someone we will be hearing more of. I class him in the Bujold, Weber, Mcaffrey, Moon, Webb, Ringo, Modessitt, Feist calibre.

RECOMMENDED

One person found this helpful

Georgiana89

Some issues, but still a strong end to a unique series

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 5 December 2014

Verified Purchase

I absolutely loved the first book in this trilogy for its strong writing, its interesting setting (medieval meets post-apocalyptic) and above all, its ultra-compelling protagonist, Jorg, a man who enjoyably blurred the lines between anti-hero and outright psychotic villain. Book Two, while still an enjoyable read, seemed to meander slightly, and didn't grab me quite as much. It will probably depend on taste, but for me, this third and final installment ranked somewhere between them.

Half of the alternating chapters flashback in time by a few years and continue the story, began in book two, of Jorg's travels round the Empire, developing his power and knowledge and learning more about "the builders" and their technology. This fills in some of the blanks that left that end of Book Two slightly confusing, notably where and how Jorg got a gun. Like before, this aspect was very episodic and there were some parts I definitely enjoyed more than others. A little pruning would potentially have been useful here.

The other half is in the "present" and was much stronger on the whole. Miana, Jorg's child bride, is now fifteen and pregnant with his heir, congression, the four-yearly event where all the kings gather to attempt to elect an emperor from amongst their numbers (so far unsuccessfully) is upon us, and the Dead King, merely hinted at in earlier books, is basically attempting to take over the world and fill it with dead things. As this brief summary suggests, this section is action-packed and dramatic, and it provided some of the best show piece scenes in the whole series, even if at times, I sometimes felt the author almost had too many plot lines running simultaneously.

There was a lot of character development going on here, which left me torn. On a technical level, I admired the way the author humanised Jorg and had him start to feel regret for his earlier actions and concern for others. On the other hand, I have to admit that I missed the driven psychopath of book one. Indeed, while I accepted him gaining a conscience, I could have done without him gaining self-doubt. His absolute drive and self-belief made him a fascinating character to me. That said, I loved the strength of his feelings for his new baby - genuinely touching. And considering these feelings, and considering how he tends to react when people mildly inconvenience him, I was waiting with baited breath to how he'd react to someone who tried to kill his son. Let's just say I wasn't disappointed.

As far as other characters went, most of the "brothers" took a relative back seat here, but it's still a strong supporting cast. I loved Miana (one of the few people who ever feels like a match for her husband) and I was hoping they'd develop a strong relationship and he'd get over his weird teenage crush on Katherine. She was a little more interesting in this book now she'd developed dream powers, but I still couldn't understand the depths of his obsession, especially with what feels like the perfect woman for him at his side and pregnant with/mothering his child.

I can't give too much detail without spoiling some plot points, but there were some scenes I was almost certain would be in this book, based on all the rules of storytelling, such as Jorg having a final showdown with his father or some combination of seducing/killing/conclusively getting over Katherine. I got the impression that the author avoided these scenes to avoid cliche, which is understandable, but I felt that the novel lost something as a result. Sometimes things become cliches for a good reason.

The ending was conclusive and suitably dramatic and mostly hard to predict (although I figured out one of the key plot point a few chapters in). On the other hand, the ending was extremely complicated and convoluted, and left me wondering what the hell had just happened. Still, you certainly can't accuse the author of giving readers a cop-out.

That feels like quite a lot of complaints for a 5-star review of a book, but that really sums up how I feel. It was a great read, well-written and unusual. I admired the way it took risks and though for me, some of them didn't quite work out, I'd rather a few brave plot choices that I didn't enjoy than more of the predictable same old same old. As with the rest of the series, this isn't for everyone, but if you'd read this far, I'd definitely recommend this as a fitting, if sometimes frustrating, conclusion.

2 people found this helpful

See all reviews

Emperor of Thorns: The Broken Empire, Book 3 Audible Audiobook – Unabridged

Read & Listen

Free with Audible Trial $0.00

Pay with 1-Click $22.62

People who viewed this also viewed

Product details

Customer reviews

Review this product

Top reviews from Australia

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.

Top reviews from other countries

Free with Audible Trial

$0.00

Pay with 1-Click

$22.62