The Unbroken

By: C. L. Clark

Narrated by: Rasha Zamamiri

Length: 18 hrs and 20 mins

Publisher's summary

In an epic political fantasy unlike any other, two women clash in a world full of rebellion, espionage, and military might on the far outreaches of a crumbling desert empire.

Touraine is a soldier. Stolen as a child and raised to kill and die for the empire, her only loyalty is to her fellow conscripts. But now, her company has been sent back to her homeland to stop a rebellion, and the ties of blood may be stronger than she thought.

Luca needs a turncoat. Someone desperate enough to tiptoe the bayonet's edge between treason and orders. Someone who can sway the rebels toward peace, while Luca focuses on what really matters: getting her uncle off her throne.

Through assassinations and massacres, in bedrooms and war rooms, Touraine and Luca will haggle over the price of a nation. But some things aren't for sale.

©2021 C. L. Clark (P)2021 Orbit

Not fantasy

The story was interesting enough but lolled as the story progressed. Took me a very long to finish. It turned up in the second half though. Definitely some plot twists I didn’t expect. The book is described as fantasy but is more a war story with touch of magic. I also felt like magic was used a crutch to resolve certain conflicts. We really only saw it to save someone’s life. Although this wasn’t a romance, I didn’t feel the chemistry between Touraine and Luca.

I like that essentially there are no gender roles. This books underlying theme is violent women in positions of power.

I could tell from the beginning that Touraine was a bit naive of what’s really going on in this war. She’s a bit brainwashed. My biggest issue is that Touraine isn’t loyal. She goes where she’ll be accepted at the time. Between Touraine and Luca, it was bad decision after bad decision.

Who tipped the soldiers off where Touraine was? If the other soldiers found her bound, how did she kill the Beledaire soldier? Why wasn’t that brought up? What took Luca so long to ask questions at the hearing?

Great world building and details. It was a lot of characters to keep up with.

The narrator did a great job.

Not what I expected

This really seemed like something I would like, but I couldn’t finish it. I found it really slow, and while the narrator seemed to vary voices well, the third person narration seemed to repeat the same patterns of emphasis over and over. I was excited to read a fantasy novel with queer women as leads (and even a queer disabled woman), but there were too many meetings and discussions and I just didn’t find the characters or story compelling enough to continue.

love a sapphic, anti-colonialism fantasy

this gave me everything i needed. i am sad the sequel doesn’t drop on audible for another month and some change.

A so-so political chaos book with 1 fun character.

This really started to fizzle out for me right around 50% through. Then at around 65%-70% through it just completly lost my interest and started becoming a chore.

I really liked our soldier lead Touraine, she was terrific, had great character development, amazingly easy identifiable characteristics and overall I just really enjoyed her internal conflicts with the plot and her strong demeneor.

Luca though was just boring, I never liked her and often felt the attractions to her felt forced and unrealistic. She really didn't have a lot of likable qualities and came off really generic. She was so hard to care about too because her plights just were so generic old world politics by someone who clearly doesn't know what they are doing but is convinced that they know what they are doing. It's kinda painful honestly everytime her character comes up because the writing is very obviously trying to get you to care about her but not enough work went into her to really achieve that.

The plot also fizzled for me and was getting sorta repetitive. It's hard to care about all these minor side characters and all the backstabbing when it happens constantly. It really needed better pacing with that because it started to become so apparent that it losts its surprise after like the 8th time it happens. The plot also felt artificially fluffed up and way longer then it needed to be given its somewhat simplicity it's went about.

The action scenes also really were not that good. The build up to these scenes just was really lacking and I found the descriptive writing just couldn't keep up with some of these scenes causing me to really struggle to picture what's going on and to care.

Also these side characters were just hard to keep track of, they come in and out of the story so quickly and without a lot of attention to them that i constantly forgot who was who. Important side characters would die or get horribly injured and i just felt nothing because I didn't even know who they were to begin with.

The world building was fantastic, sorta, kinda. The immediate area and locations were very well described, easy to picture and easy to get a good sense of the world, how it operates and the cultural conflicts.
What wasn't really well done was overall world building as to where and whom exactly are the conflicting factions. What really are the differences between everyone that started this whole messy conflicts.
It felt like it was in a bubble. Within that bubble was great but trying to understand what is going on outside that bubble really was a struggle for me.

I know a book just isn't for me when I just keep putting it off and with this, after I reached 50% through and started really feeling the issues I had with he book, I really found this to be a chore. I definitely appreciate what it did so far but a lot just failed to grab me and keep my attention when the issues start piling up.

Good

Good solid story. Very interesting characters. Would like to hear more. Hope there is more soon. I did not appreciate the accent it did not seem to have a purpose since everyone had it.

Should have listened to the reviews

It started out good. There was a gratifyingly grim depiction of colonialism, and gratifyingly nonchalant gender equality and LGBTQ relationships. But as it kept going it just got tiresome. The characters became ever more maddening, and the plot ever more dreary. I didn't care in the slightest, at the end, what happened to anyone. I was just relieved to finally be done with it.

Amazing from beginning to end

I had only a small inclination of what this book was about, only finding out about it a few weeks ago, and I was blown away. This story really had me at the edge of my seat from the first few sentences to the epic conclusion. It is lucky for me that the second installment is released in March, and I cannot wait to delve back into this universe. Please, do yourself a favor and read this book.

Gripping

Great story, kept engaged the whole time. Excellent characters too. I already have the second booked queued up!

Brilliant !!!

This is such a tough, heartbreaking, and gorgeous novel! Clark’s ability to humanize even the worst characters is a real talent

Excellent Characters and World

Love it for the story, the world, AND the queer plot line. Can't wait for the sequel!