The Unbroken

De: C. L. Clark

Narrado por: Rasha Zamamiri

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

Colonialism S U C K S

Heartbreakly and endearingly human. The characters are so well written and the storyline... I hope in this case life will imitate art one day soon. 12/10

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.

Historic Fiction, but Make it Fantasy

I was a bit nervous about this book, I don’t read a lot of “adult” fiction as I still enjoy young adult and new adult literature despite my age. However, my concerns quickly proved to be unwarranted. This book was amazing! Like, the kind of amazing that makes it impossible to fully describe without spoiling everything. I love all the representation they managed to put in the book without anything feeling forced; multiple LGBT characters, disable characters, and strong POC females! It was refreshing.

My favorite characters were Touraine and her mother, Jaghotai. Both are such strong, bad-ass women who have been through hell. Touraine was kidnapped as a small child by the Balladairan Empire and raised to be a mindless, obedient soldier. Jaghotai mourned the loss of her child with no body to bury, only to have that child come back nearly 20 years later and hang her brother for being a rebel. Touraine’s life was not easy in Balladaire; she was punished harshly as she was growing up, often for other people's infractions, and rewarded for good behavior, as though the military was training dogs – not children. Her goal for her future was to become a captain, the captain of the Sands. She believed that by doing so, she could protect them and better their lives. And perhaps it would have worked out for her, had it not been for her run in with the rebels. Everything changes rapidly and what follows is possibly one of the best examples of human resilience and personal discovery I have ever read.

If you are looking to read this novel because it is labeled as a “sapphic romance”, do not go into it expecting that. There is pining and the characters do seem to love each other (or at least the idea of each other), but romance is far from a focal point. The romance doesn’t even go anywhere in the long run. It’s much more action focused, taking the rebellion to the next level. The fighting scenes were well written, even if the descriptions for scents tended to be... disgusting.

The book seems to be influenced by the French occupation and colonization of North Africa there is no lack of realistic tension. The influence also helps as a segway into why everyone in the audio book is French; a fact that thoroughly confused my brain, but the narrator was fantastic. I am also rather pleased with how the book ended. No revolution is ever going to be bloodless, and I hate that we lost some truly wonderful characters, but it made it more impactful that way. I look forward to picking up the second book and continuing the series.

Struggled to finish this book

I tried to continue listening to this book but, had a hard time following. The scene transitions were hard to follow which sometimes lose you as you are listening.

slow burn

narrator did a wonderful job of expressing the difference between each character and their personalities. Overall the book was a slow burn but very enjoyable.

Too much a woke love story for me

Please don't get me wrong I am not a male chauvinist. The best new Sci Fi and fantasy authors I listened to last year were women. They also had homosexual characters. Not a problem. I love Ann Lackie N K Jimisin and Arkady Martine. All the main characters being homosexual women is a little much for me. Also using the neutral pronoun? The story was also all over the place. Characters made the same stupid decisions over and over.

Great book, Better Narrator

The book was super enjoyable, nearly if not every character is deeply interesting whether for good or bad reasons. Elevated by probably my favorite Narrator I’ve heard on this platform. They carry great matching energy through emotional highs and somber lows. This has to be someone who enjoys what they do, if not they are simply very skilled.

A Tragic Triumph

This story, at its heart, is about how colonialism twists and hurts everyone that it touches. The queer romance at its center is used adeptly to illustrate this, as two people with cautious but passionate affection for each other are repeatedly hurt by the very real ways that their differing circumstances make any actual romance truly impossible.

This is a story populated by well realized and deeply human characters, who make difficult and sometimes very incorrect decisions. I was often incredibly frustrated, watching their stories spiral out of control, but their motivations are all so fully explored that even when I am horrified by the way things are going, I can't help but feel empathy for why they're going down this route.

Ultimately I think this story is beautiful, and tells a vital story about the horror of a colonial occupation. Those expecting a more typical story, where two young queer people overcome impossible odds with the force of their love and maybe a bit of magic, are in for a bit of a surprise. I would encourage them to stick it out. The Unbroken has a bit of a bitter taste, but it's all the better for the complexity of that flavor.

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.