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Magic of the Lost #1
The Unbroken
Goodreads Choice Award
Nominee for Readers' Favorite Fantasy (2021)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.
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.
488 pages, Hardcover
First published March 23, 2021
1772 people are currently reading
93599 people want to read
About the author
C.L. Clark
23 books2,207 followersC. L. Clark is a BFA award-winning editor and Ignyte award-winning author of several books, including The Unbroken (Magic of the Lost trilogy), Fate's Bane (a novella), and Ambessa: Chosen of the Wolf (an Arcane novel). When she’s not writing, she’s trying not to throw her kettlebells through the wall. Her work has appeared in various SFF venues, including Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy, Tor.com, Uncanny, and Beneath Ceaseless Skies. Sign up to her newsletter for updates and bonus materials.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 2,654 reviews
June 19, 2021
There are few books I can’t read without pain, without all my old wounds flaring open. These are the stories that feel almost unbearably personal, the stories I can’t talk about without the words filling my throat to choking, without unlocking something I cannot begin to reconcile. Coming face to face with The Unbroken, a story that is built out of the bones of the colonial history of North Africa—the history of my people, my history—a story which drags out those perennial hurts and exorcises those familiar demons on the page, I was completely and utterly defenseless.
The sheer thematic gravity of The Unbroken ambushed me. The novel is quite nakedly about empire and colonialism, and it is utterly unafraid to leap into the immensity of those words, their labyrinths, the dark and deathlike cold of their truth. But while there is no shortage of fantasy novels that wrangle with the definition of empire and the long, precise catalogue of its colonial cruelties, what makes The Unbroken stand out is that it is most interested in the emotional experiences of the people caught in that empire’s teeth.
Indeed, at the core of this book is a rich, faceted, and jewel-clear examination of not only empire and colonialism but of what it means to be a cog in that blank-eyed hungry machine and to perpetually scrounge for a way to survive without being utterly subsumed. The novel goes deep into all the terrible minutiae of taking a long, hard look at your own colonization, of unraveling the strands of your own complacency while empire is so hideously entangled in your understanding of yourself—just the sheer, exhausting enormity of inheriting an atrocity, of being at the center of that atrocity, and trying, every single day, to find the strength to not dissolve into the weight of it.
—
Touraine, a Qazāli-born conscript in the imperial army of Balladaire, has a past that she keeps locked in doorless and windowless rooms where the walls are fortified against memory. Now Touraine is back in Qazāl, as an agent of Balladaire’s will, and the dam keeping her past there is finally threatening to burst.
Unlike the other desert-born conscripts—called “Sands” by Balladairans with a boorish lack of affection—who were ripped from their mothers’ arms and thrown into the machinery of empire before they could finish being children, Touraine does not indulge herself in extravagant hopes of home-coming or in vicious dreams of revenge. She stuffs her mind instead with more attainable aspirations, like keeping her soldiers alive, and proving herself an industrious pupil of General Cantic, and an apt subject of Balladaire—hoping Balladaire might like her better for it, that they might look past all that is barbaric about her, and allow her entry inside the warm and glittering center of their grand civilization. For Touraine, who has spent her whole life crawling out of one shallow grave after another, it was about survival: “I can fight for the side that’s winning.”
Through Touraine’s character, The Unbroken asks, with an icy clarity that cut through me: what does it do to a person to suffer, day by day, the tyrannies of the powerful who abominate them, while slowly disintegrating from the strain of trying to belong—the equivalent of willfully putting your hand in the mouth of the thing which wants to kill you and pray it doesn’t kill you? And icier still: Where is home, when you are too foreign for your country, and too foreign for theirs, an outsider wherever you land? What is a way of belonging, when the colonizer’s words are stuffed into your mouth and your ancestors’ language is sluggish on your tongue, too cobwebbed with desuetude? Who are you, after they’ve robbed you of your identity and left you bereft of everything that you might have been?
Touraine was cut adrift—sealed off even—from Qazāl, and from everything that made her Qazāli, her memories of her family burned out of her, scoured clean by training, by punishment. When Touraine finds herself back in Qazāl, years later, her return is too contemptuous to be called a coming-home, like trying to fit back into a skin that’s already been ripped out of her. Touraine feels very little continuity between that innocent Qazāli child and this soldier who toils to Balladaire’s whims, and this discontinuity creates in her a painful landscape, a hole eaten through the fabric of her. At one point, Touraine muses: “it [is] impossible to come from one land and learn to live in another and feel whole… you [will] always stand on shaky, hole-ridden ground, half of your identity dug out of you and tossed away.”
For so long Touraine had been full of Balladaire; Balladaire was where she grew up, where she lived, where she remembered Qazāl only as a distant and unsalvageable memory. Accepting that she could no longer lay claim to Qazāl, Touraine wanted to be a good guest for Balladaire, she wanted them to accept her, to approve of her, and she wanted it with the fierceness of someone who hadn’t been allowed much to want. Balladaire, of course, saw it. Balladaire saw the kindling of that helpless desperation and coaxed it to flame. They saw how Touraine soaked up their tutelage like a sponge does water, how she burned with the shame of unbelonging—the weakness of that emotion—and they wielded it against her with silken, meticulous cruelty. They made sure Touraine knew, every day, that she was indebted to them, that she was bound unequivocally to their sufferance. They promised her belonging, but only if she behaved, only if she were good, if she were sufficiently grateful, and kept her dangling, endlessly, on the leash of that hope, chasing hopelessly after something which will always be just beyond her reach, irretrievable.
This is the seduction and horror of empire, a species of violence that is far worse than anything conceivable: how it clamps down, with jaws like a vise, and devours—entire cultures, histories, and peoples lost to its perpetual thirst and hunger—until there is nothing left of you. Except your barbaric marrowless bones, which it spits out so you may bear its civilized lustrous skin—so you may speak its language, ingest its stories, worship at its altar—and be reborn. And when you do—because you always do, you are so eager to fill the absence you hold at your center—it will seize and weigh and measure you before it shakes its head with utter contempt because “you are not enough” and it wants you to never forget it.
—
After a false accusation almost ties a noose around her neck, Touraine is offered reprieve by working as a precisely-edged weapon for the imperial princess of Balladaire, Luca, who is trying to secure her path to power and prove her imperial bona fides amidst an increasingly intensifying climate of social upheaval and rebellion. And this is how Touraine’s and Luca’s worlds begin to scrape together like the two halves of a broken shard of glass.
My dislike for Luca sprung to life like flint very early on. Everything about her is so perfectly imperial: from her avowed ambition to seize the imperial throne that cared not for who has to succumb to make that accession possible, to her brutal sangfroid when faced with the abject tyrannies of the colonial nobility, to her sheer entitlement—epitomized in her desperate hankering for Qazāl’s magic, which she longs to either possess or annihilate. Even the threadbare excuses Luca drapes herself in to maintain her innocence are so endemic to empire, including her sleek and well-fed delusions about Qazāl and Balladaire growing stably and equilaterally together, living in peace as oppressed and oppressor, an offensive impossibility dressed up as a perfectly tenable eventuality, hindered only by the Qazāli rebels’ inconvenient chafing at Balladaire’s yoke.
The Unbroken cuts through the vocabularies of white entitlement and complacency like an obsidian knife, and the words part to reveal the enormity of the damage even considerably less ill-intentioned white people do, by dint of willful ignorance or appalling gullibility. Indeed, Luca participates in a tradition of white people who nod and utter all the right platitudes, make all the appropriate noises of sympathy, even as they pull the doors behind their eyes closed against your pain—and it only served to make me even less prone to charity towards her. After all, Luca is loyal to empire—to the endlessly self-justifying greed that is empire—and a person who is loyal to empire is never innocent of the blood that waters that empire’s soil. Yet, rather than face her shame, and accept accountability, Luca consistently fails to recognize her complicity, always shoveling blame away from herself, and sifting excuses in her head to choose only those which would obviate her direct responsibility. Luca was never the one doling out lashes, after all; she was simply standing aside, letting terrible things happen, an eerily austere and silent presence during public executions, or in more private dinner parties where Balladaire’s best and brightest paraded their ill-treated Qazāli servants while they devised spectacularly cruel plans intended to strip Qazāl to its bones. It is, the novel hauntingly illustrates, by such deliberate omissions that evil fails to recognize itself.
—
The relationship between Luca and Touraine, two characters who sit across the world from each other, is a complicated one—the imbalance of power between them stark and troubling—but the author handles it with remarkable care. Luca is, to borrow some of Touraine’s words, “as much a jailer as she [is] a safe bunker”, and their dynamics are a pendulum swinging between flinching back from each other and wanting to pull each other closer. In my more generous moments—and there were very few of them, believe me—I wanted Luca to get it right, I wanted her to understand that it had never been the shape of the world for her like it had been for Touraine, that one cannot love in oppression but in freedom, and most crucially, that Touraine is not the “exception” that absolves Luca's single-minded devotion to an entirely heartless and impenitent empire. I’m not entirely convinced that Luca gets it by the end of the book, though the final pages do hint at an upcoming process of deeper reconciliation, reparation, and retribution in future installments—and it’s something I’m looking forward to reading.
I was really most interested, however, in the relationship between Touraine and the Qazāli rebels she was duty-bound to suppress and crash into silence and darkness and the places that bloomed into agony where their lives met and misaligned. Touraine’s collision with these women—women who, even in shaking despair, fought to rise above their griefs, to bear each other up and carry each other through one torment to the next—informs a significant part of her journey. In the fragile trust they built between them—a scaffolding held together by desperation, necessity, and purpose—there was something like the word family. This connection dissolves the lies Touraine needed to tell herself because she felt safer inside them: that she no longer belongs to Qazāl any more than it belongs to her, that if she were good, if she did Balladaire’s bidding, she could still earn their respect, and no harm would come to her.
Denuded of the protection of that specious, self-perpetuating belief, Touraine begins, heartbreakingly, to reckon with a part of herself which she had until then tried to excise from her mind in order to survive. That reckoning comes with layers upon layers of choice, and every single one is infused, inconsolably, with a sense of loss, a cold hollowness like the space left behind by a pulled tooth: the knowledge that Qazāl and Balladaire will always fight for the same room inside Touraine’s chest, half of her always at war with the other half, and there is no end for that kind of war.
The ending of The Unbroken, flinchingly hopeful though it may be, refuses to chlorinate the tragedies of colonialism, and it had crystallized for me something I’ve always known, at the back of my mind, unadmitted: that though the wounds of colonial violence can be soothed, they are incurable. There are absences, in the gasping aftermath of war and colonialism, that are impossible to fill, like a hunger that can never be satisfied, but these are the words I keep returning to, like a febrile meditation: “Give me hunger on my own terms.”
Give me hunger on my own terms.
—
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The sheer thematic gravity of The Unbroken ambushed me. The novel is quite nakedly about empire and colonialism, and it is utterly unafraid to leap into the immensity of those words, their labyrinths, the dark and deathlike cold of their truth. But while there is no shortage of fantasy novels that wrangle with the definition of empire and the long, precise catalogue of its colonial cruelties, what makes The Unbroken stand out is that it is most interested in the emotional experiences of the people caught in that empire’s teeth.
Indeed, at the core of this book is a rich, faceted, and jewel-clear examination of not only empire and colonialism but of what it means to be a cog in that blank-eyed hungry machine and to perpetually scrounge for a way to survive without being utterly subsumed. The novel goes deep into all the terrible minutiae of taking a long, hard look at your own colonization, of unraveling the strands of your own complacency while empire is so hideously entangled in your understanding of yourself—just the sheer, exhausting enormity of inheriting an atrocity, of being at the center of that atrocity, and trying, every single day, to find the strength to not dissolve into the weight of it.
—
Touraine, a Qazāli-born conscript in the imperial army of Balladaire, has a past that she keeps locked in doorless and windowless rooms where the walls are fortified against memory. Now Touraine is back in Qazāl, as an agent of Balladaire’s will, and the dam keeping her past there is finally threatening to burst.
Unlike the other desert-born conscripts—called “Sands” by Balladairans with a boorish lack of affection—who were ripped from their mothers’ arms and thrown into the machinery of empire before they could finish being children, Touraine does not indulge herself in extravagant hopes of home-coming or in vicious dreams of revenge. She stuffs her mind instead with more attainable aspirations, like keeping her soldiers alive, and proving herself an industrious pupil of General Cantic, and an apt subject of Balladaire—hoping Balladaire might like her better for it, that they might look past all that is barbaric about her, and allow her entry inside the warm and glittering center of their grand civilization. For Touraine, who has spent her whole life crawling out of one shallow grave after another, it was about survival: “I can fight for the side that’s winning.”
Through Touraine’s character, The Unbroken asks, with an icy clarity that cut through me: what does it do to a person to suffer, day by day, the tyrannies of the powerful who abominate them, while slowly disintegrating from the strain of trying to belong—the equivalent of willfully putting your hand in the mouth of the thing which wants to kill you and pray it doesn’t kill you? And icier still: Where is home, when you are too foreign for your country, and too foreign for theirs, an outsider wherever you land? What is a way of belonging, when the colonizer’s words are stuffed into your mouth and your ancestors’ language is sluggish on your tongue, too cobwebbed with desuetude? Who are you, after they’ve robbed you of your identity and left you bereft of everything that you might have been?
Touraine was cut adrift—sealed off even—from Qazāl, and from everything that made her Qazāli, her memories of her family burned out of her, scoured clean by training, by punishment. When Touraine finds herself back in Qazāl, years later, her return is too contemptuous to be called a coming-home, like trying to fit back into a skin that’s already been ripped out of her. Touraine feels very little continuity between that innocent Qazāli child and this soldier who toils to Balladaire’s whims, and this discontinuity creates in her a painful landscape, a hole eaten through the fabric of her. At one point, Touraine muses: “it [is] impossible to come from one land and learn to live in another and feel whole… you [will] always stand on shaky, hole-ridden ground, half of your identity dug out of you and tossed away.”
For so long Touraine had been full of Balladaire; Balladaire was where she grew up, where she lived, where she remembered Qazāl only as a distant and unsalvageable memory. Accepting that she could no longer lay claim to Qazāl, Touraine wanted to be a good guest for Balladaire, she wanted them to accept her, to approve of her, and she wanted it with the fierceness of someone who hadn’t been allowed much to want. Balladaire, of course, saw it. Balladaire saw the kindling of that helpless desperation and coaxed it to flame. They saw how Touraine soaked up their tutelage like a sponge does water, how she burned with the shame of unbelonging—the weakness of that emotion—and they wielded it against her with silken, meticulous cruelty. They made sure Touraine knew, every day, that she was indebted to them, that she was bound unequivocally to their sufferance. They promised her belonging, but only if she behaved, only if she were good, if she were sufficiently grateful, and kept her dangling, endlessly, on the leash of that hope, chasing hopelessly after something which will always be just beyond her reach, irretrievable.
This is the seduction and horror of empire, a species of violence that is far worse than anything conceivable: how it clamps down, with jaws like a vise, and devours—entire cultures, histories, and peoples lost to its perpetual thirst and hunger—until there is nothing left of you. Except your barbaric marrowless bones, which it spits out so you may bear its civilized lustrous skin—so you may speak its language, ingest its stories, worship at its altar—and be reborn. And when you do—because you always do, you are so eager to fill the absence you hold at your center—it will seize and weigh and measure you before it shakes its head with utter contempt because “you are not enough” and it wants you to never forget it.
—
After a false accusation almost ties a noose around her neck, Touraine is offered reprieve by working as a precisely-edged weapon for the imperial princess of Balladaire, Luca, who is trying to secure her path to power and prove her imperial bona fides amidst an increasingly intensifying climate of social upheaval and rebellion. And this is how Touraine’s and Luca’s worlds begin to scrape together like the two halves of a broken shard of glass.
My dislike for Luca sprung to life like flint very early on. Everything about her is so perfectly imperial: from her avowed ambition to seize the imperial throne that cared not for who has to succumb to make that accession possible, to her brutal sangfroid when faced with the abject tyrannies of the colonial nobility, to her sheer entitlement—epitomized in her desperate hankering for Qazāl’s magic, which she longs to either possess or annihilate. Even the threadbare excuses Luca drapes herself in to maintain her innocence are so endemic to empire, including her sleek and well-fed delusions about Qazāl and Balladaire growing stably and equilaterally together, living in peace as oppressed and oppressor, an offensive impossibility dressed up as a perfectly tenable eventuality, hindered only by the Qazāli rebels’ inconvenient chafing at Balladaire’s yoke.
The Unbroken cuts through the vocabularies of white entitlement and complacency like an obsidian knife, and the words part to reveal the enormity of the damage even considerably less ill-intentioned white people do, by dint of willful ignorance or appalling gullibility. Indeed, Luca participates in a tradition of white people who nod and utter all the right platitudes, make all the appropriate noises of sympathy, even as they pull the doors behind their eyes closed against your pain—and it only served to make me even less prone to charity towards her. After all, Luca is loyal to empire—to the endlessly self-justifying greed that is empire—and a person who is loyal to empire is never innocent of the blood that waters that empire’s soil. Yet, rather than face her shame, and accept accountability, Luca consistently fails to recognize her complicity, always shoveling blame away from herself, and sifting excuses in her head to choose only those which would obviate her direct responsibility. Luca was never the one doling out lashes, after all; she was simply standing aside, letting terrible things happen, an eerily austere and silent presence during public executions, or in more private dinner parties where Balladaire’s best and brightest paraded their ill-treated Qazāli servants while they devised spectacularly cruel plans intended to strip Qazāl to its bones. It is, the novel hauntingly illustrates, by such deliberate omissions that evil fails to recognize itself.
—
The relationship between Luca and Touraine, two characters who sit across the world from each other, is a complicated one—the imbalance of power between them stark and troubling—but the author handles it with remarkable care. Luca is, to borrow some of Touraine’s words, “as much a jailer as she [is] a safe bunker”, and their dynamics are a pendulum swinging between flinching back from each other and wanting to pull each other closer. In my more generous moments—and there were very few of them, believe me—I wanted Luca to get it right, I wanted her to understand that it had never been the shape of the world for her like it had been for Touraine, that one cannot love in oppression but in freedom, and most crucially, that Touraine is not the “exception” that absolves Luca's single-minded devotion to an entirely heartless and impenitent empire. I’m not entirely convinced that Luca gets it by the end of the book, though the final pages do hint at an upcoming process of deeper reconciliation, reparation, and retribution in future installments—and it’s something I’m looking forward to reading.
I was really most interested, however, in the relationship between Touraine and the Qazāli rebels she was duty-bound to suppress and crash into silence and darkness and the places that bloomed into agony where their lives met and misaligned. Touraine’s collision with these women—women who, even in shaking despair, fought to rise above their griefs, to bear each other up and carry each other through one torment to the next—informs a significant part of her journey. In the fragile trust they built between them—a scaffolding held together by desperation, necessity, and purpose—there was something like the word family. This connection dissolves the lies Touraine needed to tell herself because she felt safer inside them: that she no longer belongs to Qazāl any more than it belongs to her, that if she were good, if she did Balladaire’s bidding, she could still earn their respect, and no harm would come to her.
Denuded of the protection of that specious, self-perpetuating belief, Touraine begins, heartbreakingly, to reckon with a part of herself which she had until then tried to excise from her mind in order to survive. That reckoning comes with layers upon layers of choice, and every single one is infused, inconsolably, with a sense of loss, a cold hollowness like the space left behind by a pulled tooth: the knowledge that Qazāl and Balladaire will always fight for the same room inside Touraine’s chest, half of her always at war with the other half, and there is no end for that kind of war.
The ending of The Unbroken, flinchingly hopeful though it may be, refuses to chlorinate the tragedies of colonialism, and it had crystallized for me something I’ve always known, at the back of my mind, unadmitted: that though the wounds of colonial violence can be soothed, they are incurable. There are absences, in the gasping aftermath of war and colonialism, that are impossible to fill, like a hunger that can never be satisfied, but these are the words I keep returning to, like a febrile meditation: “Give me hunger on my own terms.”
Give me hunger on my own terms.
—
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March 27, 2021
3.50 Stars. This was a well written story that unfortunately was not really for me. I love fantasy, especially sapphic fantasy, so this was another book on my most anticipated ‘21 reads list. I was so excited when I was approved for an ARC copy and could not wait to spend this weekend (it’s a long book) reading this. My expectations might have been a little high, but in the end, the quality of this book was definitely higher than my actual enjoyment. Enjoyment wise this book was just in the average or okay category, but I upped my final rating a little because the book was well written.
This is a long book, twice the size of an average read, but I was excited for a big epic fantasy adventure. I knew that this book was slower in parts, and it was, but I actually liked the slower parts. I thought the world building was well done and I loved all the details of culture, government, and military that Clark wrote so well. I felt fully immersed in this new world. I also thought that Clark did really well with not being too info-dumpy which is always appreciated.
I’ve noticed in other reviews, that people thought the first half was slow but liked the second better. While I agree about the speed, I was the opposite in what I enjoyed. The book from about 50% to 75%, felt like a real slog to me. The pace actually speeds up, but I felt like there were a bunch of start and stops in all the action and little storylines. It looks like this is going to happen, but then this does, than this, so I could not get comfortable with the story and it was harder to read. The flow of the last quarter, the ending, was much better but I didn’t particularly enjoy reading about anything that was going on.
I think the biggest issue was that I did not like the main characters. I like strong badass women and while both mains acted like they wanted to be, they were anything but. Luca, a princess who did not seem to understand crown politics at all, and Touraine, a lieutenant who disappointed me most of all. Touraine, who is supposed to be the best, the highest ranking of all her soldiers, and instead is an absolute mess. I don’t think she did anything right the whole book except for one choice near the end. It was so frustrating to read about such a useless character. I can’t even count how many people are dead because of her choices. You know when you wish a main character will just go away to some far off city and leave the rest of the characters in peace, well that’s not really a great sign.
Besides the fantasy aspects, I wanted to read this book because it was sapphic. That was a bit of a bummer too. I would not read this book if you are looking for romance. I would say that this book did not have romance. One character likes the other, while the other character just ruins anything that character is trying to do. It’s not much of a relationship and I could not even get why one character pinned after the other when she got nothing in return.
I’m such a character driven reader that not liking the mains really affected my enjoyment. If you are more of a plot driven reader, this book might work much better for you. This book has a lot of wonderful high reviews so I’m a bit of an outlier here. It was well written and well imagined, but it just was not my type of book. I don’t think I will be reading the sequel, but this author has plenty of talent and I will keep an eye on her future books.
A copy was given to me for a review.
This is a long book, twice the size of an average read, but I was excited for a big epic fantasy adventure. I knew that this book was slower in parts, and it was, but I actually liked the slower parts. I thought the world building was well done and I loved all the details of culture, government, and military that Clark wrote so well. I felt fully immersed in this new world. I also thought that Clark did really well with not being too info-dumpy which is always appreciated.
I’ve noticed in other reviews, that people thought the first half was slow but liked the second better. While I agree about the speed, I was the opposite in what I enjoyed. The book from about 50% to 75%, felt like a real slog to me. The pace actually speeds up, but I felt like there were a bunch of start and stops in all the action and little storylines. It looks like this is going to happen, but then this does, than this, so I could not get comfortable with the story and it was harder to read. The flow of the last quarter, the ending, was much better but I didn’t particularly enjoy reading about anything that was going on.
I think the biggest issue was that I did not like the main characters. I like strong badass women and while both mains acted like they wanted to be, they were anything but. Luca, a princess who did not seem to understand crown politics at all, and Touraine, a lieutenant who disappointed me most of all. Touraine, who is supposed to be the best, the highest ranking of all her soldiers, and instead is an absolute mess. I don’t think she did anything right the whole book except for one choice near the end. It was so frustrating to read about such a useless character. I can’t even count how many people are dead because of her choices. You know when you wish a main character will just go away to some far off city and leave the rest of the characters in peace, well that’s not really a great sign.
Besides the fantasy aspects, I wanted to read this book because it was sapphic. That was a bit of a bummer too. I would not read this book if you are looking for romance. I would say that this book did not have romance. One character likes the other, while the other character just ruins anything that character is trying to do. It’s not much of a relationship and I could not even get why one character pinned after the other when she got nothing in return.
I’m such a character driven reader that not liking the mains really affected my enjoyment. If you are more of a plot driven reader, this book might work much better for you. This book has a lot of wonderful high reviews so I’m a bit of an outlier here. It was well written and well imagined, but it just was not my type of book. I don’t think I will be reading the sequel, but this author has plenty of talent and I will keep an eye on her future books.
A copy was given to me for a review.
June 13, 2021
The Unbroken takes on so many things and does so expertly, tackling magic and rebellions and even a bit of romance, but above all, colonialism. This political fantasy follows two protagonists, Touraine and Luca. A Qazāli soldier, pejoratively referred to as a “Sand,” Touraine was stolen from her homeland when she was young to serve the Balladairan empire, and now stationed at home again, she begins to question everything she thought she knew. Luca is the Balladairan princess intent on making peace with Qazāli rebels to prove that, instead of her incapable uncle, she can be ruling on the throne. Their paths cross as loyalties form and wither and the “threat” of the rebels grows larger.
Touraine’s arc was one of my favorite parts of the book, difficult to witness at first but resulting in an ultimately satisfying growth. Touraine’s mindset as a colonized person is twisted and disturbing to read, the way she believes the warped things she had been taught about her own people and thinks that if she commits more and more of herself to the empire they will finally see her as more than a Sand—but it is all too reminiscent of the thinking patterns that colonized people have in the real world. Clark handled this frame of thinking with care, challenging it through other characters’ criticisms while ensuring that the reader understood that it was a result of colonial brainwashing. Throughout the book we get to watch Touraine work through her complicated thoughts and feelings about the empire and her and other Qazālis’ role in it, and her development was truly fulfilling.
While I enjoyed reading from both Touraine and Luca’s perspectives, I found that Luca wasn’t as compelling of a character as Touraine was for me. Even if it weren’t already a bit unsettling to read from a colonizer’s perspective (which was the point and well-done, with no justification for horrible actions), I didn’t feel a strong connection with her as I did with Touraine. Luca was an interesting character and I loved the insights that her POV offered, specifically with how colonizers may believe they search for “peace” but fail to realize that without justice for the colonized, there can be no peace. But in comparison to Touraine, who had such a strong character arc, Luca fell a bit short for me.
As much as I might have liked Touraine and Luca, though, I truly did not enjoy their romance. I knew beforehand that it would be a colonized/colonizer romance and I was apprehensive about that, but it was written in a sensitive way, so that wasn’t my main issue. What bothered me was that there was a lack of development and chemistry between Touraine and Luca. This didn’t hinder my enjoyment of the book since the romance wasn’t part of the main plot, but their relationship still was a large influence on some of the storyline, resulting in more emotional parts falling flat for me since I honestly could not see how their feelings had developed.
Whatever I found lacking in the romantic relationship was luckily made up for in other relationships. The found family Touraine found was heartwarming, especially in how they played a large role in her growth and escaping from her brainwashed mindset. I loved Touraine and her mother’s relationship the most, though; nothing is unaffected by colonialism, and that includes relationships and family. Touraine and her mother’s growth, from misplaced resentment and misunderstanding to the love and fondness they were never allowed to feel, was so lovely, serving as a source of joy and an outlier in the tragic outcomes of families in a colonized land. It honestly made me want to cry at certain parts.
If you were to ask me what the highlight of this book was for me, though, with complete certainty I would say the way politics and colonialism were written. How different facets of colonialism were explored on a more personal level through the characters themselves was masterful already, but equally impressive is Clark’s portrayal of the effects of colonialism on a larger scale. As inspired by France’s colonization of North Africa, what the Balladairan empire did to the Qazāli people and their land was painful to read, from the suppression of Qazāli religion and language, to the pitting of rebels and Sands against each other despite being from the same culture. The fact that, from its characters to the broader setting, almost every aspect of this book is influenced by colonialism only serves to reinforce the idea that colonialism is a completely destructive force and leaves nothing untouched.
The Unbroken is definitely on the slower side, so if you’re looking for a faster-paced fantasy this might not be for you. I myself wanted things to move more quickly in the beginning, but if you can let the story slowly unravel in the first half, you’ll find yourself quickly devouring the rest. (It took me several weeks to read the beginning, and then I binged the last half in only a day.) This is truly a book to savor and take your time with in order to fully appreciate all that it encompasses. If you enjoy fantasy with a complex examination of colonialism, you will undoubtedly be satisfied by what you find within the pages of The Unbroken.
—★—
:: representation :: Black North African-coded lesbian MC, wlw MC with physical disability (injury), Black North-African coded characters, wlw characters, non-binary side character
:: content warnings :: murder, death, violence, past attempted rape, torture, racism, colonialism, depictions of grief, depictions of blood
Touraine was starting to think it was impossible to come from one land and to live in another and feel whole. That you would always stand on shaky, hole-ridden ground, half of your identity dug out of you and tossed away.
Touraine’s arc was one of my favorite parts of the book, difficult to witness at first but resulting in an ultimately satisfying growth. Touraine’s mindset as a colonized person is twisted and disturbing to read, the way she believes the warped things she had been taught about her own people and thinks that if she commits more and more of herself to the empire they will finally see her as more than a Sand—but it is all too reminiscent of the thinking patterns that colonized people have in the real world. Clark handled this frame of thinking with care, challenging it through other characters’ criticisms while ensuring that the reader understood that it was a result of colonial brainwashing. Throughout the book we get to watch Touraine work through her complicated thoughts and feelings about the empire and her and other Qazālis’ role in it, and her development was truly fulfilling.
While I enjoyed reading from both Touraine and Luca’s perspectives, I found that Luca wasn’t as compelling of a character as Touraine was for me. Even if it weren’t already a bit unsettling to read from a colonizer’s perspective (which was the point and well-done, with no justification for horrible actions), I didn’t feel a strong connection with her as I did with Touraine. Luca was an interesting character and I loved the insights that her POV offered, specifically with how colonizers may believe they search for “peace” but fail to realize that without justice for the colonized, there can be no peace. But in comparison to Touraine, who had such a strong character arc, Luca fell a bit short for me.
As much as I might have liked Touraine and Luca, though, I truly did not enjoy their romance. I knew beforehand that it would be a colonized/colonizer romance and I was apprehensive about that, but it was written in a sensitive way, so that wasn’t my main issue. What bothered me was that there was a lack of development and chemistry between Touraine and Luca. This didn’t hinder my enjoyment of the book since the romance wasn’t part of the main plot, but their relationship still was a large influence on some of the storyline, resulting in more emotional parts falling flat for me since I honestly could not see how their feelings had developed.
“You’ll have to fight for one side or the other. Why not fight for the side that gives you freedom?”
Whatever I found lacking in the romantic relationship was luckily made up for in other relationships. The found family Touraine found was heartwarming, especially in how they played a large role in her growth and escaping from her brainwashed mindset. I loved Touraine and her mother’s relationship the most, though; nothing is unaffected by colonialism, and that includes relationships and family. Touraine and her mother’s growth, from misplaced resentment and misunderstanding to the love and fondness they were never allowed to feel, was so lovely, serving as a source of joy and an outlier in the tragic outcomes of families in a colonized land. It honestly made me want to cry at certain parts.
If you were to ask me what the highlight of this book was for me, though, with complete certainty I would say the way politics and colonialism were written. How different facets of colonialism were explored on a more personal level through the characters themselves was masterful already, but equally impressive is Clark’s portrayal of the effects of colonialism on a larger scale. As inspired by France’s colonization of North Africa, what the Balladairan empire did to the Qazāli people and their land was painful to read, from the suppression of Qazāli religion and language, to the pitting of rebels and Sands against each other despite being from the same culture. The fact that, from its characters to the broader setting, almost every aspect of this book is influenced by colonialism only serves to reinforce the idea that colonialism is a completely destructive force and leaves nothing untouched.
“We pray for rain.”
“No. Be the rain.”
The Unbroken is definitely on the slower side, so if you’re looking for a faster-paced fantasy this might not be for you. I myself wanted things to move more quickly in the beginning, but if you can let the story slowly unravel in the first half, you’ll find yourself quickly devouring the rest. (It took me several weeks to read the beginning, and then I binged the last half in only a day.) This is truly a book to savor and take your time with in order to fully appreciate all that it encompasses. If you enjoy fantasy with a complex examination of colonialism, you will undoubtedly be satisfied by what you find within the pages of The Unbroken.
—★—
:: representation :: Black North African-coded lesbian MC, wlw MC with physical disability (injury), Black North-African coded characters, wlw characters, non-binary side character
:: content warnings :: murder, death, violence, past attempted rape, torture, racism, colonialism, depictions of grief, depictions of blood
Thank you to Hachette for sending me a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. This did not affect my opinion in any way.
All quotes are from an advanced copy and may differ in final publication.
March 2, 2024
This book has a lot of what I like in revolutionary fantasy: messy political machinations, complicated characters, and difficult choices with unintended consequences. And aside from the fantasy writing, it's impossible to read this book and not think about both its very real world roots in France's colonization of Morocco and the current global climate.
Both main characters in this Dual POV book are equal parts interesting and frustrating and without saying too much the arc the book takes with them from the first to the second half of this story is a really interesting framing that ultimately I think worked really well for me. I have lots to say on both of them but none that I'll get into here because it's important to the narrative and I never know how much or how little to say in a review (especially being someone who wants to know as little as possible from reviews myself).
The ending feels incredibly rushed and seems to happen completely out of nowhere, which is really where the book lost me, but not so much that I won't continue the series. I'm...questionable on the romantic plotline but holding out on too much judgement until I read the next book and see where things are going.
Both main characters in this Dual POV book are equal parts interesting and frustrating and without saying too much the arc the book takes with them from the first to the second half of this story is a really interesting framing that ultimately I think worked really well for me. I have lots to say on both of them but none that I'll get into here because it's important to the narrative and I never know how much or how little to say in a review (especially being someone who wants to know as little as possible from reviews myself).
The ending feels incredibly rushed and seems to happen completely out of nowhere, which is really where the book lost me, but not so much that I won't continue the series. I'm...questionable on the romantic plotline but holding out on too much judgement until I read the next book and see where things are going.
Want to read
April 23, 20212020 has been a year of revelations, one of them being that I'd do pretty much anything for queer women with great biceps
April 28, 2021
2 to perhaps 2.5 stars.
This book and I just didn't mesh very well, unfortunately. Before I get into the things I didn't care for, I'll list some that I enjoyed:
- The writing was pretty good, in particular the action scenes. I think the author did an excellent job building suspense and keeping things engaging in those scenes.
- The setting was fresh and unique. I personally haven't read a fantasy book before this one that was set in a colony, and with the complicated politics and issues that come along with it, so that was interesting.
-
As for dislikes, let's begin with our leading protagonist Touraine. I...did not care for her. I believe much of that stems from how little backstory we got, or really any actual showing of her relationships early on. We're told (and told and told) just how much she cares about the other Sands, but those relationships just didn't ring true for me most of the time. As for Touraine herself, well, she's a soldier...and that pretty much sums her up. Or maybe not, because for such a well-trained soldier, she sure makes some odd choices, such as getting drunk while in the camp of the rebels who are rebelling against the country Touraine is working for.
I would expect a soldier to be a little more level-headed and actually maybe think a decision through for half a second, but with Touraine, basically every decision she makes is on a whim (and so many of them are so extreme, such as
Of course, Touraine is not the only illogical person in this book. Far from it. With the exception of Gil and perhaps Pruett, both fairly minor characters in the grand scheme of the book, pretty much all of the characters in any position of authority seem to forgo any logic when making most of their decisions.
Might as well move on to Luca herself at this point. Um, she is not a good ruler-in-training AT ALL. Much like Touraine, she has this habit of making decisions seemingly out of nowhere and with painfully little forethought put into any of them. She knowingly puts people who she finds untrustworthy in positions of power and then is shocked when they abuse their power.
The rest of the cast often felt like filler characters playing their role. I'm talking about most of the Sands, Touraine's supposedly beloved family, who are often only treated as fodder by the plot to motivate Touraine. Very few are shown to have any personality beyond their role, such as Pruett being this tough soldier ex(?)-girlfriend or Tibeau, who is kind of the more hopeful friend. At least maybe? I still don't have a good image of him.
Swinging back to Touraine and Luca, let's discuss their romance for a moment, shall we? It is after all what so, so many of the decisions in this book are made for. This was the most forced, least respectful, and toxic romance I have read about in a long, long time. There was practically no chemistry between the two leads and they made all these kingdom-shattering decisions based on some slight attraction to one another. I did not for a moment buy into their relationship or feel compelled to “ship" them. What forever tarnished any hope of that was the scene where Touraine belittles Luca's disability. I just could not ship a pair of characters where it's so clear that one party does not respect the other at all, as was clear when Touraine talked over Luca and treated her disability as though it were nothing compared to the things that Touraine, an able-bodied person, witnessed. I know she was trying to make a point about Luca's position of privilege. I am aware of that. But it was just not handled very well if you also want me to imagine these characters together romantically.
I haven't really delved into my thoughts on the plot as whole because I really don't know where to begin. To me, the plot overall is little more than a string of one bad decision after another. Touraine passes her “loyalty” out like candy and then just as quickly snatches it out of a person's hand and runs away laughing, then wonders why she keeps making a mess of everything. There were just so many things that happened that made so little sense. Not to mention that the book basically lives off drama and characters backstabbing one another, which can be fun, but in this book felt like filler in place of an actual cohesive plotline.
As I mentioned in the list of highlights, I did like some of the worldbuilding. However, there was, like so many aspects of The Unbroken, things that also left me wanting. One thing I enjoyed at first but that disappointed me in the end was how the main country did not have religion So...there went my hope for an atheistic fantasy setting. For a time there was a nice focus on science, but then it was pretty much replaced by these healing gods once they were introduced.
I did not care for the magic, as it seemed that whatever the characters needed, here was some magic to take care of the problem. We were not really shown its limitations and the rules of what all it could do were not clear. If the characters didn't understand the magic and were still trying to figure it out themselves, it would be one thing, but here we had these priests who knew how to use it but were too tight-lipped to say much about it.
----------------
I really, really wanted to like The Unbroken. I was looking forward to it for months prior to release. It has so many high ratings and seems well-received by so many readers. The premise was sound and intriguing. The execution, sadly, just didn't work for me.
This book and I just didn't mesh very well, unfortunately. Before I get into the things I didn't care for, I'll list some that I enjoyed:
- The writing was pretty good, in particular the action scenes. I think the author did an excellent job building suspense and keeping things engaging in those scenes.
- The setting was fresh and unique. I personally haven't read a fantasy book before this one that was set in a colony, and with the complicated politics and issues that come along with it, so that was interesting.
-
As for dislikes, let's begin with our leading protagonist Touraine. I...did not care for her. I believe much of that stems from how little backstory we got, or really any actual showing of her relationships early on. We're told (and told and told) just how much she cares about the other Sands, but those relationships just didn't ring true for me most of the time. As for Touraine herself, well, she's a soldier...and that pretty much sums her up. Or maybe not, because for such a well-trained soldier, she sure makes some odd choices, such as getting drunk while in the camp of the rebels who are rebelling against the country Touraine is working for.
I would expect a soldier to be a little more level-headed and actually maybe think a decision through for half a second, but with Touraine, basically every decision she makes is on a whim (and so many of them are so extreme, such as
Of course, Touraine is not the only illogical person in this book. Far from it. With the exception of Gil and perhaps Pruett, both fairly minor characters in the grand scheme of the book, pretty much all of the characters in any position of authority seem to forgo any logic when making most of their decisions.
Might as well move on to Luca herself at this point. Um, she is not a good ruler-in-training AT ALL. Much like Touraine, she has this habit of making decisions seemingly out of nowhere and with painfully little forethought put into any of them. She knowingly puts people who she finds untrustworthy in positions of power and then is shocked when they abuse their power.
The rest of the cast often felt like filler characters playing their role. I'm talking about most of the Sands, Touraine's supposedly beloved family, who are often only treated as fodder by the plot to motivate Touraine. Very few are shown to have any personality beyond their role, such as Pruett being this tough soldier ex(?)-girlfriend or Tibeau, who is kind of the more hopeful friend. At least maybe? I still don't have a good image of him.
Swinging back to Touraine and Luca, let's discuss their romance for a moment, shall we? It is after all what so, so many of the decisions in this book are made for. This was the most forced, least respectful, and toxic romance I have read about in a long, long time. There was practically no chemistry between the two leads and they made all these kingdom-shattering decisions based on some slight attraction to one another. I did not for a moment buy into their relationship or feel compelled to “ship" them. What forever tarnished any hope of that was the scene where Touraine belittles Luca's disability. I just could not ship a pair of characters where it's so clear that one party does not respect the other at all, as was clear when Touraine talked over Luca and treated her disability as though it were nothing compared to the things that Touraine, an able-bodied person, witnessed. I know she was trying to make a point about Luca's position of privilege. I am aware of that. But it was just not handled very well if you also want me to imagine these characters together romantically.
I haven't really delved into my thoughts on the plot as whole because I really don't know where to begin. To me, the plot overall is little more than a string of one bad decision after another. Touraine passes her “loyalty” out like candy and then just as quickly snatches it out of a person's hand and runs away laughing, then wonders why she keeps making a mess of everything. There were just so many things that happened that made so little sense. Not to mention that the book basically lives off drama and characters backstabbing one another, which can be fun, but in this book felt like filler in place of an actual cohesive plotline.
As I mentioned in the list of highlights, I did like some of the worldbuilding. However, there was, like so many aspects of The Unbroken, things that also left me wanting. One thing I enjoyed at first but that disappointed me in the end was how the main country did not have religion So...there went my hope for an atheistic fantasy setting. For a time there was a nice focus on science, but then it was pretty much replaced by these healing gods once they were introduced.
I did not care for the magic, as it seemed that whatever the characters needed, here was some magic to take care of the problem. We were not really shown its limitations and the rules of what all it could do were not clear. If the characters didn't understand the magic and were still trying to figure it out themselves, it would be one thing, but here we had these priests who knew how to use it but were too tight-lipped to say much about it.
----------------
I really, really wanted to like The Unbroken. I was looking forward to it for months prior to release. It has so many high ratings and seems well-received by so many readers. The premise was sound and intriguing. The execution, sadly, just didn't work for me.
October 3, 2021
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Actual Rating: 3.5 Stars
I like to explore fantasy books in all areas and I realized that I haven’t read many books with African settings so when I saw the cover of The Unbroken along with the fact that it is published by Orbit, I knew I had to pick it up asap!
I have a small disclaimer: I want you to take this review with a pinch of salt, I read it in a not good time, if you know the political situation in my country you know what I am talking about because there was a war -still going on at the moment I am writing this- while I read this one. My brain was all over the place and it was harder for me to focus but I desperately needed a distraction. The funny thing is that this is a book about colonialism so it should have hit differently. I still think I have my criticisms despite everything.
The main story is about colonialism, we have two POV, one is the native that has been stolen to the colonialism side and the other is the colonizer. I think it is one of those books with a great synopsis, I think it is explanatory without giving much so read it if you wanna know more.
The writing is good, I think I enjoyed the dialogues the most, the beginning was a bit confusing but things got better after that, the middle was interesting albeit a little bit too long and finally the ending which was satisfying! The beginning is confusing because the two characters sounded similar and I had to keep checking the beginning of the chapter to see who was it, the other thing that bothered me stems from something I actually liked. I liked the way the world was built, I like the fact that there were many strong women in many high positions and that queerness was normalized without making a big story out of it. The thing that I did not like and confused me were the titles used, someone would be first introduced as lord or sir and they are married to a woman but then I would find out that they are two women, I think the titles should have been changed to go with the world because sir is not stronger than Ma’am in my opinion!
The characters are okay, I don’t think they are characters that I will remember for years, it took me a while to know who is who and what side they are on. The two main characters had similar voices as I said above but later they were more distinguishable. I think I was not a big fan of Luca and as the colonizer I think that was the whole point.
I liked the world building from the feminist side to the magic to the African settings! I think the pacing was toward the slower side specially that it has much politics at its core, there was going back and forth in the middle which could have been cut off resulting in a shorter, faster read!
Summary: I enjoyed this story for the most part with a few things that I thought could have been better. I am no stranger to colonialism but I think anyone interested in Africa will enjoy it even more than I did. I think it does have an important message at the end of the day and the author did not hold back when it comes to that! I will see if I want to continue book 2 when it comes out!
Actual Rating: 3.5 Stars
“Touraine was starting to think it was impossible to come from one land and learn to live in another and feel whole. That you would always stand on shaky, hole-ridden ground, half of your identity dug out of you and tossed away.”
I like to explore fantasy books in all areas and I realized that I haven’t read many books with African settings so when I saw the cover of The Unbroken along with the fact that it is published by Orbit, I knew I had to pick it up asap!
I have a small disclaimer: I want you to take this review with a pinch of salt, I read it in a not good time, if you know the political situation in my country you know what I am talking about because there was a war -still going on at the moment I am writing this- while I read this one. My brain was all over the place and it was harder for me to focus but I desperately needed a distraction. The funny thing is that this is a book about colonialism so it should have hit differently. I still think I have my criticisms despite everything.
The main story is about colonialism, we have two POV, one is the native that has been stolen to the colonialism side and the other is the colonizer. I think it is one of those books with a great synopsis, I think it is explanatory without giving much so read it if you wanna know more.
The writing is good, I think I enjoyed the dialogues the most, the beginning was a bit confusing but things got better after that, the middle was interesting albeit a little bit too long and finally the ending which was satisfying! The beginning is confusing because the two characters sounded similar and I had to keep checking the beginning of the chapter to see who was it, the other thing that bothered me stems from something I actually liked. I liked the way the world was built, I like the fact that there were many strong women in many high positions and that queerness was normalized without making a big story out of it. The thing that I did not like and confused me were the titles used, someone would be first introduced as lord or sir and they are married to a woman but then I would find out that they are two women, I think the titles should have been changed to go with the world because sir is not stronger than Ma’am in my opinion!
The characters are okay, I don’t think they are characters that I will remember for years, it took me a while to know who is who and what side they are on. The two main characters had similar voices as I said above but later they were more distinguishable. I think I was not a big fan of Luca and as the colonizer I think that was the whole point.
I liked the world building from the feminist side to the magic to the African settings! I think the pacing was toward the slower side specially that it has much politics at its core, there was going back and forth in the middle which could have been cut off resulting in a shorter, faster read!
Summary: I enjoyed this story for the most part with a few things that I thought could have been better. I am no stranger to colonialism but I think anyone interested in Africa will enjoy it even more than I did. I think it does have an important message at the end of the day and the author did not hold back when it comes to that! I will see if I want to continue book 2 when it comes out!
April 17, 2025
“You can’t be yourself unless you have a leash in your hand, and there’s always got to be someone attached to it.”
So What’s It About?
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.
What I Thought
Have we, as spec fic readers, not been blessed with a showering of anticolonialist works over the past few years? It’s something that I’m personally delighted by, and I’ve been making a point of trying to read as many of them as possible lately. I’d been highly anticipating The Unbroken and...well, I’ll admit that I might be just a little bit disappointed with it now that I’ve read it.
I think a lot of my nonplussed feelings stem from the fact that it’s really hard to write morally conflicted characters well. In this book there are two of them, and I don’t feel like their characterization was ever thoroughly satisfying to me. Luca, in particular, is kind of a giant mess with motivations that bounce all over the place. One minute she’s all about reform and common humanity and improving things in the empire and the next she’s appointing the brutal Beau-Sang as leader and taking healers as prisoners. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with writing a character who is conflicted and makes opposing decisions, but I think it really helps to show the factors that make them veer one way or another and how they grapple with these decisions internally. I didn’t really see that with Luca.
Touraine is a much stronger character overall, but I was really hoping that the book would dig deeper into her process of unlearning the rules and strictures imposed on her by Balladaire’s imperialism. There are moments where she questions her world and experiences cognitive dissonance, but I still think this exploration could have been a lot juicier, and more build-up of this kind would have made her decision to join the rebels a lot stronger.
The other thing about Touraine is that she makes a number of decisions with terrible consequences to protect her unit, the Sands, but I never really felt the emotional connection there, no matter how many times the narration said they were family. I also wish that we knew more about the culture and magic in Touraine’s homeland. The magic felt a little deus ex machina-y and the culture only vaguely outlined. This book could have been a great opportunity for the reader to learn more about the country as Touraine reclaimed her heritage so I can’t help but feel that it was a bit of a missed opportunity.
I love that we’re getting so many messy queer relationships where complex power dynamics are explored, and Luca and Touraine have one such fraught relationship. Despite herself, Touraine wants to be wanted by Luca and she mercenarily wants the practical benefits that would come from belonging to her and being under her protection. It’s extremely messed up and interesting, but again I can’t help but feel that it could have been explored more. Luca and Touraine make huge decisions that stem from their feelings about each other but I never really understood where those feelings came from other than lust.
I think The Unbroken excels when it meditates on the predicament of the colonized - the constant shame and indoctrination; the simultaneous hope of things getting better if you just play by the rules and do as you’re told and pain of punishment and fear that keeps you in line as well; the desire to advance in the colonizer’s approval that is ultimately impossible to attain when the colonizer doesn’t see you as an equal human being. We see the reality of the colonizer’s so-called beneficence in the way that the colonized people have to pay for the privilege of protection and the ways that they speak of “improving” the uncivilized.
I think that different kinds of colonizers are also depicted well. Luca’s sense of identity largely revolves around being more humane than the rest of her people, but she is still willing to enact a massacre to get herself on the throne. There are people from Balladaire who are sympathetic to the colonized for a variety of reasons, and yet they nevertheless still have power over them in a way that is inherently violent.
It’s always interesting to me to see how different authors handle writing systems of oppression in fantasy worlds. In this case, Clark chose to make the colonizing power Balladaire seemingly queernorm and gender equal. I think my preference ultimately tends to be for worlds that demonstrate how different kinds of oppression intersect and compound and feed off one another, but I know there are readers who have different preferences. I should also note that Balladaire largely seems to be queernorm and gender equal but the glaring exception to this is Touraine’s fellow soldier who routinely torments her with threats of sexual violence.
I can’t really put my finger on what caused this reaction for me, but something about the writing made me feel incredibly distant from the story for most of the book. For some reason it was very easy to start skimming, after which I’d have to retrace my steps. I think part of it might be the relatively straightforward and unadorned writing style combined with the characterization that I wasn’t completely on board with. Maybe?? I’m not entirely sure. I think there’s a lot to recommend The Unbroken, but an equal amount that holds it back from truly excellent in my regard.
So What’s It About?
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.
What I Thought
Have we, as spec fic readers, not been blessed with a showering of anticolonialist works over the past few years? It’s something that I’m personally delighted by, and I’ve been making a point of trying to read as many of them as possible lately. I’d been highly anticipating The Unbroken and...well, I’ll admit that I might be just a little bit disappointed with it now that I’ve read it.
I think a lot of my nonplussed feelings stem from the fact that it’s really hard to write morally conflicted characters well. In this book there are two of them, and I don’t feel like their characterization was ever thoroughly satisfying to me. Luca, in particular, is kind of a giant mess with motivations that bounce all over the place. One minute she’s all about reform and common humanity and improving things in the empire and the next she’s appointing the brutal Beau-Sang as leader and taking healers as prisoners. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with writing a character who is conflicted and makes opposing decisions, but I think it really helps to show the factors that make them veer one way or another and how they grapple with these decisions internally. I didn’t really see that with Luca.
Touraine is a much stronger character overall, but I was really hoping that the book would dig deeper into her process of unlearning the rules and strictures imposed on her by Balladaire’s imperialism. There are moments where she questions her world and experiences cognitive dissonance, but I still think this exploration could have been a lot juicier, and more build-up of this kind would have made her decision to join the rebels a lot stronger.
The other thing about Touraine is that she makes a number of decisions with terrible consequences to protect her unit, the Sands, but I never really felt the emotional connection there, no matter how many times the narration said they were family. I also wish that we knew more about the culture and magic in Touraine’s homeland. The magic felt a little deus ex machina-y and the culture only vaguely outlined. This book could have been a great opportunity for the reader to learn more about the country as Touraine reclaimed her heritage so I can’t help but feel that it was a bit of a missed opportunity.
I love that we’re getting so many messy queer relationships where complex power dynamics are explored, and Luca and Touraine have one such fraught relationship. Despite herself, Touraine wants to be wanted by Luca and she mercenarily wants the practical benefits that would come from belonging to her and being under her protection. It’s extremely messed up and interesting, but again I can’t help but feel that it could have been explored more. Luca and Touraine make huge decisions that stem from their feelings about each other but I never really understood where those feelings came from other than lust.
I think The Unbroken excels when it meditates on the predicament of the colonized - the constant shame and indoctrination; the simultaneous hope of things getting better if you just play by the rules and do as you’re told and pain of punishment and fear that keeps you in line as well; the desire to advance in the colonizer’s approval that is ultimately impossible to attain when the colonizer doesn’t see you as an equal human being. We see the reality of the colonizer’s so-called beneficence in the way that the colonized people have to pay for the privilege of protection and the ways that they speak of “improving” the uncivilized.
I think that different kinds of colonizers are also depicted well. Luca’s sense of identity largely revolves around being more humane than the rest of her people, but she is still willing to enact a massacre to get herself on the throne. There are people from Balladaire who are sympathetic to the colonized for a variety of reasons, and yet they nevertheless still have power over them in a way that is inherently violent.
It’s always interesting to me to see how different authors handle writing systems of oppression in fantasy worlds. In this case, Clark chose to make the colonizing power Balladaire seemingly queernorm and gender equal. I think my preference ultimately tends to be for worlds that demonstrate how different kinds of oppression intersect and compound and feed off one another, but I know there are readers who have different preferences. I should also note that Balladaire largely seems to be queernorm and gender equal but the glaring exception to this is Touraine’s fellow soldier who routinely torments her with threats of sexual violence.
I can’t really put my finger on what caused this reaction for me, but something about the writing made me feel incredibly distant from the story for most of the book. For some reason it was very easy to start skimming, after which I’d have to retrace my steps. I think part of it might be the relatively straightforward and unadorned writing style combined with the characterization that I wasn’t completely on board with. Maybe?? I’m not entirely sure. I think there’s a lot to recommend The Unbroken, but an equal amount that holds it back from truly excellent in my regard.
October 10, 2022
I have finished the whole Sapphic Trifecta!
This was wonderful.
This was wonderful.
December 12, 2024
I’m kicking myself because I let this book sit on my shelf for so long. Incredible read
April 17, 2024
Blog | Instagram
Rating: 4 stars
Cover: 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟
This stunning illustration captures the fierce and defiant nature of one of the main characters, Touraine, while also hinting at her complex feelings of being caught between two worlds. The additional details of soldiers and the desert landscape help convey the genre and highlight key aspects of the story.
Writing: 🌟🌟🌟🌟
Though I found the third-person narrative slightly confusing, I loved the vibrant descriptions that brought the desert setting and complex world brimming with culture and brutal politics to life. However, the magic system was underwhelming, as it seemed to be a convenient plot device and was poorly explained.
"Winning isn’t everything. It’s how you win that matters most."
Storyline: 🌟🌟🌟
The slow-paced, character-driven storyline brilliantly uses the struggles of the main characters to explore different aspects of colonialism. Despite this and the constant twists and turns of the story, my interest eventually waned as the second half felt messy and unrealistic.
Main character(s): 🌟🌟🌟🌟
Touraine and Luca are fierce, determined characters whose complex motives and emotions make their narratives compelling. The self-discovery journey both characters experience also results in strong growth arcs, but their frustrating decisions along the way made it hard for me to connect with or root for them.
"You don't find a life. You have to make one, with the people around you and the causes you put your strength into."
Secondary characters: 🌟🌟🌟🌟
Although I struggled to keep track of the large cast of secondary characters, several were memorable as their roles added depth and complexity to the story.
Romance: 🌟🌟🌟
Hints of attraction between the main characters developed into deeper feelings that felt forced as the progression of their connection was not well demonstrated. Additionally, besides the dynamics of colonisation and the power imbalance between them, the actions of both characters throughout the story made their connection somewhat uncomfortable and ridiculous.
"Know a person's desires, and you have leverage- Give a person their desires, and you have an extension of your own will"
Narration & Audio: 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟
Rasha Zamamiri did a fantastic job bringing the character-driven story to life with skilful vocal effects and variety.
Ultimately, I was left with mixed feelings after reading 'The Unbroken'. While I enjoyed the clever examination of colonization, the second half of the story missed the mark for me. I would recommend The Jasmine Throne by Tasha Suri as a similar fantasy read with women shaping the fate of an empire.
Rating: 4 stars
Cover: 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟
This stunning illustration captures the fierce and defiant nature of one of the main characters, Touraine, while also hinting at her complex feelings of being caught between two worlds. The additional details of soldiers and the desert landscape help convey the genre and highlight key aspects of the story.
Writing: 🌟🌟🌟🌟
Though I found the third-person narrative slightly confusing, I loved the vibrant descriptions that brought the desert setting and complex world brimming with culture and brutal politics to life. However, the magic system was underwhelming, as it seemed to be a convenient plot device and was poorly explained.
"Winning isn’t everything. It’s how you win that matters most."
Storyline: 🌟🌟🌟
The slow-paced, character-driven storyline brilliantly uses the struggles of the main characters to explore different aspects of colonialism. Despite this and the constant twists and turns of the story, my interest eventually waned as the second half felt messy and unrealistic.
Main character(s): 🌟🌟🌟🌟
Touraine and Luca are fierce, determined characters whose complex motives and emotions make their narratives compelling. The self-discovery journey both characters experience also results in strong growth arcs, but their frustrating decisions along the way made it hard for me to connect with or root for them.
"You don't find a life. You have to make one, with the people around you and the causes you put your strength into."
Secondary characters: 🌟🌟🌟🌟
Although I struggled to keep track of the large cast of secondary characters, several were memorable as their roles added depth and complexity to the story.
Romance: 🌟🌟🌟
Hints of attraction between the main characters developed into deeper feelings that felt forced as the progression of their connection was not well demonstrated. Additionally, besides the dynamics of colonisation and the power imbalance between them, the actions of both characters throughout the story made their connection somewhat uncomfortable and ridiculous.
"Know a person's desires, and you have leverage- Give a person their desires, and you have an extension of your own will"
Narration & Audio: 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟
Rasha Zamamiri did a fantastic job bringing the character-driven story to life with skilful vocal effects and variety.
Ultimately, I was left with mixed feelings after reading 'The Unbroken'. While I enjoyed the clever examination of colonization, the second half of the story missed the mark for me. I would recommend The Jasmine Throne by Tasha Suri as a similar fantasy read with women shaping the fate of an empire.
June 5, 2022
My thanks to Orbit books, C.L. Clark and Netgalley. I hated this story. Actually despised it! Yet, I kept thinking that as bleak as it was, maybe somewhere? Well, that somewhere took me to the 55% mark. Up until then? Hints. Maybe, just a few promises of what may come. I would usually quit a book at 30%. That's my bullshit line. This story took way too long to come into its own. Still, I realize that it's Fantasy. That's the only genre I'll spend this much time getting to know. Just because it's not just one book, but at least 3. However C.L. Clark and his or her editor's should get a move on. Most people aren't going to stick around this long! I'll admit that I spent half of this book tense. I mean, really tense! I didn't like it! But, I still had to keep reading. I was finally happy when things went haywire! It is what I wanted. I do wish that there were a few lighthearted moment's. Humor does tend to loosen up the butt clenching parts. Seriously. Humor should always be a given. Much as I've moaned, I will say that I eventually loved this book. Touraine and the rebels own me. 3 1/2 stars because of the beginning. 4* because of the end! I wouldn't have said this 24 hours ago, but now? I'm ready to read the next book!
December 12, 2021
Clark's "The Unbroken" is an epic fantasy about loyalty and picking sides. The main character Tourraine is a soldier off to help the Queen-to-be put down a rebellious colony. Like many other "Sands," Tourraine is returning to her birthplace from whence she was stolen as a child and trained to be a soldier for the Empire. Here, her loyalties are tested as she struggles with whether her loyalty lies with the Empire, her fellow indentured soldiers, or her birth people who she barely remembers. Her loyalties are further tested as she becomes the Princess' assistant, confidant, and lover. In this novel, their tragic romance seems natural as part of the story. Is her loyalty to the rebels, to her former fellow soldiers, or to the Princess?
The Empire feels like the French Empire, particularly the names and the manner of address. The colony feels much like North Africa, particularly the desert climate and the Magic practiced by an unknown culture in the hills. But it is no more France he Morroco than Robert Howard's Stygia was Egypt or Aquilonia was medieval England.
This is a novel that becomes more intense as it goes on with the stakes becoming higher and higher. And, there is at least a sequel in the works.
The Empire feels like the French Empire, particularly the names and the manner of address. The colony feels much like North Africa, particularly the desert climate and the Magic practiced by an unknown culture in the hills. But it is no more France he Morroco than Robert Howard's Stygia was Egypt or Aquilonia was medieval England.
This is a novel that becomes more intense as it goes on with the stakes becoming higher and higher. And, there is at least a sequel in the works.
November 13, 2022
so many conflicting feelings about this book - but i have to seriously commend the author for taking such a unique, difficult approach on an equally difficult topic.
pros:
- top notch worldbuilding - c.l. clark is a really talented writer, i love how they breathed life into this world and naturally wove in pieces of information within the narrative.
- the themes of colonialism/imperialism are brilliantly done - inspired by the french colonization of north africa, the story is told through the eyes of touraine, a soldier stolen from her home as a young child and brainwashed by her colonial masters. honestly, it was a huge struggle reading through her intense internalized racism and admiration of the country that colonized her people. but that also made her eventual growth and unlearning feel all the more valuable and cathartic to see.
- what i appreciate the most about this book is how it portrays the rebellion - the rebels are forced to do horrible things as part of their resistance to the colonizers and while we see luca (our colonizer princess) being horrified, the narrative itself never once vilifies the rebels. the unbroken made it clear that violence by the oppressed is always justified (unlike a certain other sapphic fantasy book i read).
- the women!!! - the cast features a wide variety of women, most of whom are messy and/or deeply unlikeable and i absolutely loved that. they're all such complex characters, especially my personal faves djasha, aranen and jaghotai.
- the most complicated mother/daughter relationship i've ever read - i really liked how it was handled and i'd love to see it further grow.
cons:
- luca - words can never fully express the hatred i felt for her but i'll try. first off, i get what the author was attempting to do by giving us luca's pov, the future queen of the country that is brutally colonizing the qazāli people. we get a look at the mindset of a colonizer - the fact that they genuinely believe they're helping their colonial subjects and that they have a right of ownership to the culture they've forcefully conquered. what frustrated me about luca was: 1) being touraine's love interest (which i think was completely pointless to the narrative/themes) and 2) her lack of development. she NEVER shows any growth, not once!! it felt so jarring to read about touraine growing and changing her mindset while luca stays the exact same.
- also, i don't know how i personally feel about redemption arcs for white colonizer characters. if i had it my way, luca would see the truth of her actions by the end of the series and then die a painful death.
- while the climax was really cool and exciting to read, i didn't like how the main balladairan/qazāl conflict was concluded. again, it felt so false and highlighted the utter lack of growth from luca's side.
- the epilogue also left a bad taste in my mouth - i hate touraine and luca's romantic pairing so much and i can't tell if we're supposed to root for them or not. even apart from the uncomfortable colonizer x colonized dynamic, they had no chemistry. i have no idea why they were into each other besides lust.
overall, i definitely recommend this book to anyone looking for a politically charged adult fantasy with a complex exploration of colonialism. honestly though, me reading the sequels entirely depends on how the author will develop the romance.
rep: north african coded world + characters, black lesbian mc, bi/pan mc with physical disability, non binary sc, f/f side couple
cws: murder, violence, death by hanging, past attempted rape, torture, racism (internal + external)
pros:
- top notch worldbuilding - c.l. clark is a really talented writer, i love how they breathed life into this world and naturally wove in pieces of information within the narrative.
- the themes of colonialism/imperialism are brilliantly done - inspired by the french colonization of north africa, the story is told through the eyes of touraine, a soldier stolen from her home as a young child and brainwashed by her colonial masters. honestly, it was a huge struggle reading through her intense internalized racism and admiration of the country that colonized her people. but that also made her eventual growth and unlearning feel all the more valuable and cathartic to see.
- what i appreciate the most about this book is how it portrays the rebellion - the rebels are forced to do horrible things as part of their resistance to the colonizers and while we see luca (our colonizer princess) being horrified, the narrative itself never once vilifies the rebels. the unbroken made it clear that violence by the oppressed is always justified (unlike a certain other sapphic fantasy book i read).
- the women!!! - the cast features a wide variety of women, most of whom are messy and/or deeply unlikeable and i absolutely loved that. they're all such complex characters, especially my personal faves djasha, aranen and jaghotai.
- the most complicated mother/daughter relationship i've ever read - i really liked how it was handled and i'd love to see it further grow.
cons:
- luca - words can never fully express the hatred i felt for her but i'll try. first off, i get what the author was attempting to do by giving us luca's pov, the future queen of the country that is brutally colonizing the qazāli people. we get a look at the mindset of a colonizer - the fact that they genuinely believe they're helping their colonial subjects and that they have a right of ownership to the culture they've forcefully conquered. what frustrated me about luca was: 1) being touraine's love interest (which i think was completely pointless to the narrative/themes) and 2) her lack of development. she NEVER shows any growth, not once!! it felt so jarring to read about touraine growing and changing her mindset while luca stays the exact same.
- also, i don't know how i personally feel about redemption arcs for white colonizer characters. if i had it my way, luca would see the truth of her actions by the end of the series and then die a painful death.
- while the climax was really cool and exciting to read, i didn't like how the main balladairan/qazāl conflict was concluded. again, it felt so false and highlighted the utter lack of growth from luca's side.
- the epilogue also left a bad taste in my mouth - i hate touraine and luca's romantic pairing so much and i can't tell if we're supposed to root for them or not. even apart from the uncomfortable colonizer x colonized dynamic, they had no chemistry. i have no idea why they were into each other besides lust.
overall, i definitely recommend this book to anyone looking for a politically charged adult fantasy with a complex exploration of colonialism. honestly though, me reading the sequels entirely depends on how the author will develop the romance.
rep: north african coded world + characters, black lesbian mc, bi/pan mc with physical disability, non binary sc, f/f side couple
cws: murder, violence, death by hanging, past attempted rape, torture, racism (internal + external)
November 22, 2024
BookTube channel with my awesome brother, Ed - The Brothers Gwynne
My personal BookTube channel - William Gwynne
I read The Unbroken in preparation for a chat I was moderating between Papa John Gwynne and C.L. Clark in Waterstones, and I am so glad this event prompted me to pick up Magic of the Lost.
We are thrust into an immersive world that is gritty, dark and visceral. A group of children taken by the Empire as children, now forged into a cohort of soldiers forced to serve, are being back to where they were born, but this time they will be tools to enforce the law through force. Through the perspectives of Touraine, a solider in this cohort, and Luca, a princess sent to prove herself, Clark gives us such an entertaining story that also makes you think. The character conflict both internal and external is wonderfully crafted, as is the history of our world and the evolution of the plot and tension.
Clark shows herself to be a writer of great talent. I cannot wait to carry on with the series!
4.5/5 STARS
My personal BookTube channel - William Gwynne
I read The Unbroken in preparation for a chat I was moderating between Papa John Gwynne and C.L. Clark in Waterstones, and I am so glad this event prompted me to pick up Magic of the Lost.
We are thrust into an immersive world that is gritty, dark and visceral. A group of children taken by the Empire as children, now forged into a cohort of soldiers forced to serve, are being back to where they were born, but this time they will be tools to enforce the law through force. Through the perspectives of Touraine, a solider in this cohort, and Luca, a princess sent to prove herself, Clark gives us such an entertaining story that also makes you think. The character conflict both internal and external is wonderfully crafted, as is the history of our world and the evolution of the plot and tension.
Clark shows herself to be a writer of great talent. I cannot wait to carry on with the series!
4.5/5 STARS
December 31, 2024
I wanted to like The Unbroken so bad, and for the most part, I did. The North African inspired setting is fascinating, the prose is eminently readable, and the dynamic between the two protagonists has great potential. This book was pitched to me as “a political fantasy about a disaster lesbian who makes terrible choices”, so I went in fully expecting the main character to mess things up and act in poor judgement. As a result, I wasn’t particularly bothered by Touraine’s bad decision-making skills. I think it’s perfectly understandable that, when thrown into a completely new environment and forced to reconsider her life plans, she panicked and struggled to figure out what strategy she should follow going forward. However, and this is a big however, the same cannot be said for Luca.
I have a really hard time believing that an adult woman who was raised to rule an empire could be as utterly clueless as she is in this book. Right from the beginning, I got the sense that Clark didn’t really know what she wanted to do with her character, and the few interviews I’ve read have only solidified my belief. This book cannot decide whether Luca is a ruthless colonizer who would do anything to ascend to the throne, or a compassionate ruler who sympathizes with the plight of the Qazali people. In case this isn’t clear to anyone reading, the two cannot coexist. Luca can’t have spent her entire life preparing to become queen, only to be shocked at the violence her colonial army is inflicting upon the natives. She is the Balladairan empire; her home country’s wealth and prosperity are directly dependant upon her ability to continue exploiting the colonies.
Her final decision to withdraw from Qazal and grant the rebels independence reads especially absurd when you consider what a long, messy, complex process decolonization is. Given how many different interests are at stake here, the idea that one princess could just wake up one day and decide that colonialism is over with absolutely no pushback from anyone is laughable. How is the economy going to fare, now that they can’t import raw materials from Qazal anymore? Does Luca even have the legal authority to transfer sovereign powers to the rebels, when she isn’t Balladaire’s head of state yet?
In my opinion, this inconsistent characterization negatively affects her relationship with Touraine, too. I initially thought Clark was aiming to establish them as enemies who are fatally attracted to each other; nemeses who cannot be apart, but are destined for mutual destruction. In fact, the possible presence of this trope was one of the main reasons I picked up this book. Instead, I got an angsty romance between a semi-enslaved bodyguard and the colonizer princess who refuses to acknowledge that their interests are incompatible. An odd choice, if you ask me.
All in all, I would say that The Unbroken is less than the sum of its parts. There is a lot to love about it: the nuanced exploration of colonialism, vivid setting, and lovable protagonist kept me interested in the story even when the politics became too hazy and unrealistic for my liking. I’m not sure I will pick up the sequel, but C.L. Clark is an author I want to read more from.
I have a really hard time believing that an adult woman who was raised to rule an empire could be as utterly clueless as she is in this book. Right from the beginning, I got the sense that Clark didn’t really know what she wanted to do with her character, and the few interviews I’ve read have only solidified my belief. This book cannot decide whether Luca is a ruthless colonizer who would do anything to ascend to the throne, or a compassionate ruler who sympathizes with the plight of the Qazali people. In case this isn’t clear to anyone reading, the two cannot coexist. Luca can’t have spent her entire life preparing to become queen, only to be shocked at the violence her colonial army is inflicting upon the natives. She is the Balladairan empire; her home country’s wealth and prosperity are directly dependant upon her ability to continue exploiting the colonies.
Her final decision to withdraw from Qazal and grant the rebels independence reads especially absurd when you consider what a long, messy, complex process decolonization is. Given how many different interests are at stake here, the idea that one princess could just wake up one day and decide that colonialism is over with absolutely no pushback from anyone is laughable. How is the economy going to fare, now that they can’t import raw materials from Qazal anymore? Does Luca even have the legal authority to transfer sovereign powers to the rebels, when she isn’t Balladaire’s head of state yet?
In my opinion, this inconsistent characterization negatively affects her relationship with Touraine, too. I initially thought Clark was aiming to establish them as enemies who are fatally attracted to each other; nemeses who cannot be apart, but are destined for mutual destruction. In fact, the possible presence of this trope was one of the main reasons I picked up this book. Instead, I got an angsty romance between a semi-enslaved bodyguard and the colonizer princess who refuses to acknowledge that their interests are incompatible. An odd choice, if you ask me.
All in all, I would say that The Unbroken is less than the sum of its parts. There is a lot to love about it: the nuanced exploration of colonialism, vivid setting, and lovable protagonist kept me interested in the story even when the politics became too hazy and unrealistic for my liking. I’m not sure I will pick up the sequel, but C.L. Clark is an author I want to read more from.
July 31, 2021
So so good! A look into colonialism from both sides. I still hate Luca, sorry not sorry. Touraine’s ties with her friends made the story richer and more believable. The description of the setting is absolutely incredible.
Book 2 of the Sapphic Trifecta (The Jasmine Throne, She Who Became the Sun, and this book)
**Spoilers**
It’s a little too soon for a book with a deadly plague storyline, ngl.
Book 2 of the Sapphic Trifecta (The Jasmine Throne, She Who Became the Sun, and this book)
**Spoilers**
It’s a little too soon for a book with a deadly plague storyline, ngl.
November 22, 2025
read my full review on reads rainbow!
CWs: violence, gore, past attempted rape, threats of rape, torture
CWs: violence, gore, past attempted rape, threats of rape, torture
February 20, 2022
The Unbroken is an unflinching look at the brutality of empire, and the insidious ways that it colonizes people's minds as well as bodies. Touraine and Luca are both terrific characters, and their relationship has as many twists and turns as the political machinations of this book. The portrayal of internalized oppression in this book is super powerful and intense, as Touraine returns to the country she was stolen from as a child, only to discover that her people are not the savages she's been taught they were. What I loved about this book is Clark's ruthless dissection of the notion of loyalty, and whom we choose to give it to. Touraine is somewhat loyal to the empire, but her real loyalty is to her fellow native conscripts, and this ends up getting her into all kinds of trouble. Meanwhile, the reader is constantly rooting for Luca and Touraine to be together, and Clark uses this to make us realize how both characters are part of oppressive systems. This book is brutal and unstinting and upsetting, and so worth it.
November 27, 2021
This was such a thrilling read! Clark (no relation) creates a complex world that touches on grand themes of colonialism and empire, as well as the frayed human interactions between families, friends, and lovers. Touraine is the heroine we need in these times!
April 23, 2023
Me cuesta mucho puntuar este libro (cada vez me cuesta más puntuar libros en general) porque ha habido cosas que me han encantado y otras que no tanto.
Mi parte preferida es la primera mitad del libro, creo que empieza de una manera espectacular pegándote una bonita bofetada en la cara al hablar de colonización desde un punto de vista único.
Es un libro que muestra la crudeza y violencia de un imperio, lo que de verdad hace falta para asimilar una tierra y su cultura y acabar con sus rebeldes. Es también el viaje de la protagonista que solo tiene a su familia, la del ejército, por ser la única que conoce, con la que ha crecido.
Me ha parecido una novela original, con un mensaje muy potente y que me ha tenido muy atrapada por partes.
Al mismo tiempo ninguna de las relaciones personales que hay en el libro me han llegado especialmente, tan solo una, en realidad, pero como es spoiler no voy a decir nada xD me parece que se cuentan muchas cosas pero no las ves (desde el romance creciente entre las protas al cariño de Touraine por su compañía), me faltaron más de esas escenas para que tuvieran verdadero sentido algunas decisiones que parecen sacadas de la manga para que la trama avance...
Aún así, me ha gustado mucho por su ambientación árabe y por como muestran a esos colonizadores (los franceses que a todos nos encanta odiar xD) desde varios puntos de vista dentro del ejército y el mando.
Aún no está en castellano pero no creo que tarde mucho en llegarnos a estas alturas.
Mi parte preferida es la primera mitad del libro, creo que empieza de una manera espectacular pegándote una bonita bofetada en la cara al hablar de colonización desde un punto de vista único.
Es un libro que muestra la crudeza y violencia de un imperio, lo que de verdad hace falta para asimilar una tierra y su cultura y acabar con sus rebeldes. Es también el viaje de la protagonista que solo tiene a su familia, la del ejército, por ser la única que conoce, con la que ha crecido.
Me ha parecido una novela original, con un mensaje muy potente y que me ha tenido muy atrapada por partes.
Al mismo tiempo ninguna de las relaciones personales que hay en el libro me han llegado especialmente, tan solo una, en realidad, pero como es spoiler no voy a decir nada xD me parece que se cuentan muchas cosas pero no las ves (desde el romance creciente entre las protas al cariño de Touraine por su compañía), me faltaron más de esas escenas para que tuvieran verdadero sentido algunas decisiones que parecen sacadas de la manga para que la trama avance...
Aún así, me ha gustado mucho por su ambientación árabe y por como muestran a esos colonizadores (los franceses que a todos nos encanta odiar xD) desde varios puntos de vista dentro del ejército y el mando.
Aún no está en castellano pero no creo que tarde mucho en llegarnos a estas alturas.
December 6, 2022
The Unbroken is a dual POV epic fantasy that follows two women from very different backgrounds. One is a disgraced soldier of Qazali origin and the other is the future ruler of the Balladairan Empire.
Touraine is saved from sure death for a crime she did not commit by Luca is exchange for being a pawn in her plan towards peach between the Qazali rebellion and the Balladairans. However Luca's version of peace is still a very much colonized version where even granting the people minimal rights is a power struggle, And Touraine having the most freedom she's ever had really has to grapple with her place in the world. All she knows is serving the empire in different roles. So it's interesting to read about her basically decolonizing her mind to reject the notions that have been programmed into her. Right now she's an outsider who has been tugged away from everything she knows and her Sands(fellow soldiers) she can relate to.
There was a little point where it lagged in the middle while we get to know the characters more in the routine they've settled in. It does end up picking back up as Luca and Touraine battle each other on different sides. There's romantic tension between the two but it's not a sweet romance where they perfectly fit. Luca is the master and the one with dominant power which is something that can't be ignored.
CL Clark does an great job describing the world of Qazal. I love fantasies where you can picture the town clearly and are given vivid descriptions of what people wore and ate. I also liked the parallels to the real life French Empire's rule over North Africa.
I received an arc from Orbit Books in exchange for an honest review.
Full review
https://womenofcolorreadtoo.blogspot....
Touraine is saved from sure death for a crime she did not commit by Luca is exchange for being a pawn in her plan towards peach between the Qazali rebellion and the Balladairans. However Luca's version of peace is still a very much colonized version where even granting the people minimal rights is a power struggle, And Touraine having the most freedom she's ever had really has to grapple with her place in the world. All she knows is serving the empire in different roles. So it's interesting to read about her basically decolonizing her mind to reject the notions that have been programmed into her. Right now she's an outsider who has been tugged away from everything she knows and her Sands(fellow soldiers) she can relate to.
There was a little point where it lagged in the middle while we get to know the characters more in the routine they've settled in. It does end up picking back up as Luca and Touraine battle each other on different sides. There's romantic tension between the two but it's not a sweet romance where they perfectly fit. Luca is the master and the one with dominant power which is something that can't be ignored.
CL Clark does an great job describing the world of Qazal. I love fantasies where you can picture the town clearly and are given vivid descriptions of what people wore and ate. I also liked the parallels to the real life French Empire's rule over North Africa.
I received an arc from Orbit Books in exchange for an honest review.
Full review
https://womenofcolorreadtoo.blogspot....
March 25, 2021
I’m going to start by saying that the content of The Unbroken is incredibly rich and in-depth. The first half reads like a non-fictional account of the climate, politics, art, history, etc of Qazāl which is a plus for world building but a heavy weight to carry for pacing. Just when scenes seem to be taking off with dialogue and character interaction, the author breaks in with 3x as many details of, for example, the courtyard they are entering or fabrics that went into the making of their clothing. In the end, I think most of us read fiction for characters or action and that is lacking in the first half. The second half is better.
There are battles, intrigue, magic, the story moves faster from one point to the next. I’m not saying it is lightening quick, just explaining that it picks up.
Now here’s the part that frustrated me the most, I did not like the two main characters very much. Balladairan Princess Luca Ancier is young and hopes to take her place at the throne very soon. Her uncle believes that sending her to Qazāl, a nation that they hold under subjugation, will give her the necessary experience to rule or maybe kill her off which would make him the king. She’s an okay character but I wanted so much more, not just the fact that she uses crutches due to her permanent injuries. There’s a person there and I wanted to know her but that’s what happens when we get so much architectural information rather than character defining scenes. Finally, Touraine, who I badly wanted to hero worship because one look at the cover and I was won over. She is a Lieutenant with the slave soldiers who were stolen as children from Qazāl and raised to be fighters for Balladaire. Of course, it’s a bitter homecoming. They’re viewed as traitors by the locals and yet are slaves to the Balladairians. It’s a powder keg that’s due to set off, not only because of the “Sand’s” return but also because revolution is in the air. Back to Touraine. She’s confused, not the brightest, oftentimes weak, and worst of all, cannot make up her mind which causes much turmoil. Not the stuff of heroes but maybe that is the author’s aim. Luca and Touraine have an interesting dynamic together which is still hazy at this stage but I’m looking forward to see how their relationship evolves. Interestingly, I found many of the secondary characters to be much more impactful even though their appearances are brief.
Let me end by saying the writing is top notch and the author’s turn of phrase is magical. I intend to keep reading this series because it’s worth it and I still recommend because the author unabashedly went all out to create something special. There are shortcomings but I have no doubt, they will be straightened out and there will be amazing works in the future.
Read an Arc courtesy of Netgalley in exchange for a review.
There are battles, intrigue, magic, the story moves faster from one point to the next. I’m not saying it is lightening quick, just explaining that it picks up.
Now here’s the part that frustrated me the most, I did not like the two main characters very much. Balladairan Princess Luca Ancier is young and hopes to take her place at the throne very soon. Her uncle believes that sending her to Qazāl, a nation that they hold under subjugation, will give her the necessary experience to rule or maybe kill her off which would make him the king. She’s an okay character but I wanted so much more, not just the fact that she uses crutches due to her permanent injuries. There’s a person there and I wanted to know her but that’s what happens when we get so much architectural information rather than character defining scenes. Finally, Touraine, who I badly wanted to hero worship because one look at the cover and I was won over. She is a Lieutenant with the slave soldiers who were stolen as children from Qazāl and raised to be fighters for Balladaire. Of course, it’s a bitter homecoming. They’re viewed as traitors by the locals and yet are slaves to the Balladairians. It’s a powder keg that’s due to set off, not only because of the “Sand’s” return but also because revolution is in the air. Back to Touraine. She’s confused, not the brightest, oftentimes weak, and worst of all, cannot make up her mind which causes much turmoil. Not the stuff of heroes but maybe that is the author’s aim. Luca and Touraine have an interesting dynamic together which is still hazy at this stage but I’m looking forward to see how their relationship evolves. Interestingly, I found many of the secondary characters to be much more impactful even though their appearances are brief.
Let me end by saying the writing is top notch and the author’s turn of phrase is magical. I intend to keep reading this series because it’s worth it and I still recommend because the author unabashedly went all out to create something special. There are shortcomings but I have no doubt, they will be straightened out and there will be amazing works in the future.
Read an Arc courtesy of Netgalley in exchange for a review.
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October 21, 2023I FINALLY FINISHED!!!! It was an uphill battle (because i'm slow af, not because the book is bad) but it was worth it!
very detailed review to come.
very detailed review to come.
November 26, 2020
This was a thrilling read, full of diverse and queer characters. I love the entire world-building element of The Unbroken. It was vivid and skilfully constructed. The Unbroken explores the concepts of colonialism and racism. The story is told from the POV of two characters that couldn't be more different. Luca, the heir apparent to the throne and Touraine, a conscript soldier.
I enjoyed the politics and the unexpected twists and the search for magic. But the romance, which was the whole reason I wanted to read the book, felt underdeveloped to me. I would've liked more interaction between Touraine and Luca before they go around yearning and crying for each other.
Between Touraine's good intentions, dumb decisions and terrible luck she made a very interesting protagonist that I wanted to hug her, punch her or both sometimes.
Where Touraine is lead by her heart and emotions, Luca follows her head, and is supposedly shrewd and clever. She is driven by the desire to take her rightful throne from her uncle. For the most powerful character of the book, she didn't utilize her power well enough till that end speech of hers.. Luca's character has a lot more potential and I hope it will be utilized in the next installment.
The side characters were all well developed and interesting. I especially liked Jaghotai, Djasha and most of all Aranen. The General, I just can't decide if I hate or not.
Overall, this was an enjoyable read. The last 100 pages were the best of the book and I would give anything to read Luca's letter. I can't wait to read the next book in the series.
ARC copy provided by the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
I enjoyed the politics and the unexpected twists and the search for magic. But the romance, which was the whole reason I wanted to read the book, felt underdeveloped to me. I would've liked more interaction between Touraine and Luca before they go around yearning and crying for each other.
Between Touraine's good intentions, dumb decisions and terrible luck she made a very interesting protagonist that I wanted to hug her, punch her or both sometimes.
Where Touraine is lead by her heart and emotions, Luca follows her head, and is supposedly shrewd and clever. She is driven by the desire to take her rightful throne from her uncle. For the most powerful character of the book, she didn't utilize her power well enough till that end speech of hers.. Luca's character has a lot more potential and I hope it will be utilized in the next installment.
The side characters were all well developed and interesting. I especially liked Jaghotai, Djasha and most of all Aranen. The General, I just can't decide if I hate or not.
Overall, this was an enjoyable read. The last 100 pages were the best of the book and I would give anything to read Luca's letter. I can't wait to read the next book in the series.
ARC copy provided by the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
January 24, 2023
Video Review (Spoiler Free): https://youtu.be/R1p5iGqUevI
Re-read thoughts: I Still love this book so much and jumped right into my arc of the sequel after completing this. Touraine is just everything, I love her <3
Alright I was not expecting to love this one as much as I did. On paper I was really apprehensive because this is a low magic, military fantasy that focuses on an occupied territory going through rebellion and none of those are my buzz words BUT I loved it. I was extremely impressed with how all the themes were handled and woven into the story. I love the messiness in everything, especially the main characters of Touraine and Luca. It was a book I could not put down. For me this was an action packed roller coaster form beginning to end (although be warned that some people found the beginning slow so take my experience with a grain of salt). Although the ending wraps up the story well I am very excited to read the next installment whenever it comes out!
Re-read thoughts: I Still love this book so much and jumped right into my arc of the sequel after completing this. Touraine is just everything, I love her <3
Alright I was not expecting to love this one as much as I did. On paper I was really apprehensive because this is a low magic, military fantasy that focuses on an occupied territory going through rebellion and none of those are my buzz words BUT I loved it. I was extremely impressed with how all the themes were handled and woven into the story. I love the messiness in everything, especially the main characters of Touraine and Luca. It was a book I could not put down. For me this was an action packed roller coaster form beginning to end (although be warned that some people found the beginning slow so take my experience with a grain of salt). Although the ending wraps up the story well I am very excited to read the next installment whenever it comes out!
January 18, 2021
Here's an excerpt of the first two chapters: https://www.orbitbooks.net/orbit-exce...
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December 30, 2020You know that shiver you get when you encounter fiction that excavates truth? This book is SO TRUE: all the ugly, painful, deeply personal complexities of revolution against empire, captured in shimmering pointillist detail. I’m in awe
dnf
May 30, 2022DNF p. 150
I really really really wanted to love this but this just is not 'clicking' with me. I'm sure more patient readers who love military fantasy or tales of political intrigue will be able to appreciate The Unbroken more than I was.
The writing was okay but the characters, pacing, and world-building did very little for me. Not only could I not picture Touraine nor Luca but their personalities seemed very one-note. Most of the secondary characters seemed very stereotypical of the genre (Cantic with who is as hard and cold as her 'blue eyes', Rogan is the classic villainous bully, Touraine's lover, Pruett, and Tibeau, seemed to exist merely as fodder to Touraine's temperament).
While I 100% agree with N.K. Jemisin when she said that creating fantasy worlds is challenging as you are inevitably influenced by "real (if bygone) cultures" I was hoping for a more unique setting. We have the colonialist evil empire Balladaire that is basically France while Briga and Qazal seem to be heavily inspired by Morocco and Algeria. Maybe later in the novel the author expands on this world a bit more but so far the only 'innovative' thing about it is that there seems to be no gender inequality and that same-sex relationships are viewed in the same way as heterosexual ones. These two things are wins in my books given that I am a lesbian and I am tired of reading fantasy novels in which women and LGBTQ+ ppl are oppressed. What did not sit well with me was the choice to address female characters in positions of power with male titles (Touraine and Cantic are addressed as 'Sir' while the governor of Qazal City, who is a woman, is addressed as 'Lord Governor'). This might have worked if there were no female titles but they are also used only not when describing those who have authoritative positions. This leads me to speculate that even in this world female equivalents of 'Sir' and 'Lord' are not seen as conveying the same authority as the male ones. But why would that be the case given that in this world where there seems to be no gender inequality? Sure, in our world, 'Master' has connotations of power and control whereas 'Mistress' is used to describe teachers and women who engage in relationships with married individuals. But in the world of The Unbroken men and women are seen as the same (I am not including other genders because up to the point I have read there were no non cis characters), why would women in positions of power have to be addressed with male titles? It would have been more interesting if the author could have created titles that could have been applied to all genders.
My third issue was the pacing which kind of dragged. There were a few scenes that seem very reminiscent of other fantasy books (such as Luca getting her rapier) or Touraine being recognized by an old man.
While the story might in the long run develop the characters more and or provide a more detailed world-building I don't feel compelled to continue. If you are thinking of reading this I recommend you check out some more positive reviews.
ARC provided by NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
I really really really wanted to love this but this just is not 'clicking' with me. I'm sure more patient readers who love military fantasy or tales of political intrigue will be able to appreciate The Unbroken more than I was.
The writing was okay but the characters, pacing, and world-building did very little for me. Not only could I not picture Touraine nor Luca but their personalities seemed very one-note. Most of the secondary characters seemed very stereotypical of the genre (Cantic with who is as hard and cold as her 'blue eyes', Rogan is the classic villainous bully, Touraine's lover, Pruett, and Tibeau, seemed to exist merely as fodder to Touraine's temperament).
While I 100% agree with N.K. Jemisin when she said that creating fantasy worlds is challenging as you are inevitably influenced by "real (if bygone) cultures" I was hoping for a more unique setting. We have the colonialist evil empire Balladaire that is basically France while Briga and Qazal seem to be heavily inspired by Morocco and Algeria. Maybe later in the novel the author expands on this world a bit more but so far the only 'innovative' thing about it is that there seems to be no gender inequality and that same-sex relationships are viewed in the same way as heterosexual ones. These two things are wins in my books given that I am a lesbian and I am tired of reading fantasy novels in which women and LGBTQ+ ppl are oppressed. What did not sit well with me was the choice to address female characters in positions of power with male titles (Touraine and Cantic are addressed as 'Sir' while the governor of Qazal City, who is a woman, is addressed as 'Lord Governor'). This might have worked if there were no female titles but they are also used only not when describing those who have authoritative positions. This leads me to speculate that even in this world female equivalents of 'Sir' and 'Lord' are not seen as conveying the same authority as the male ones. But why would that be the case given that in this world where there seems to be no gender inequality? Sure, in our world, 'Master' has connotations of power and control whereas 'Mistress' is used to describe teachers and women who engage in relationships with married individuals. But in the world of The Unbroken men and women are seen as the same (I am not including other genders because up to the point I have read there were no non cis characters), why would women in positions of power have to be addressed with male titles? It would have been more interesting if the author could have created titles that could have been applied to all genders.
My third issue was the pacing which kind of dragged. There were a few scenes that seem very reminiscent of other fantasy books (such as Luca getting her rapier) or Touraine being recognized by an old man.
While the story might in the long run develop the characters more and or provide a more detailed world-building I don't feel compelled to continue. If you are thinking of reading this I recommend you check out some more positive reviews.
ARC provided by NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
February 14, 2021
Thank you to Netgalley and Orbit for providing me with an e-ARC in exchange for an honest review!
4 stars for now, with the potential for a higher rating on reread.
I have a lot of thoughts about this book that I think I'll need to reread to be able to fully process, but on first read, I liked this book a lot. I think the way that CL Clark explores the effects of colonization, both at the macro and micro level, is really well done and nuanced, and sparks a lot of discussion. For me, the way that Clark explores this central theme and all the themes that stem from this, is definitely the standout element of this book. Clark dives into internalized racism, white privilege, and cultural appropriation, among other themes, and I just felt like it was all woven into the narrative so seamlessly.
The character work for both Luca and Touraine is also fantastic. I would definitely have liked to know some our side characters a little more, but the two main characters were very well fleshed out, and most importantly, they felt so real. I love Touraine. I would die for Touraine (and her biceps). She deserves the world and I found her growth throughout this book so satisfying, and I cannot wait to see where Clark decides to take her character. Luca, on the other hand, is one of the most unlikable and frustrating characters I have read in a long time. That being said, she is SO incredibly well-written. I can't really speak to how well her disability was represented (she uses a walking stick due to an injury and experiences chronic pain), but I did feel like Clark did a good job of making Luca way more than just her disability, and she felt like a very nuanced character to me.
I think the only thing that really fell a bit short for me was the romance - I definitely felt like their relationship was underdeveloped, and was more there as a way to explore the themes, rather than a relationship that I could genuinely root for.
The worldbuilding and politics in this book was top notch. If you are a fan of political fantasies, this is a must-read. I'd also consider it a military fantasy, but definitely heavier on the politics and strategy than actual fighting. The magic in this book is on the lighter side, and definitely very vague - I'm excited to see it get explained a bit more as the series continues, as it leaves off on a very interesting note. One thing that I really personally appreciate about the world that Clark has created is that it is a queer-normative world. I think this is really refreshing to see in a fantasy world, especially one that deals with heavier themes like colonization where characters are already experiencing other forms of oppression.
Overall, I highly recommend this book. This was one of my most anticipated releases of the year, and it certainly did not disappoint.
4 stars for now, with the potential for a higher rating on reread.
I have a lot of thoughts about this book that I think I'll need to reread to be able to fully process, but on first read, I liked this book a lot. I think the way that CL Clark explores the effects of colonization, both at the macro and micro level, is really well done and nuanced, and sparks a lot of discussion. For me, the way that Clark explores this central theme and all the themes that stem from this, is definitely the standout element of this book. Clark dives into internalized racism, white privilege, and cultural appropriation, among other themes, and I just felt like it was all woven into the narrative so seamlessly.
The character work for both Luca and Touraine is also fantastic. I would definitely have liked to know some our side characters a little more, but the two main characters were very well fleshed out, and most importantly, they felt so real. I love Touraine. I would die for Touraine (and her biceps). She deserves the world and I found her growth throughout this book so satisfying, and I cannot wait to see where Clark decides to take her character. Luca, on the other hand, is one of the most unlikable and frustrating characters I have read in a long time. That being said, she is SO incredibly well-written. I can't really speak to how well her disability was represented (she uses a walking stick due to an injury and experiences chronic pain), but I did feel like Clark did a good job of making Luca way more than just her disability, and she felt like a very nuanced character to me.
I think the only thing that really fell a bit short for me was the romance - I definitely felt like their relationship was underdeveloped, and was more there as a way to explore the themes, rather than a relationship that I could genuinely root for.
The worldbuilding and politics in this book was top notch. If you are a fan of political fantasies, this is a must-read. I'd also consider it a military fantasy, but definitely heavier on the politics and strategy than actual fighting. The magic in this book is on the lighter side, and definitely very vague - I'm excited to see it get explained a bit more as the series continues, as it leaves off on a very interesting note. One thing that I really personally appreciate about the world that Clark has created is that it is a queer-normative world. I think this is really refreshing to see in a fantasy world, especially one that deals with heavier themes like colonization where characters are already experiencing other forms of oppression.
Overall, I highly recommend this book. This was one of my most anticipated releases of the year, and it certainly did not disappoint.
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