Reviews with content warning for Kidnapping - The Unbroken

Franticly paced and constantly challenging, this is a painful story with no good answers backed by solid worldbuilding and clever, flawed characters. The fantasy elements usually have a pretty light hand, but the tone is successfully mystical and otherworldly. The only flaw is that the relentless failures one of the protagonists experiences are painfully predictable. She tries the same thing (court a bunch of loyalties badly, betray a confidence of one to the other, get in trouble) over and over, and it gets a bit wearying.

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booksthatburn's review against another edition

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challenging dark sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

THE UNBROKEN is a tale of colonialization, uprising, and a stolen child returning to her homeland as a conscripted soldier ordered to bring it to heel. Touraine is one of the Sands, the term for Qazāli people stolen as children and raised to be soldiers by the Balladaire. This puts her in the position of being used to enforce restrictions on the people she came from. Events early in the book remove her from the Sands, the people she's lived with, fought alongside, and bled with all her life to instead be in service to princess Luca. The rest of the book explores Touraine's confused attempts to figure out what she wants and what she's willing to die for, as well as Luca's desperate attempts to hold on to power through the slim thread of her uncle's distant regard and her subordinates' loyalty. One of the strengths of THE UNBROKEN is it highlights the way that someone who is marginalized in their own group but has power and privilege over another group often uses that relative power to gain a sense of control by oppressing someone else. Luca's physical disability and precarious political position lead her to make harsher choices in order to not appear weak, something that would probably be less on her mind if she weren't constantly worried about people mistaking her physical impairment for lack of will.

The tension between Luca and Touraine is very well handled, as throughout the story their dynamic as a pair constantly shifts, but they're never quite on the same page about the nature of their relationship. It showed over and over how no matter how attracted they might be to each other, the gulf of power between Luca's position and Touraine's means that it's impossible to trust any "Yes" from Touraine when Luca can have her tortured or killed for a "No". This affects everything from their mutual attraction to the treatment of the Sands to the handling of the rebels.

I love the portrayal of the Qazāli rebels, I can't discuss much there without spoilers but they were dynamic as a group and as individuals, each with their own reactions to Touraine and Luca's various intrusions on their lives, as well as the reality of life under Balladaire's oppressive colonial rule.

I'm looking forward to the sequel, I'm a little worried that it'll only get worse for the characters from here but I want to know what happens next.

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laurareads87's review against another edition

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adventurous dark tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

The Unbroken is a fantasy novel with a setting inspired by French colonial occupation in Northern Africa with two POV characters: Touraine, who was stolen as a child and taken to Balladaire where she is raised to fight for the colonial power occupying her homeland, and Luca, a princess of Balladaire given power in occupied Qazāl and desperate to prove her competence so she can take the Balladairan throne. The plot follows both characters' (and other characters') political maneuvering and shifting loyalties in the context of a rapidly growing rebellion. Overall, I really liked this novel + will definitely read the next book in the series. I thought many of the characters were very well developed + particularly appreciated Touraine's perspective; I hope that some of the more peripheral characters get more focus in the sequel. I also thought that the book was well written - the action scenes especially - and that the political intrigue was compelling. I appreciated that sexual diversity is the norm in the world of this book -- many characters are lgbtq+ but this itself is not a plot point -- and that women being in positions of power is also the norm here. I will note that while both Touraine and Luca (and a number of other characters) are queer and a number of reviews describe the book as sapphic, it ought not be construed a romance; there is an extreme power difference here (Luca has the power to deem Touraine's life forfeit given that Touraine is her empire's property) which negates consent. While the characters are both individually complex and well-developed, their relationship did not feel that way to me; I could not wrap my head around how

both their decision-making processes were so deeply impacted by their personal relationship, which consisted of some moments of tension and of Luca sexualizing Touraine,

and ultimately wish that the suggestion of chemistry between them had just been left out entirely.

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cerilouisereads's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

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entazis's review against another edition

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challenging dark hopeful mysterious sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

This was just fantastic and fun even though it also hurts in a lot of places.

It's really all about colonialism, power and what it means to be a good leader. It's about loyalty and trust. But mostly it's about the lost children, stolen children, who are coming back home as a tool of oppressors.

Relationships are messy. My favorite one in this book isn't a romantic one, but a familial. The complicated relationship between daughter and mother who are unable to understand each other, who have a lot of hurt between them thanks to the colonial forces that separated them. There was one particular scene nearing the end when I almost cried, when we see the depths of pain, love and lost time.

The characters are just interesting and complex and it feels that there's no good decisions no matter the intentions. I will say that Luca irritated me a lot. But the way the author explores what it means to be a queen was really a great one, regardless of my personal frustrations. But because she irritated me I couldn't really buy into the romance between her and Touraine or at least I'm not rooting for them even though they're obviously endgame.

Worldbuilding is also rich, full of small and big details, full of history, different cultures and nations.

All in all I really enjoyed this book a lot and I'm excited for more.

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dedonohoe's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional hopeful tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

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