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A review by lizshayne
The Unbroken by C.L. Clark
adventurous
challenging
dark
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
So, like, there are different kinds of 3s. There's the aimed for adequacy and hit it squarely 3s and then there are the aimed really high and didn't hit it 3s and it always feels weird to me that they both land with the same "yeah, I liked it".
This book was beautiful and frustrating and I wish I liked it more than I did and also it took me a relatively long time to listen my way through because I kept wondering whether I should listen to something else instead, like an interesting podcast.
The beginning and end were good. The middle could have been about 4-6 hours shorter.
There's an interesting problem that happens when you're trying to show a character's conversion but the audience is already believers. There's the God element here, but its mostly the "large European-esque empires conquering other cultures and stamping out their religion is bad" is a position I already held. Touraine had to learn it and the process of watching her learn (and mess up, lather rinse repeat) wasn't written in a way that held my attention. Insofar as people evolved in this story, they either didn't or had moments of, like, punctuated equilibrium. Suddenly I'm different.
I wanted to like this book, but between feeling like the character development needed development and my own general distaste for "all the main characters are selfish and get people killed" as a larger narrative arc, I just couldn't get into it.
Also, and this is a very weird digression, but I immediately read the debate between the two schools of how to "civilize" the conquered as a great example of how old mean ABA and new nice ABA are both still attempts to squish and cut and mold a child into something they were never meant to be. Which may not have been in the intent, but definitely resonated.
This book was beautiful and frustrating and I wish I liked it more than I did and also it took me a relatively long time to listen my way through because I kept wondering whether I should listen to something else instead, like an interesting podcast.
The beginning and end were good. The middle could have been about 4-6 hours shorter.
There's an interesting problem that happens when you're trying to show a character's conversion but the audience is already believers. There's the God element here, but its mostly the "large European-esque empires conquering other cultures and stamping out their religion is bad" is a position I already held. Touraine had to learn it and the process of watching her learn (and mess up, lather rinse repeat) wasn't written in a way that held my attention. Insofar as people evolved in this story, they either didn't or had moments of, like, punctuated equilibrium. Suddenly I'm different.
I wanted to like this book, but between feeling like the character development needed development and my own general distaste for "all the main characters are selfish and get people killed" as a larger narrative arc, I just couldn't get into it.
Also, and this is a very weird digression, but I immediately read the debate between the two schools of how to "civilize" the conquered as a great example of how old mean ABA and new nice ABA are both still attempts to squish and cut and mold a child into something they were never meant to be. Which may not have been in the intent, but definitely resonated.