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A review by river24
The Unbroken by C.L. Clark
adventurous
dark
emotional
reflective
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
5/5
This book is incredible, it got better and better and better. It faces empire and the cruelty that always comes with empires and colonisation with an unyielding face. It's an emotional, powerful, poignant read and I absolutely adored it.
This story is written with such deep complexity and nuance. It's written with rage and with empathy. It's written in such an incredible, heart-wrenching way that is simply unparalleled.
Touraine is an immensely complicated and fleshed out character with conflicting motivations and an evocative sense of realness to her. She's an amazing main character to have. Her choices always had consequences.
That was another factor that I absolutely adored. For every action there was a price and for every choice there was sacrifice. The stakes were always so high and the situations and the inevitable consequences only got more and more compelling and absorbing.
One of my favourite aspects of the entire story was the themes of belonging and its opposite of not belonging. There was such an intriguing exploration of where this character (Touraine) belonged. Touraine is a conscript of the empire, stolen from her colonised home country as a child and raised under the empire's watchful eye. Her entire life she's been force-fed their rules, their version of history, their lies. She's wanted nothing more than to be a part of their society, to be a good soldier, and to fight for the empire. Her slow realisation that the empire has never cared about her and will never view or treat her as an equal was gut-wrenching to experience first-hand. But what I found even more shattering and also interesting was Touraine's realisation that neither side cared for her and her fellow stolen conscripts. Both sides would feed their corpses to their fight without a care for them as people. That was so incredibly nuanced and immaculately and so carefully cultivated.
This moral question of choice was such a huge, almost unexpected theme. Every word in this book was chosen with such care to tell the story to absolute perfection. C.L. Clark achieved a massive feat with this story and I cannot wait for the sequel.
The characters were all so compelling and incredibly complex. They were all conflicted people with hard choices. I adored some characters with all my heart and despised others, but both of these feelings were expertly achieved by Clark's writing.
Their writing was incredible. There were such beautiful descriptions and both of the two main characters had very distinct voices. Touraine's perspective read like a soldier's point of view, whereas Luca's read from a heightened royal/scholar's ignorant one. C.L. Clark masterfully achieved exactly what they set out to do.
The world-building was amazing. World-building is my favourite thing and this world was so detailed and perfectly woven across many histories and cultures. The world-building is so interesting and cleverly combined into the little things, like curses that people use.
This book will be absolutely perfect for you if you like The Poppy War as it draws on similar themes of war and empire. The Unbroken delves deeper into colonisation and is more political than military, however still has a lot of military influence, but on a smaller scale than The Poppy War.
I'm honestly just so honoured that Clark has shared this story with the world and I have therefore been able to read it. It is truly an unforgettable tale!
This book is incredible, it got better and better and better. It faces empire and the cruelty that always comes with empires and colonisation with an unyielding face. It's an emotional, powerful, poignant read and I absolutely adored it.
This story is written with such deep complexity and nuance. It's written with rage and with empathy. It's written in such an incredible, heart-wrenching way that is simply unparalleled.
Touraine is an immensely complicated and fleshed out character with conflicting motivations and an evocative sense of realness to her. She's an amazing main character to have. Her choices always had consequences.
That was another factor that I absolutely adored. For every action there was a price and for every choice there was sacrifice. The stakes were always so high and the situations and the inevitable consequences only got more and more compelling and absorbing.
One of my favourite aspects of the entire story was the themes of belonging and its opposite of not belonging. There was such an intriguing exploration of where this character (Touraine) belonged. Touraine is a conscript of the empire, stolen from her colonised home country as a child and raised under the empire's watchful eye. Her entire life she's been force-fed their rules, their version of history, their lies. She's wanted nothing more than to be a part of their society, to be a good soldier, and to fight for the empire. Her slow realisation that the empire has never cared about her and will never view or treat her as an equal was gut-wrenching to experience first-hand. But what I found even more shattering and also interesting was Touraine's realisation that neither side cared for her and her fellow stolen conscripts. Both sides would feed their corpses to their fight without a care for them as people. That was so incredibly nuanced and immaculately and so carefully cultivated.
This moral question of choice was such a huge, almost unexpected theme. Every word in this book was chosen with such care to tell the story to absolute perfection. C.L. Clark achieved a massive feat with this story and I cannot wait for the sequel.
The characters were all so compelling and incredibly complex. They were all conflicted people with hard choices. I adored some characters with all my heart and despised others, but both of these feelings were expertly achieved by Clark's writing.
Their writing was incredible. There were such beautiful descriptions and both of the two main characters had very distinct voices. Touraine's perspective read like a soldier's point of view, whereas Luca's read from a heightened royal/scholar's ignorant one. C.L. Clark masterfully achieved exactly what they set out to do.
The world-building was amazing. World-building is my favourite thing and this world was so detailed and perfectly woven across many histories and cultures. The world-building is so interesting and cleverly combined into the little things, like curses that people use.
This book will be absolutely perfect for you if you like The Poppy War as it draws on similar themes of war and empire. The Unbroken delves deeper into colonisation and is more political than military, however still has a lot of military influence, but on a smaller scale than The Poppy War.
I'm honestly just so honoured that Clark has shared this story with the world and I have therefore been able to read it. It is truly an unforgettable tale!