The Unbroken by C.L. Clark (Review)

Title: The Unbroken
Author: C.L. Clark
Type: Fiction
Genre: Adult, Fantasy, LGBTQ
Publisher: Orbit
(Hachette Book Group)
Date published: March 23, 2021

A complimentary physical copy of this book was kindly provided by the publishers in exchange for an honest review.

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.

⤖ My Review ⬻

By the time I requested C.L. Clark’s The Unbroken, I had already heard from numerous sources that it was a fantastic read. This doesn’t happen often, since I usually request books before many of my other fellow book bloggers/reviewers have shared how they feel about them. Knowing this, I tried my best to make sure to go into The Unbroken without any expectations.

I failed a little bit in my goal (which is 100% on me)–I had certain expectations despite my intentions to avoid that, and it definitely affected my reading of The Unbroken a little bit. I won’t go into which parts of the book I had expectations about, because those of you who know my plot and character preference might put two and two together, thereby spoiling parts of the plot.

What I will, however, focus on is what I noted about The Unbroken without touching on what I expected and didn’t expect. Firstly, the setting was fantastically written and the descriptions for it were snuck into the narrative so skilfully, that I wouldn’t even realize until the end of a chapter that a new part of the city had been added to my mental map. (For those who play open world RPGs or are familiar with them–it was kind of like unlocking a new part of the map when entering a new area.)

I really enjoyed the plot of The Unbroken and how it hinted at larger, overarching plot points. I also became quite familiar with the characters, and somewhat invested even though they kept doing things I was telling them not to do, haha. Honestly, I was more invested in relationships and partnerships than any individual characters (if that makes sense). To wrap, and in case my review was unclear on this point, I will definitely be continuing with this series and look forward to becoming more familiar with characters and places while along for the ride.

⤖ About the Author ⬻

Cherae was a 2012 Lambda Literary Fellow and graduated from Indiana University’s creative writing MFA. She’s been a personal trainer, an English teacher, and an editor, and is some combination thereof as she travels the world. When she’s not writing or working, she’s learning languages, doing P90something, or reading about war and [post-]colonial history. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in FIYAH, PodCastle, Uncanny and Beneath Ceaseless Skies. Now she’s one of the co-editors at PodCastle. The first novel in her upcoming trilogy is THE UNBROKEN (Orbit, 2021).