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.
Chapter 15: Rebellions
Table of Contents
Why The Unbroken?
I was originally planning on reading a different book this past week. However, the morning I was supposed to start that book I was on the Kobo ebook store and noticed that The Unbroken by C.L. Clark on sale for a few bucks. I had vaguely heard about C.L. Clark somewhere in the past and the premise for the book seemed interesting enough for me to buy it and put it on my TBR.
The premise of this book seemed more interesting than the book I was originally planning on reading and it met my mini-challenge requirement of being by a Black author so this was the book I read this past week. This is my first time reading anything by C.L. Clark so I didn’t have any expectations beyond what I saw in the Storygraph description for the book.
The previous books in my Black History Month reading challenge were – Lost Ark Dreaming, A Song of Legends Lost, Dawn, and Birth of a Dynasty.
Let’s get into it.
The Book
The Unbroken is an epic fantasy novel and like with the other epic fantasy novels I’ve read recently, it comes with a map. In this book, it is a map of the empire of Balladaire. The story opens with one of our protagonists on a ship that is just about to land on the shores of Qazāl, one of the colonies of the Balladairan empire.
The story is told from two perspectives, one is Touraine – a lieutenant in the Balladairan Colonial Brigade. The other is Princess Luca Ancier, next in line to be the queen. The story switches between these two perspectives. Considering the issues with too many perspectives in the last two fantasy novels I read, it is a relief to read a story from only two perspectives.
The Unbroken is very much a story about colonization. The book is very unsubtle about this and the complexities of the power dynamics between the colonizer and colonized are woven into the interactions between our two protagonists, Touraine and Luca. Touraine is what the book colloquially refers to as a “Sand”, a soldier in the Balladairan Colonial Brigade who was originally from Qazāl and was stripped of any all aspects of their origin and trained by Balladairans to be a soldier.
Luca on the other hand is a princess who is next in line to be queen. Her primary objective throughout this book is to secure the throne from her uncle, the duke regent who rules in her stead. That puts her in an interesting position. Due to her privileged upbringing and her high position in Balladairan society, she has a large amount of power and privilege at her disposal. But her position as queen is not yet secure and her long term physical disability puts her at the mercy of those most closest to her. Her guards and…Touraine.
This is also a story that revolves around loyalty. Who is Touraine loyal to? That is the question the story keeps coming back to. Is she loyal to her fellow Sands? Is she loyal to the Balladairan Empire and the ideals that were drilled into her since she was a child? Is she loyal to Princess Luca Ancier with who she is slowly but surely falling in love with and who has the power to change her life and the life of the Qazāli colonial subjects for the better?
These loyalties are constantly in conflict throughout the story and Touraine is pulled in many directions. She is constantly trying to find the best path through this extremely complicated web of love, loyalty, and the brutality of a colonial regime that wants nothing more than to subjugate and repress people like her.
The colonial brutality on display here is extreme to the point of cartoonish. Most of the antagonists here see the Qazāli as an inferior uncivilized people who are best subjugated and cowed until they learn the civilized ways of their betters. The book is at its best when it is talking these themes of colonization and divided loyalties. There is a good amount of complexity and nuance in the portrayal of those dynamics. Not only with our two protagonists but with the side characters as well.
I have previously talked about books like Babel and Blood Over Bright Haven which are books that also tackle the topic of colonization in different ways. The Unbroken combines aspects of both of those books – the use of language as a colonizing force which forms the core of Babel and the problematic relationships that can form between the colonizer and colonized which forms the core of Blood Over Bright Haven.
Unfortunately the book doesn’t quite stick the landing. The ending did what first books in a series sometimes do which is leave a thread hanging as a hook for the second book. Now I think that there is a good way to do this that leaves the reader satisfied with what they read. This book chose not to do that. I feel the ending tricking me into reading the next book in the series and I very much do not like that feeling.
Conclusions
The Unbroken was definitely a better time than the other two epic fantasy novels I read this month, it avoided the trap of too many character perspectives while having a reasonably nuanced portrayal of the complexities of colonization. My feelings about the ending notwithstanding, the characters and world that C.L. Clark built here is compelling enough for me to put the second book in my TBR for a later time.
I have read a fair amount of epic fantasy this month which is great because I love epic fantasy. But I also need a change of pace and some cleansing of the ol’ palate. So the next few books I am planning on reading will be from different genres and I think I will even dip back into the cold waters of non-fiction.
That’s all from me. See y’all in the next one.
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