Reviews with content warning for Sexual assault - The Unbroken

Reviews tagging 'Sexual assault'

distraughtplant's review

adventurous dark hopeful tense medium-paced

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

5.0

The Unbroken gripped my heart in my chest and dug in its nails and left it in shreds and only just barely mended it together again. Which is strikingly similar to the quote on the front page, but thats exactly what it feels like. That piece of praise sold me on this book, and by Shāl did C.L. Clark deliver.

The Unbroken is loyalty and betrayal and heartbreak and revolution and political pressures and magic and a little bit of lust. It is gorgeous and heart wrenching and real. There are no moments any characters actions felt rushed or out of place. I love this book for it's perfect pacing, it's immaculate queer representation (and non binary representation! I NEED to see more of Niwai and their lioness). I love it most for it's many showcases of the complexities around human emotions and thought processes and why people may do the things they do. I also love it for it's calculated witholdings of full explanation. Humans don't always even know why they've done something, just that it feels it's the right way, or the only option. I love The Unbroken for it's raw depictions of humanity, which will stick with me long after the images of blood, shit, and gore fade away.

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taratearex's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark mysterious sad tense medium-paced

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

3.5

3.5 rounded up, this kind of fell apart for me in the last quarter, but I did really enjoy reading it I just kind of lost my ability to suspend my disbelief at the end as it went off the rails a bit.

This is a fantasy loosely based on French colonization of a North African country, I was on board from the start with that premise as I studied Arabic and lived in Egypt for a summer, so I really enjoyed seeing the fantasy elements that referenced this and I thought this worked really well and was really well done, the world felt real and the worldbuilding interesting and detailed. I enjoyed the absolutely messy characters in this, even if I was like WHAT ARE YOU DOING a lot of the time, I think the messiness also did make sense when you think about Luca's desire for power fighting with her desire to be a good leader, this gets very white savior too so it's hard to sympathize with her character at all sometimes, but her as the opposing character to Touraine did make for interesting dynamics. And then Touraine, oof, her being deeply brainwashed by the military and then being thrown back into a world she should have known and dealing with a lot of trauma trying to free herself and find herself, she's a mess and it makes sense why- but the in world motivations for why characters sympathized with her did get a bit hard to believe. BUT everyone in this book is deeply flawed and so messy I went with it, and they are all handled with care, even side characters have stories to make them fuller people. Also the disability rep was great and I loved that it was a queer normative world.

Where I think it goes off the rail a bit is just that there are a lot of loose ends that get left dangling as you go through the book and so when I got to the last quarter I expected to see some of those tied up and instead it went kind of more off the rails. Motivations of characters became even more murky, the magic that gets introduced doesn't really get much explanation or time so I'm still not really sure what happened in a couple of the last scenes, and there's an alliance that seemed crucial sort of disappears?

Knowing that this is a trilogy it's always hard to know if some things are just being saved for the next book, so maybe some of these will be explained more in the next book, and I do think I will continue with the series as it was really engaging - it was very dense though so I totally see where some people lost interest in the complicated military and political dynamics, but I thought it was all very interesting, sometimes I'd look up and I'd just read for an hour without looking up, which is kind of rare for me.

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talonsontypewriters's review against another edition

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adventurous dark tense medium-paced

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

3.5

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cardanrry's review against another edition

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challenging emotional tense medium-paced

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

3.0

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rorikae's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional 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

4.5

“The Unbroken’ by C.L. Clark is a tense fantasy steeped in the political machinations of the heir to the throne and a soldier questioning her loyalty.
Touraine is a soldier sent to quell a rebellion in the homeland that she was stolen from. After arriving, she realizes that there is more going on in the country than she suspected and that there are still some personal connections that exist for her. She also meets Luca, the princess who is secretly trying to steal the throne from her uncle. As the two women connect, they begin to learn more about how they can create peace in this country but it may require them to come close to committing treason.
Clark creates a fascinating story rooted in complex characters that it is easy to care for. This world is filled with political intrigue and a cast of fascinating and sometimes despicable characters. Touraine and Luca are both easy to care for and easy to curse at in the same breath. They feel like living people with all of their flaws painfully obvious. The story took a number of twists and turns and Clark keeps the reader guessing about what will happen next. I'm fascinated to see where the story goes in the second installment.

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bookcasey's review against another edition

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dark tense slow-paced

Strong character development? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

There was a slow start, and then points where I thought this might be a 5 star read, but ultimately the rich aspects of the world building weren’t sufficient to make up for the slow, erratic pacing. Certain relationships were more intense than the plot would suggest, and the last 10% really lost my attention.
Strong colonizer themes.

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marigoldgem's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional hopeful mysterious sad tense slow-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

4.0

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katieduffy151's review

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adventurous challenging medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

This book was well enough written; I would have preferred if the magic system was explained more to the audience - it left a lot of unanswered questions. I liked the characters but I just don't believe the romance between the main two characters. I can't put my finger on why. Overall, it was an enjoyable book but I don't think I'll be continuing with the series.

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