#BlogTour ‘The Unbroken’ by C.L Clark

About the book…

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

Huge thanks to Tracy at Compulsive Readers for the blogtour invite and Orbit for my review copy of ‘The Unbroken’, book 1 of the ‘Magic Of The Lost’ series which is out on March 23rd.

Happy Publication Day and blog tour for this wonderful series opener! It really is difficult to find the words rto describe quite what reading this book is like, you finish it and have the massive conflicting emotions of wanting to digest it, return to page one, and leap to your nearest book shop to check out the release date for Book 2.

It is a sweeping and epic novel that, all wars, fighting and massacres aside, focuses on the need and feeling of belonging. This often gets lost in the bigger scheme of things where empires are built, and destroyed, that the individual, in this case Touraine,has her perspective overlooked.

Touraine is a remarkable character, she straddles two worlds-that of Qazali , where she was born, and Balladaire where she was conscripted at the age of 10.

Her loyalties are set against her instincts as she returns, with her squad of fellow Sands (conscripts) to capital city El-Wast. Here we see the geographical and political set up of this strange new world through Touraine and her companions eyes, it is as fresh to her as it is to us after having lived away for so long.

A thwarted assasination attempt brings Touraine to the attention of the princess,Luca, who is ostensibly a minor (read disposable) royal family member sent on a diplomatic mission. From this seemingly small event, Touraine embarks on a epic struggle to find herself, establish herself and fight on the right side of history.

I loved the gender reversals of women in major military and political postions, the way that they were unasahmedly fierce and not used in the traditional role of needing rescuing. Touraine has such conflict within her for without her education and training, she would be another street rat, so there is a sense of military fealty to the royal family and troops. But, can you ever truly ignore what are essentially the formative years of your existence, whether you actually remember them or not?

The need to have companions that you can trust, the responsibilities beholden to leaders and the physical disability of Luca’s limp makes her an interesting foil/companion to Touraine, they both are intellectual and strategic planners who want to be seen as individuals rather than part of the war machine, however, they quickly learn that in order to create this reality which they believe in, they had better be prepared to fight uprisings, violence and sabotage.

The characters are so well drawn, Touraine is the heart of the story whereas Luca is the soul. Their journey may be fraught, but the rewards are worth it to bring together a divided nation.

I absolutely devoured this whole novel, it looks huge -486 pages!-but feels like a much shorter novel. I cannot wait to see the finished version,complete with maps, I have a small idea of how it will look but seeing it is a totally different experience.

Highly recommended, this is the start of a series which I hope will run and run!

Oh and can we pause for a moment to truly admire the artwork on the cover?

It totally encapsulates the story and how I imagine Touraine to look, she is bent and bowed but stands, Samson like, between 2 pillars as though she is holding up and making an entrance at the same time, it’s fantastic!

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.

Twitter @C_L_Clark @OrbitBooks @Tr4cyF3nt0n 

Links-https://www.clarkwrites.wordpress.com/

https://www.compulsivereaders.com/