The Faithless

The Unbroken is the début novel from queer Black author [a:CL Clark|8573525|C.L. Clark|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1577864170p2/8573525.jpg]. Her queernorm “muskets and magic” low-fantasy looks at colonialism and identity, with one of our POV protagonists being a soldier kidnapped as a child from her native Qazāl by imperial power Balladaire and conscripted as a colonial soldier.

One doesn’t need to know that Clark learned Arabic in Morocco to see that aspects of her world­building are clearly inspired by Françafrique colonial policy; she talks about that a little more for Color the Shelves and in her Reddit AMA, she says “I mostly read/write/yell about sword lesbians, colonial fuckery, and workouts”. Clark has also said in interviews that she wanted to mess with the ways that women are allowed to be violent in fantasy, as well as exploring the ways in which conscripted colonial soldiers interact with the power dynamics of empire — being both “above” the “natives”, but never being seen as “one of us” by the imperials.

The Unbroken is full of terrible choices — Clark’s characters are delightfully imperfect and fallible, with Touraine simultaneously aware of and naïvely ignorant of how the empire inevitably fucked up conscripted children like her, wrenched from the colonies and trained to be colonial foot-soldiers, their own culture denied to them and — in some cases, literally — beaten out of them. As Maya C James describes for Locus, “colonialism conditions its subjects to villainize their own cultures and adore the dominating class, regardless of how mediocre they might be”; James’s review itself is well worth a read.

Our other POV protagonist Luca is a physically-disabled Balladairan princess seeking to prove her suitability for the throne currently usurped by her regent uncle. Luca is a beautiful example of a “well-meaning white person”, trying to right some of the ways in which empire brutalises its native subjects, but also knowing that there are some lines she cannot cross, some demonstrations of humanity she cannot allow herself. Both characters excel at paving their roads to hell with good intentions aplenty, all their copious bad choices being made for the right reasons. The opening scenes see these 2 queer woman arrive in Qazāl and Touraine saving Luca’s life from an assassin. Hijinks and attempts at revolution ensue, while Touraine tries to resolve that she doesn’t truly belong to either culture. But don’t think that this book will be gentle with your emotions; Clark writes an excellent narrative but she does not give a fuck about your feels. Again quoting Maya C James:

The Unbroken is such a realistic portrayal of colonialism’s genocidal tendencies, that I nearly forgot that I wasn’t reading a historical fiction novel about Algerian freedom fighters, until magic entered the plotline.