The Unbroken (Magic of the Lost)

📚 political 📚 magical 📚 civil war 📚 back and forth 📚 the beginnings of a queer love I started reading this book some time ago, when I tried to figure out, if I wanted to order book two from Illumicrate. The answer was yes, very fast. While I am not the biggest of fans of political books, I think I am liking them more and more. This one was especially well written. Every time you pick it up, it is hard to set it down. The chapters are short and well paced, a lot happens in this book and while there is a lot of back and forth, it makes sense. This is a revolution/civil war situation and everyone involved naturally makes mistakes. Nobody has a map, so all sides are trying to figure out a way to get what they want and need. There is the relationship between the main characters sprinkled in, but it’s not in the foreground. I still rooted for them the whole time. I can’t wait to see where this will go.

So many feelings - Few good ones.

This one did a lot to me but not really in a good way? We have 2 main characters and both are kinda horrible people? Touraine had some good moments but I had 5 or 6 moments where I went "WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT?!" out loud so near the end of the book she was getting on my nerves a lot. There is so much death that just happens because of Touraines dumb choices. Luca starts out with a full on colonizer mindset, slowly realizes that colonialism is bad to then just go back to full on colonizer. She also is really bad at being a ruler and has no control over what happens in the city she supposedly rules but the book sill Kind of tries to frame her as a good choice for being queen. I really wanted to like her because she has chronic leg pain and uses a cane like myself but sadly I just couldn't. The romance in this book felt so forced and weird and I just couldn't root for them. You have Touraine who was taken from her family as a child and then brutally force trained as a soldier by a colonial force and then the princess of said colonial force. To make matters worse Touraine even gets stripped of her military title before the romance starts so she has literally 0 agency, no citizenship and is basically a slave labourer for the princess. That power imbalance is INSANE and never gets talked about in this book. Also for every sentence from Lucas perspective that felt like she had feelings for Touraine you get one that shows how she sees Touraine/her people as less than and "uncivilized" and there were sooo many red flags. What was really well done was the slow escalation of the conflict between the colonizers and the colonized. I think the different stages and war tactics were quite interesting and each strike was met with a bigger counter strike until everyone was fucked. The writing was fine and there were some pretty good quotes but mostly the prose was pretty functional but didn't bother me. I also thought it was cool that this was a world where there weren't patriarchal structures and no queerphobia. It isn't talked about a lot because it's a non issue in this world but there were a lot of women in power and queer people that never faced any discrimination based on that fact. There was a lot of ableism though. Even from Touraine so that sucked a lot to read as someone with a similar disability. The magic is held very vague with what it can do and how it works which works for the mainly political conflict but there were some moments where it felt pretty convenient to have that magic work this way right now. The pacing was really slow in the beginning. For the first 40% I would read 2 chapters and then get bored and do something else and repeat. Thankfully the pacing picked up after the 50% mark. Honestly this had so much potential but it just didn't work for me.

Hochpolitischer Fantasy Schmöker mit dem Hang zu schlechten, Hals-über-Kopf getroffenen Entscheidungen und der Suche nach der Antwort auf die Frage "wer bin ich?"

Puh, kein leichtes Buch zu lesen, aber es hat mich dennoch in Bann gezogen. Ich gebe zu, ich habe es zum zweiten Mla gelesen, da ich beim ersten Mal für die Themen des Buches keinen Kopf hatte...und für die Entscheidungen, die die Protagonistinnen Touraine und Luca immer und immer wieder treffen. Beide zwei Seiten einer Medallie, die für ein Empire gegen eine unterworfene Nation stehen. Touraine, ihres Zeichens Quazali, die als Kind ihrer Mutter geraubt wurde und im Militär des Balladairan Empires groß geworden ist. Luca, die Prinzessin eben jenes Empires, die versucht ihren eigenen Anspruch auf den Thron zu festigen. Die Erzählung dieser beiden unterschiedlichen Frauen wird gerahmt von einem immer währenden Konflikt zwischen Unterdrückern und Unterdrückten. Und der Frage, was man tut und wer man ist wenn man sich zwischen diesen Linien befindet im Land der Unterdrückten, aus dem man - im Falle von Tourain - stammt aber keine Verbindung mehr hat und welches man versucht zu regieren. Das Buch ist spannend, hat allerdings seine Längen und auch Tourains Entscheidungen sind manchmal schwer zu ertragen. Allerdings auch zeitgleich nachvollziehbar - denn was würde man selbst tun, wenn die eigene Welt auf den Kopf und in Frage gestellt wird?

Heart-wrenching, fast-paced sapphic fantasy with two strong pov characters and quite a few enticing side characters. Amazing world building, yet a bit too political for me at times. Very interesting magic system. Refreshing read that doesn't lean on societal judgement for sexual preferences of the characters as a plot point.

A fast paced book, which while a little too political for me at some times, lets you sympathise with both sides. I rarely ever read a book with such authentic characters. You might not like everyone of them, but you will be able to relate to their decisions.

Really wanted to like this but it took me so long to finish and I did skim read a lot at the end just to get it over with... It was just too political for me and because I read it over such a long period of time it was hard for me to keep track of who is who and which side everyone's on etc. the writing was good and I think if I would be more interested in political schemes this wouldve been closer to a 4.5 star review.