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Unbreakable: A Novel
The Chronicles of Promise Paen
by W.C. Bauers
*****
Acquired: Barnes & Noble Booksellers
Series: The Chronicles of Promise Paen (Book 1)
Paperback: 384 pages
Publisher: Tor Books (July 5, 2016)
Language: English
*****
The Story: The colonists of the planet Montana are accustomed to being ignored. Situated in the buffer zone between two rival human empires, their world is a backwater: remote, provincial, independently minded. Even as a provisional member of the Republic of Aligned Worlds, Montana merits little consideration--until it becomes the flashpoint in an impending interstellar war.
When pirate raids threaten to destabilize the region, the RAW deploys its mechanized armored infantry to deal with the situation. Leading the assault is Marine Corps Lieutenant and Montanan expatriate Promise Paen of Victor Company. Years earlier, Promise was driven to join the Marines after her father was killed by such a raid. Payback is sweet, but it comes at a tremendous and devastating cost. And Promise is in no way happy to be back on her birthworld, not even when she is hailed as a hero by the planet's populace, including its colorful president. Making matters even worse: Promise is persistently haunted by the voice of her dead mother.
Meanwhile, the RAW's most bitter rival, the Lusitanian Empire, has been watching events unfold in the Montana system with interest. Their forces have been awaiting the right moment to gain a beachhead in Republic territory, and with Promise's Marines decimated, they believe the time to strike is now.
The Review: One of the most refreshing things about this book is that it doesn’t start from the beginning, as it were. We read the story of Promise losing her family and joining the Marines but then we skip to their deployment to Montana almost right away. One of the defining features of the genre is the boot camp scene with the main character threatening to break under the relentless training and gruff drill instructors. Those sequences can be fun but Bookworm is glad that they were skipped here. For one thing, it would have taken away more time from the main story and even if it didn’t, we have all seen boot camp in one way or another. It is hard to take anything new away from it.
What is newly taken away is the role religion is brought up in the text. It is made clear that Promise’s father was a fundamentalist Christian and Christianity brought up a few more times. Religion occupies a strange place in science fiction. As a total negative on a societal or personal level, the victim, or not even mentioned. Here, it is mentioned, and portrayed as being both a positive and a negative. This mirrors
Almost the same level of religion is romance. The success of Twilight and the Hunger Games has left major mark on popular fiction in that almost every other author feels the need to add a romantic angle to their story. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t but its not always necessary. Thankfully, in this case the author took that to heart and while there is some romantic hinting between Promise and the male lead it never comes to anything which is very refreshing. Promise, the female protagonist is also refreshing. She is a badass Marine but she is still unfamiliar with social situations and the fact that she can see her dead mother in her head is also memorable. The mechanism behind this is one of the books mysteries, that hopefully will be explored in later volumes.
What is also refreshing is the setting. The planet Montana feels like a fully realized place. The ‘cowboy planet’ may seem silly but it fits with the environment of the planet. This a hard, frontier place where cowboys are right at home. Setting can be neglected in military science fiction sometimes not being much more that battlefield and home base. There is a lot to learn from planet like this.
Not to mention their punishment of rapists.
The citizens of Montana may be memorable and Promise stands out from a lot of science fiction protagonists, for her strength combined with her real vulnerabilities, but the Marines fell into the interchangeable category as they so often tend to do. Sad but true. What is also never made clear is the whole reason why they were on Montana in the first place.
One of the reasons zombie literature is so popular is that it fulfills the fantasy of being a warmonger without having to think about it. In a war between Lusitania and the Republic, you do need to think about it. Its never made clear what the war was really about. Its been remarked that is the case in almost every real life war, but even then there is something. All we get here is a vague reference to territory and a cold war.
That is the biggest flaw of the whole book. It brings a bunch of new stuff but succumbs to the cliche’s of the genre which is further bogged down by the writing, while not terrible, can be a bit amateurish. A lot of this book is forgettable.
Minor nitpick here: but why is the planet called Montana, which is already the name of U.S. state. Granted, Earth and the United States no longer exist in this universe but still, the author could of have called the place New Montana.
Final Verdict: Unbreakable falls into a lot of the traps laid down by the cliches of military science fiction, a genre that unfortunately is leaning towards over saturation. What saves this book is the cliches that it breaks, with colorful characters, an interesting protagonist, and a planet that feels very much alive. The next book in the series is definitely on the TBR (To Be Read) shelf.
Four Montanas out of Five
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