AudiobookReviewer

ABR's full Unbreakable: A Novel audiobook review and many others can be found at Audiobook Reviewer.

Promise Paen, the main character, grows up on one of the outer colonized worlds called Montana. The earth has split into two factions who fight over the resources of the outer colonies. More or less equal in strength, they seem to struggle back and forth gaining and losing worlds. Montana (the planet) has recently joined one of the factions to protect them from pirates. It is in fact a pirate raid that killed Promise’s non-violent father in front of her as a child. She joins the military as soon as she comes of age.

That’s the basic plot, unfortunately, it is mostly hard to believe. The two political factions are woefully undermanned and plot ill-conceived plans that fail constantly. For example, the alliance which protects Montana (the planet) sends 16 marines to protect the planet. Hmm, kinda slim, Slim. The other side, nicknamed the Lucies send some fake pirates to destroy the space port and some of the capital city. Uh, aren’t you going to need that when you take over the planet? And on it goes.

Promise spends some time conversing with a hallucination of her dead heroic mother. We are supposed to believe she is this super soldier, but with psychotic episodes. Though to be honest, this is the most interesting part of the character.

There is lots of action, soldiers in mech suits and laser weapons, spaceship explosions, etc. But somehow, the action seems flat, phoned in, almost boring. The rest of the story is minute details of Montana life and the ridiculous political machinations of its cowboy president and her ex-boyfriend. Not awful, but tedious at times. You ever look at your phone or ipod to see how much longer the book is, this is one of those.

Andi Arndt is the narrator and does a competent job. Nothing about her performance stands out as especially good or bad.

This is a space military novel with some action scenes in space and on the ground with a strong female protagonist. If you generally like this genre of SciFi, you will find something to like about this novel. Also if you like strong female military characters you might also enjoy this one. There is a lot of political and sociological minutia which many listeners may find tedious.

Audiobook provided for review by the publisher.