Reading Broken-
First off, it bears mention that someone who would try to read this book as a stand-alone work is likely to find themselves utterly lost. Broken references characters, races, locations, and theoretical knowledge that is explained in detail in the previous two books involving this storyline (Enemy, and An End). Therein lies, as far as I can see, the book's single major flaw: while Enemy and An End could conceivably be read individually, Broken does not stand thematically on its own. That having been said, if you have read Enemy and An End, you do yourself a significant disfavor NOT to read Broken, which answers probably 90% of the lingering questions and mysteries from both books, and finally provides some lasting closure for the tortured characters of both plotlines.
Speaking of torture, it also bears mentioning that this book contains scenes of extreme violence. Surprisingly, I'll be willing to bet that if you read the entire book the ultra-violent scenes of rape, mutilation, and murder will not be what you remember most about it.
Broken was originally first released as a serial publication, as it was written, on Silverthought.com. This format, while entertaining on the short-term, did not lend itself particularly well to the reader understanding the incredibly cohesive continuity of the eventual complete novel. Hence, if you have only read Broken in serial form, I highly recommend that you re-read the novel in its entirety. The effect is completely different than piece-by-piece. Much of the subtle character interaction that makes this novel so terrific is lost and choppy in serial form, not to mention Hughes' propensity for constant revision, which makes the novel (until it finally reached print) a growing organism.
Novel highlights-
Broken begins with the unusual situation of an author's characters confronting him on a beach. They pull him into the story, which has already been established in separate but parallel storylines (Enemy, and An End). The Author, Hughes himself ostensibly, is brought into the story by his own characters in order to stop the destruction and havoc caused by Maire, a tortured and outcast renegade who grows constantly younger and carries a silver plague that will annihilate the Judas/Judith fleets from the Enemy and An End novels. We have met Maire before, along with most of the other major characters, but we have not until now seen evidence or detail of her motivations. Hughes handles this brilliantly with a gripping account of a person put through unimaginable hell who feels as though she must destroy the universe in revenge.
The Author proves not to be the omnipresent figure you expect him to be, and he slips away from the protagonist Judas/Judith, allowing Maire to sweep the timelines of reality and destroy them little by little.
Near the final third, the story appears to fray and literally come apart at the seams. Not just the universe that Hughes has created but the story itself. The framework of storytelling itself is stretched over this fantastical idea, and the idea expands uncomfortably within like a bird within an egg.
Motivations become tangled and inseparable we know that Paul and the author is at one end of a polarized spectrum with the tortured, miserable (yet somehow oddly justified) Maire at the other. Richter and Hope, Alina and Reynald, Whistler and Hank, their motivations become murky and disconnected, perhaps owing to the 92% of reality which has been erased or corrupted. Hope, we discover, has inexplicably become trapped in Café Bellona's back room. This, along with a number of other plot developments we accept, if we do not quite understand them. Along the way, there are dazzling narrative vignettes including a character diving into the Sun, a hard-to-stomach rape scene, the Author meeting and conversing with another version of himself, and a quiet but utterly haunting scene of solitude and loneliness that carves a stark moment of clarity into the emotional maelstrom that is the final third of the book. This last I consider to be possibly the high-point of the entire trilogy in terms of raw storytelling talent.
One major theme of this novel is how storylines, and ultimately the people that populate them, overlap and merge into strange, unpredictable hybrids. I have seen this a number of times in my own writing where I base a character on someone I know and then the character in the novel becomes someone utterly different and unexpected. Hughes plays on a variant of this in Broken whereby characters from his real life have bled into the story, and subsequently in Broken bleed into EACH OTHER, causing the reader to free him or herself from the preconceptions of the characters themselves. Jarring inclusion of characters within characters, the line between fiction and real people becomes not just a blurred line but a fogland where the two are on equally shaky footing.
It's an interesting way to illustrate the life that narrative fictional characters have in the mind of an author, which, oddly enough, pretty much covers the thematic scope and intent of the novel in general.
Another theme that is touched on repeatedly in Broken but never fully explained is that of children. Children are constantly being born, dying, preying on each other, embodying antagonism (in the case of Maire), and carrying out a number of other symbolic duties. I have no reference point with which to draw conclusions about Hughes' intent in including these references, but it is something we haven't seen from him yet, and interesting in and of itself. As I thought about this more, I realized that the Silverthought trilogy might represent a backward life-of-man metaphor. Enemy seemed to be involved heavily with death. The Black, aptly named, becomes an allegorical representation of the oblivion that we try so hard to escape from in our mortal lives. An End, a sly misnomer, is actually not about an end, but more about what happens when idealism crumbles and meets with bitter compromise and disappointment. Or life, as it were. To finish the backward cycle, Broken seems to be about birth. Birth of children, characters, plotlines, ideas, rebirth of self... and so forth. Hughes might, with the childhood metaphors, be hinting slyly at the reverse lifespan triptych allegory. Either that, or I picked the wrong day to stop sniffing glue.
Honeybear Brown returns, one of the single fun comedy-relief characters that Hughes has worked into the series (see also: the huge planetship Gary from An End), and even gets his licks in. Also, the sleeping God-emperor motif which worked so well for Frank Herbert in his novel Dune works doubly-well here. Paul the author slips into a silver bath, confronting something terrifying and surrendering completely to it. He emerges changed, reborn, and ultimately that much further along on his journey to becoming the omniscient God that all authors wish they could be to their writing.
Strengths-
From reader's point of view, Broken is the payoff of doing the mental work required to understand the first two novels. Enemy and An End are not simple books, and Broken can be downright mind-bending at times. But in the end, Hughes does not cheat us out of the closure that Broken provides.
It is perhaps relevant here to say a few words about the addition of the author himself as a character in Broken. This was a considerable risk for Hughes, who really put the integrity of the entire trilogy in jeopardy by doing so. Many sci-fi readers, myself included, do not easily tolerate this sort of meta-writing. Proving himself to be superior to authors like Stephen King, who utterly ruined The Dark Tower by writing himself into it, Hughes delivers a rather seamless version of himself which not only blends surprisingly well with the rest of the Silverthought trilogy characters, but also affords Broken the setting for some of its best scenes. Café Bellona becomes the touchstone for reality in the novel, a touch which some might find a bit over-cooked, but I personally thought was very natural and likable. There were moments like this in Enemy and An End, but they were not as cohesive as in Broken.
There are a number of epic, flashy set pieces in these novels. The ones that come immediately to mind are the space battles from Enemy and the enormous planetary guns from An End. These more than show Hughes' ability to write convincing, thrilling sci-fi. It is in Broken, however, that we get to see what is under the emotional black armor of his characters. Broken is a book full of jealousy and treachery, revenge and bitterness, hurt and surrender. Happily, even largely lacking the whiz-bang of the first two novels, Broken remains potent and engaging.
Weaknesses-
As I mentioned above, the primary weakness of this novel is that it doesn't stand alone in terms of plot, theme, or characters. Much of what is to be learned about the characters that populate these times and worlds is laid out in Enemy and An End. This is not so grave a weakness as it seems, however, as it is clear that it was never the author's intention to create a stand-alone story from Broken.
Another stylistic element that some readers may grapple with are the highly-unusual content and formatting (the Heiligenschein and Among the Living sections). Initially, in the serialized versions, these were much longer and somewhat more diffuse. Hughes honed them down to the essential in the finished novel and they read very smoothly. The Heiligenschein segment, it bears noting, makes up for its quirky weirdness by being utterly original and unlike anything I've ever read in a novel before.
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