Customer Reviews

Three Unbroken (Novel of Celestial Empire)

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I have enjoyed this new alternate history series from Chris Roberson, which began with The Dragon's Nine Suns, and continues now in Three Unbroken. The action is fast paced, the characters well developed and easy to relate to. I enjoy learning about Chinese culture and traditions without knowing much about it otherwise. I give this 5 stars not because it's great literature, or even great science fiction, but because it's a page turner and, like Nine Suns, it has a rather simple plot without too many layers to peel in order to understand it. In other words, there is very little diversionary writing here, very few sub-plots, and only three threads (the three main characters) inter-woven through the story. The ending is satisfying. This is a good read for a wide range of age groups, from pre-teen through aged adult. After throwing out the rubbish being written by over-hyped "greats" (yeah right) like Stephen Baxter, who really knows how to write rubbish, I find Roberson to be refreshing.

I mentioned in a review of The Dragons' Nine Sons that Roberson's marriage of AH science fiction with space opera in the off-planet stories of his Celestial Empire world is a tasty combination that pays dividends for the reason.

Set at about the same time as The Dragons' Nine Sons, Three Unbroken is another novel of the Chinese-Aztec war around Mars. While the Dragon's Nine Sons took its inspiration from "The Dirty Dozen", the inspiration for Three Unbroken is "Band of Brothers". In an afterword, Roberson confirms my suspicions that Ambrose's work was a major influence on this novel.

Three Unbroken tells the story of a trio of soldiers of the Chinese military forces: a female Indian bomber pilot, a Texan infantryman and a Manchu nobleman who becomes a commando. The novel follows their stories in the War against the Aztecs on Mars until the explosive (and given that this is based on WWII, very appropriate) finale.

The novel also takes physical and thematic inspiration from the I Ching. The novel is divided into 64 chapters, one for every line of the divination device. The ideas and concepts from the I Ching are reflected in the events of each chapter. While I am not an expert on the I Ching, I did see the parallels. Roberson does a good job of lining up the events to the I Ching lines without making it seem forced.

Overall, the novels show the development of the soldiers into masters of their arts. Sticking to the mostly low level viewpoint, instead of just the Grand Strategy, Roberson shows the individual soldier's point of view of war, and shows it well. We get some battle and action sequences for all three soldiers, too. Each of the soldiers is challenged, and learns that War is often a matter of not just grit and combat, but the Unexpected.

Once again, as I have said in other reviews of Roberson's work, while his work might not be as literary as some other SF writers, Roberson knows how to write entertaining and interesting science fiction. Fans of his work will be quite satisfied with Three Unbroken and I think its a good (although The Dragon's Nine Sons might be slightly better) way to get introduced to his Chinese Empire AH stories and novels.

I hadn't planned on reviewing this book, but it deserves more credit than the 1-star reviews have given it, so I'm going to chip in a 4-star thumbs up. I thoroughly enjoyed Three Unbroken. The alternative history, in which the Chinese and Aztecs become the dominant world powers, is well reasoned and quite believable. If the 15th century expansionist emperors had continued their policy, the Chinese probably WOULD have discovered America, and prevented the Europeans from confronting the Aztecs. From there, we could easily have ended up with the world of Three Unbroken. The story itself is fairly standard military sci-fi: a lot of action and gunplay, with somewhat flat characters. But the fun part is discovering the cultural differences and similarities between our world and theirs. It's not the best book ever written, but it does make for an interesting read. I would recommend reading the first book, "The Emperor's Nine Sons," before this one, to better understand the back story.

What if the Manchu Chinese Empire had progressed technologically at a pace exceeding its Western European rivals, becoming our planet's global hegemon? Or if the Aztec Empire had made a similar leap, defending its territorial independence, and becoming the preeminent indigenous technological power in the Americas? These two questions are the reasons for Chris Roberson's alternate history/space opera Celestial Empire series, of which his novel, "Three Unbroken", is essentially, a retelling of World War II that's set on the remote human-colonized world of Fire Star (Planet Mars) in the middle 21st Century. "Three Unbroken" chronicles the exploits of three loyal soldiers of the Manchus; an upper-class Manchu noble who joins an elite commando unit; a young Indian woman who becomes an accomplished bomber pilot; and a young European-American man from Texas, who demonstrates, all too quickly, his splendid talent for war in an infantry company. Roberson excels in cinematographic descriptions of bloody raids and pitched battles between Manchu soldiers and their diabolical Mexica (Aztec) foe. However, I wasn't too impressed with his characters, except for the Manchu nobleman, who forms a close friendship with his unit's commanding officer.

I'd recommend that nobody waste their time buying or reading this book. I bought it while walking through an airport during a long layover. I needed something to occupy myself and this book was what I found. I only finished it because I had nothing better to do.

This book is poorly written. The story is corny and the characters aren't very interesting. There are three main characters that the story attempts to follow, but aside from the fact that they perform different military functions, there isn't much significant about them. There are also a lot of inconsistencies that really bother me. For example, two Earth-based empires are fighting a war on the "Fire Planet" and all of the troops, equipment, and supplies have to shipped from Earth, but there is no war on Earth. I don't get why two empires would fight a war on another planet but not fight on Earth. The level of technology described is odd as well. In this story humans can fly over vast interstellar distances, but they don't have the technology to encrypt radio communications, provide night vision to their troops, or have automatic controls in their aircraft.

Don't waste your time with this book unless you literally have nothing better to do but sit in a cramped airline seat for a couple of hours.