Three Unbroken: A Novel of the Celestial Empire

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.

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.