I really loved the beginning of this, and then I just seemed to … lose steam. I struggled to finish it, swapped to an audiobook of it and still have had to DNF this one. :(.

I adored this book! I can’t resist a standalone novel set in the same universe as a beloved author’s other work, and let me tell you, this book absolutely understood the assignment.

One of my favorite things about Ren Hutchings’ writing is how their characters are driven by curiosity, and in turn, their stories invite us to stay curious.

An Unbreakable World is a story about loss, memory, and identity. Our main character Page Found (fantastic name) grapples with who she was [redacted], who she is, and who she wants to become, all while being dragged into other character’s schemes. One of those characters is Maelle—and let’s just say the development of Page’s relationship with Maelle throughout the book had me in a chokehold. 11/10, no notes.

I also loved the use of multimedia—between the recordings, the academic papers, found documents, and the folklore presented through music and texts, I was in my element. It’s such a refreshing means of storytelling. It winds up feeling like we as the reader are an active participant, discovering the missing pieces and filling the blanks.

No spoilers, but for me, a story that ends with the characters still moving forward and working on themselves is my bread and butter. It’s like we’re ending at the beginning of something new, and that’s just beautiful.

Other things you can expect:

Faith and religion used as manipulation.
Character-driven.
Trust and betrayal.
Found family.
A sci-fi space opera that feels cozy af.
Mystery.
Sapphic.
A revenge scheme.
Galactic politics.
A rich loser you’d love to see fail.
History and folklore.
Cool space tech & alien ships!
A twisty plot.
Banter.

Don’t miss out on this one!

Thank you Netgalley and Rebellion Solaris for the ARC!

Can I just say that this is one of my favorite covers in the history of books? Truly, a masterpiece. This story is set in the same world as the author's debut, but is a completely standalone story that you needn't any prior knowledge to enjoy. (But, if I may suggest, I looooved Under Fortunate Stars , so you should read it regardless.) The main characters, Page and Maelle, are wonderful, and I really enjoyed them both. There's also a past-look into a young character Dalya who is the niece of some political bigwig which provides some context of the world. It is interesting, but I didn't love the whole "gods" part of the world-building. Also, there is a distinct lack of alien fights with a lot of mention of alien fights, so I felt like it would have been better to have them play a bigger role, or leave 'em out altogether.

That said, I really enjoyed Page and Maelle's adventures! They are both strong characters with intriguing backstories. Especially in the case of Page, she has no idea who she even is, which adds to the suspense. The characters trying to figure out who to trust and their complicated relationships (with each other and with other friends and family) was a highlight, too. I also liked the planet-hopping and space travel, of course! I really hope the author writes more books in this universe, because I have quite enjoyed them.

Bottom Line: Loved the characters in this one! Also the cover is a genuine work of art, just saying.

Hilarious characters with a lot of heart. This book will make you laugh and cry. A soft sci-fi space adventure full of mystery and amazing characters you can’t help but fall in love with.

I love standalone scifi - even that which is in an existing universe created by that author. It's like jumping between planets/galaxies but with none of the story backlog to learn before you begin.

'An Unbreakable World' throws the reader right into the action, with an amnesiac thief trying to find herself on a gutter world, and a child-princess on an extremely faith-based planet that believes itself to be the centre of the universe. It's not immediately apparent how these two connect, but the story progresses at a steady pace, providing information smoothly as the characters learn there's more to their awareness than they could possibly have known.

This is a space adventure if I ever saw one, with a heist, hidden mysteries, protagonists stepping outside to discover new worlds, and we the reader along for the ride. Oh, also politics, mafia-style villains and unexplained enemy aliens. It's a delightful cocktail and I never felt out of my depth once I knew the main characters - they're beautifully drawn and I quickly found myself keen to see how they'd grow and prevail over their respective challenges. Trying hard not to spoil!

A smart tale that avoids the SF trap of being too clever, this is engaging and fun from beginning to end. I was reminded of Ryann Fletcher's fantastic sapphic space pirates than the genre white male heavy hitters - which is no bad thing at all! An author to watch.

I came for the space heist and stayed for the hope and the found family.

Beautiful and poignant world-building, characters that deserve your time and your love and a complex weaving of fates, make this story an unexpected top runner for me. I've definitely added Under Unfortunate Stars to my tbr and will certainly be keeping my eye out for more from Ren in the future.

3.5 stars rounded up.

Page Found has no memory of her life before she woke up from stasis. She’s stuck on a backwater space outpost, paying off her enormous revivification debt by petty thievery. But then Page is kidnapped by a gang who hears she’s fluent in an extremely rare language– they want her to be part of a heist to play a role that only she can play. We also get several other POVs: Maelle, who is one of the gang members; an unnamed “Storyteller”; and Dalya, the niece of an important political figure on an isolated planet.

This is a hard review to write. IMO, An Unbreakable World is a book about misdirection. The problem is there are so many misdirecting components that are present but barely fleshed out. They simultaneously crowd out what I think is intended to be the heart of the book – an exploration of identity and the influence of politics and religion – without offering satisfaction in themselves. This might be a “have the cake and eat it too” problem, I admit. I want a book that’s also a meaty heist story, that’s also a compelling slowburn relationship story, that’s also a story about humanity poised on the brink of destruction because of ineffable aliens, that’s also a mystery about how the various plotlines connect– while also exploring those issues around identity, politics, and religion. I don’t think 480 pages was enough for all of that. So, in short, it’s a book that feels ambitious but tries to do too much, which makes a lot of the components (aliens, heists, etc.) feel like window dressing and ultimately the twists predictable or unsatisfying.

There is real heart here though, and I especially loved the vibes – a lot of hopepunk reads as saccharine to me, but this was charming. And I loved the jibbles. I will check out the author’s other works.

I really found this book to be a struggle but perhaps that’s due to it being misadvertised as a heist book. It misses many of the hallmarks of the heist genre (including, ultimately, the heist) and nothing even happens until the last 15% of the book. I don’t mind a book that spends a lot of time setting up its world building and giving the reader a strong foundation but this book is 85% foundation setting. Unfortunately this was just a disappointment for me.

Ren Hutchings burst onto the science fiction scene with her engaging time travelling space opera These Fortunate Stars. Hutchings returns to the universe of that book, but an earlier time in which the galactic war with the mysterious Felen is still burning on the fringes of the human worlds. The stakes are slightly lower in An Unbreakable World and the plot is a little more linear, but Hutchings still manages to do a fair amount of universe building. And once again, she drives a page-turning story with engaging, flawed characters.
The action of An Unbreakable World opens on a small, rundown space station called Kuuj Outpost. Page Found, a small time thief is scoping a score in hope of paying back some of an insurmountable debt. Page has been living on Kuuj for eight years, before which her memory is a complete blank and part of her debt is due to the money she spends trying to find out who she is and where she comes from. In this particular score though, it turns out that Page is actually the mark and she soon finds herself kidnapped by a couple of criminals, Zhak and Maelle, who need her particular skills to help them with a heist of their own. Maelle is given the job of getting Page to cooperate. But Maelle has an agenda of her own and hopes to bring Page into her plans. Meanwhile, in a seemingly unrelated story strand, nine-year-old Dayla has to learn about the lies that need to be told and the compromises that need to be made to rule the ‘unbreakable world’ of Teyr.
The driving motive for Page is to discover something about her past, to make sense of random images that she gets and understand why she knows this particular language. Readers may well suspect what is going on (probably half of them will be right), the Dayla plot line would not make a lot of sense otherwise, although it does come into relevance in a number of ways. The relationship between Page and Maelle is well handled, as a growing friendship rather than anything more, as Maelle brings Page more into her world and her plans.
What Hutchings does really well in this is build out her universe – the war with the Felen, relationship between the planets of the Union, the religious stories that underpin some aspects of her society, but also the way in which that religion is used, reinterpreted and twisted by people for their own ends. This allows the action to feel like it is taking place in a lived in universe. Coupled with engaging characters and some fabulous twists makes An Unbreakable World is another fun space adventure from Hutchings.

Title: An Unbreakable World
Author: Ren Hutchins
Pages: 480
Rating: 4/5
Spice/Romance level: 🫑 there is a gentle nod to a sapphic crush.

UK Publish date - 11th September 2025

#QOTD 💭 if you found you'd lost your memories. What name would you be giving yourself?

This was first proper sci fi book and I really enjoyed it. I adore a found family theme so this kept me in my comfort zone.

Page found has no memory of her past. She barely survives on a backwater space station looking for potential marks on the docks. After trying to lift a very expensive item, Page finds herself kidnapped - if somethings to good to be true, it usually is.

This book has so many different layers, and for some might be quite confusing. However, I enjoyed trying to solve the puzzles and put each clue together.

You might think that you're reading about a heist but you're reading so much more. How friendships, relationships are made and lost. Betrayal, grief and deception. This book is an onion - it has layers!

Ren has written the most incredible world building. (I will be reading her debut, as I believe it's set in the same world)

I'm so pleased it also ended up as starbright monthly book and I'm already trying to push my husband to read it, as he's a scifi geek!

You'll love this book if you like;
- sci fi space opera
- found family
- heists and kidnapping
- alien wars
- space ships
- lost memories and identity
- multiple perspectives

🩷🐈‍⬛️🫰🏻🌷🖤

This was an interesting read, I really enjoyed the concept of this book. It took me a little longer than usual to fully grasp the story but I enjoyed the world that we had built within the story. Space opera’s are a new type of read for me and I hadn’t realised just how much I would enjoy one. I enjoyed the multiple POVs, some elements of the story are clearly placed for helping to build the backdrop of the overarching plot. As you read the book the pace does increase which is when my enjoyment also came to a maximum.

More than eight years ago, Page Found was brought into Kuuj Deep Space Outpost by a random freighter. All she remembers from this time is what others have told her. She was in stasis on a ship as part of a paid medical experiment, and she was also saddled with a huge amount of medical debt thanks to the efforts it took to bring her out of stasis on Kuuj. A local criminal buys her debt and, essentially, buys her. She's spent the past eight years as a petty thief using her meager earnings to pay down her debt. All the while she has on idea who she really is or where she's really from. The twenty odd years prior to her time on Kuuj are a complete blank spot in her mind.

Then, one day, she sees the perfect mark. Unfortunately, things that appear too good to be true, usually are, and this mark manages to trap and kidnap Page, taking her away from the Kuuj for the first time in years. When she wakes up on a ship with one kidnapper, Zhak, threatening her and the other, Maelle, attempting to buy her with friendship, she doesn't know what to think. Until Zhak reveals that he knows she can speak another language, and this language is special. It's ancient, difficult to learn, and the monks of a planet called Teyr speak it exclusively.

Zhak dangles a few carrots in front of Page. If she helps him hijack one of the Teyrian monk ships to steal the Heart of Teyr, a prize worth millions, not only will Page get a cut of the loot, but she may also learn something of her forgotten past. Eventually, Page agrees, but this con isn't everything it seems. There are a lot more connections to other people and to Page's mysterious past, and the secrets her memory loss keeps may be more than any of them bargained for.

This entire story is about three things: spirituality, connections, and history. In fact, the spirituality in this story surprised me a bit. Sci-fi, at least in my experience, tends to ignore spirituality in favor of science. If we go to space and colonize it and spread ourselves across the stars, then what use have we for spirituality and belief? What is belief in the face of facts? But humanity has always sought to find explanations for the things they see and experience. Sometimes when science fails to explain, belief steps in.

This is what happens on Teyr. Interspersed throughout the main story about Page Found is the story of Dalya. Dalya is the living heir to the Edemaun House on Teyr. Her uncle is the spiritual leader of Teyr, and since their society has become increasingly theocratic, he is also the political leader of the entire planet. On the surface, Dalya's uncle is a benevolent leader trying to save his people from destruction. However, over the course of Dalya's part of the story, it becomes clear that he is really using his religious power and censorship to control Teyr with an iron grip. Thus, Teyr serves as an example of what happens when belief is used as a means of control.

Teyr is only one small subset of the spirituality in the galaxy of the book's world, though. There are also the people who rarely, if ever, set foot on a planet or who spend most of their time traveling the stars. They too have belief and a god they pray to. While the people of Teyr put their faith in the Fair-Feathered Goddess, people who make their lives on ships and stations often pray to Yhannis, the traveler-god.

All of this spirituality serves another purpose as well - connection. People from all across the galaxy share belief in a pantheon of gods, each one serving a different purpose for its believers. People can all connect to this common system of belief and through it to each other. Dalya becomes best friends with Anda, and their initial connections are based on their common beliefs in and worship of the Fair-Feathered Goddess. Page also finds connection and friendship with Maelle through shared experiences, including stories of the gods.

Finally, history is a huge theme throughout the book. All the characters have history between themselves, even Page who can't remember the vast majority of her past. This history is yet another connection they all share, for better or worse.

If I had to boil this story down into a lesson or proverb, it would be this: do not become so lost in thinking about your past or future that you forget to live today. Every character has that epiphany at some point in the story, but it's most evident with Page. In fact, every character's story seemed to have a lesson in it. For Dalya it was "don't blind yourself to the evil of others." For Page and Maelle it was "don't get lost in the past and forget to live." For Anda it was "don't lose yourself to your beliefs." This book was really all about being true to yourself and constantly seeking connection with others while remembering to live in the present.

I obviously really enjoyed this book a lot. The only little knitpicky thing that bothered me about it was that it was often hard to remember that Page is supposed to be 29 years old throughout the story. Her mannerisms and naivete and the way other characters treated her, particularly Maelle, made her seem much younger. On the one hand, it makes sense she wouldn't be very mature with so many of her memories missing. She technically only has eight years of experience living. But on the other hand, it was distracting enough at first that it affected my immersion in the story at times. Regardless of this small issue, I highly recommend this book, and I can't wait to see what Ren Hutchings writes next!

I gave An Unbreakable World by Ren Hutchings five out of five stars. I could not put this book down once I started it. I guess I shouldn't have been surprised since I loved her other book written in the same universe, Under Fortunate Stars, just as much. This story is filled with drama, longing, and connection with beautifully written characters in a rich world filled with history and lore.

Twists on twists on twists. Ren Hutchings drops you into a galaxy brimming with lore, tangled politics, and whole planets that feel like living, breathing entities. The structure is layered with POVs, flashbacks, historical articles, even the memoir of a mysterious stranger all converging in a finale where every secret comes into focus.

From the synopsis, I braced for a heist. What I got was a full-throttle space opera about memory, revenge, and the question of who we choose to be. Page’s desperate hunt for her lost identity anchors the book, and her wary bond with Maelle adds texture, tension, and quiet sapphic undertones. Their relationship isn’t framed as romance. Instead it's a mirror for survival and scars which makes it all the more compelling. The alien war raging in the background felt more like scenery, but the tradeoff is a laser-focus on Page, Maelle, and the knot of choices that define them.

By the time the last revelation landed, I was breathless. An Unbreakable World is sly, sharp, and endlessly inventive. It's a book that lingers long after the stars go dim.

This wasn’t the heist-filled novel I expected going in, but instead a really engaging, character-driven sci-fi with a strong focus on identity and what it means to choose who you want to be.
Most of the story builds toward the heist (which doesn’t really kick in until the 80% mark), but the tension and character work kept me hooked throughout, and once the stakes ramped up, I couldn’t put it down!

The story is told through three POVs, with some interludes adding extra depth to the lore and worldbuilding. Page and Maelle’s perspectives drive the main plot, while Dalya’s past-tense POV slowly weaves into the bigger picture with a really satisfying payoff.

I loved the world itself, it’s rich with political and religious systems that gave me the intrigue I crave, and the ever-elusive alien threat layered in that perfect hit of sci-fi mystery. I did sometimes crave a bit more information about the world, particularly the other systems, but I appreciate that this wasn’t the focus of the book.

Overall, if you’re after a character-driven space story with themes of identity, friendship, political and religious intrigue, and of course, a heist, this one’s worth picking up!

I love a heist, so one in space is almost a sure thing. And An Unbreakable World didn't disappoint, with excellent world building and really interesting relationships. Absolutely devoured it!

I received a copy from the publisher in exchange for an honest review

The cover drew me to this book! It’s so beautiful, I wasn’t sure what to expect but I came out of it wanting to live somewhere with lots of worlds!!

I am usually good at working things out but I got it wrong!! So much detail, be that in the multiple POV, storyteller pieces, articles and transcripts! I love a range of chapters like this!

Page Found has been wondering round in found for years trying to find themselves making surprising friendships along the way!

There’s suspense, bird headed monks, history and future. The con is a secret and the secret is the con 😂😂 5*

Oh I LOVED this book. I loved the different POV chapters and trying to figure out who they are and when in context with the main story, putting together the puzzle as I was reading along.

There was lots of amazing world building but not too much at once. More and more was being filled in as I was reading which created an amazingly vivid understanding of the universe in which this took place incl the relevant history.

I really enjoyed the heist aspect, all of the planning the characters had to do, the fact that there were clearly some mixed agendas too and I couldn't wait to see how it panned out!

The political and religious sides to the story were really well thought out, incorporated and really exciting to explore.

All in all the book had me gripped. I feel like it's an amazing sci-fi for those new to the genre as well as well versed in it.

🌌 An Unbreakable World by Ren Hutchings is a wild ride through a universe that’s as fascinating as it is intricate! From the rich history of its planets to mind-blowing technologies, I was completely absorbed in this world. 🚀✨

One of my absolute favourite things? The found family trope and the author does it perfectly 💖 The characters really pulled me in, but Page? She stole my heart. Her journey was so raw and emotional. I was right there with her, feeling every moment. 🥺

The pacing was mostly good, though I did feel the story slowed a little in the middle. But honestly, it’s a character driven plot, and I was here for every twist and turn they took!

Definitely left me wanting more from this universe! 👏 Can we please get more books in this world?! 😍

Big thank you to Ren Hutchings, Rebellion and Solaris Imprint for allowing me an early copy of An Unbreakable World in exchange for an honest review!

An exciting and distinguished universe unfolds in An Unbreakable World, creating a larger than life story that still feels grounded in its own reality. Having a character that has lost all memories can have the potential to drag but Page Found became fully actualised well before we knew who she was or could be.

Despite only being introduced to a few planets the universe feels fully fleshed out. This is due to the themes of religion, war and politics being prevalent and expanded on throughout.

Once the twist is exposed the book managed to still hold my interest and I wish there was more. This book was awesome!

An Unbreakable World has an intriguing premise and plenty of tension-filled character dynamics, but overall it didn’t completely land for me.

The story is very character-driven, which I enjoyed, but I found the pacing a little uneven at times. The shifts in writing style between POVs (including changes in tense) occasionally pulled me out of the flow. I was also slightly disappointed that all the tension between certain characters didn’t develop into the sapphic relationship I had been hoping for.

The book builds toward a dramatic conclusion, but the ending felt underwhelming to me — after such a strong setup, it seemed to fizzle rather than explode.

That said, if you’re looking for a multi-POV, secret-laden space opera with complex dynamics, this could definitely be up your alley. It just wasn’t quite the perfect fit for me.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with an advance copy in exchange for an honest review.