An Unbreakable World, by Ren Hutchings
29 Sept 2025The Book

Synopsis:
If something seems too good to be real, you’ve got to get out of there.
That’s the rule that Page Found has always followed. She’s a petty thief with no memory of her past, scrounging to survive on a backwater outpost – until she’s kidnapped by one of her marks.
Her kidnappers – the cruel, self-serving Zhak and the tough maverick Maelle – plan to pass Page off as a monk from an ancient, isolated planet to help them capture a treasure-filled ship. If Page is willing to play along, they all stand to become richer than they can imagine.
Everyone is keeping secrets, and Maelle finds her loyalties conflicted as she gets closer to their captive. Page can’t remember the last time she counted on anyone. But to navigate this deception, she and Maelle will have to trust each other to survive.
My Review
An Unbreakable World is a space opera novel, written by Ren Hutchings, published by Solaris Books. Set in the same universe as Under Fortunate Stars, we have a new standalone story that puts great care into developing a character-driven storyline that touches themes such as identity and societal oppression through beliefs, while still giving us an interesting worldbuilding as the backdrop for our characters.
Page Found has been living on a far off space station since she woke up without her memories, apparently as the result of a stasis experiment. She survives by stealing, but her last try has ended with her being kidnapped; however, soon her captors offer her a pass to her freedom from the station: joining them in their heist plan. Even if Zhak, the guy that kidnapped her, is an authentic asshole, the reward is too good to not accept; and Maelle, the other collaborator in the plan, seems more sympathetic towards her, even if she has her own goals that are hidden.
We have a second timeline in the novel, following Dalaya of House Edamaun, the niece of an important political figure on the Teyr planet; an isolated place from the rest of the Union that believe themselves to be the origin of humanity. A disconnected timeline from our main one, and that allows us to explore more about Teyr's religion and a possible origin for Page.
Page and Maeve are certainly fascinating characters, partly helped by how Hutchings focused most of the narrative weight on their POVs; and their reluctant collaboration that grows from mistrust and necessity. Zhak pales a bit in comparison with those two, but mostly because we have two powerful leading characters; and the mistery behind Page's lost memories only makes her even more interesting to follow.
Hutchings gives us an intriguing universe as the backdrop of the story; not all is explained, but with the help of some interludes and the third POV (Dalaya's), we get to know more about Teyr and its religion, an aspect that I found quite interesting, especially with its parallelism to certain nowadays religious movements.
The pacing is quite good, engulfing the reader as soon as they are on the first page; it feels like a really short book despite its length.
An Unbreakable World is a great space opera novel, a new story in this vast universe created by Ren Hutchings; if you like character-driven stories with quite a fascinating backdrop of worldbuilding, you should give her books a try. Can't wait for more!
The Author/s

Ren Hutchings
Ren Hutchings is a speculative fiction writer, writing mentor, editor, and lifelong SFF fan. She loves pop science, unexplained mysteries, 90s music, collecting outdated electronics, and pondering about alternate universes. Ren is the author of twisty sci-fi books including Under Fortunate Stars and An Unbreakable World (Solaris Books) and The Legend Liminal (Stars and Sabers), as well as short fiction.