I received this book for free from eARC from the Publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.
This Shattered World by Amie Kaufman & Meagan Spooner Series: Starbound #2
Published by Disney Hyperion on December 23, 2014
Pages: 390
Format: eARC
Source: eARC from the Publisher via NetGalley
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The second installment in the epic Starbound trilogy introduces a new pair of star-crossed lovers on two sides of a bloody war.
Jubilee Chase and Flynn Cormac should never have met.
Lee is captain of the forces sent to Avon to crush the terraformed planet’s rebellious colonists, but she has her own reasons for hating the insurgents.
Rebellion is in Flynn’s blood. Terraforming corporations make their fortune by recruiting colonists to make the inhospitable planets livable, with the promise of a better life for their children. But they never fulfilled their promise on Avon, and decades later, Flynn is leading the rebellion.
Desperate for any advantage in a bloody and unrelentingly war, Flynn does the only thing that makes sense when he and Lee cross paths: he returns to base with her as prisoner. But as his fellow rebels prepare to execute this tough-talking girl with nerves of steel, Flynn makes another choice that will change him forever. He and Lee escape the rebel base together, caught between two sides of a senseless war.
In a little twist of serendipity, friends, my first review of 2015 is for a book in Amie Kaufman and Meagan Spooner’s Starbound series, THIS SHATTERED WORLD. This is serendipitous, or maybe this is something else that I can’t think of the word for, because my first review of 2014 was also a book from this series, THESE BROKEN STARS. These two books have more in common than appears on the surface though, because they are both engaging, fast-paced, dramatic, and intriguing. I was already a big fan of this series just based on book 1, but THIS SHATTERED WORLD really drew me in and made me even more curious about WTF is exactly going on in these books. THIS IS THE BEST.
In THIS SHATTERED WORLD, we are on the planet Avon, basically this universe’s equivalent of a backwater, a perpetual, hopeless slum where the soldiers stationed there never last long and the local population is likely harboring rebels. The soldiers and the rebels on Avon are locked in what sounds kind of like a guerilla siege: The soldiers are at a disadvantage, not knowing the swamps of Avon as well, and the rebels like poking at them. Constantly. It’s a back and forth with no winners, and no end in sight. Jubilee Chase is an officer of great renown on Avon, having lasted there longer than any other. Flynn Cormac is one of the only resistance fighters who sees the benefit of peace. When Lee and Flynn become an unwitting duo in the fight to discover what is really happening on Avon that has prevented successful terraforming for decades, everything gets tossed around.
It’s hard for me to read these books and not be completely taken with the world. I don’t read much science fiction, but when I read books like THIS SHATTERED WORLD, I’m not ever sure why. Amie Kaufman and Megan Spooner make outerspace seem dangerous and exotic and familiar all at once. And even though the characters are living in a very different world and dealing with very specific, different things, they seem just as real with easily recognizable traits as any young person I know.
Jubilee and Flynn are perhaps not as gripping romance as Tarver and Lilac in THESE BROKEN STARS, but they are certainly nothing to sniff at. As individuals, they have a lot going on: Lee must contend with her soldiers coming down with this mysterious almost berserker illness. After an episode, the soldiers are unable to remember anything. It’s a problem. Plus she has a childhood riddled with tragedy that, in the end, binds her even more to Flynn, who’s own life is marred by death and loss. I liked Lee A LOT. She’s smart, strong, well-respected as a leader, and ballsy. But she’s also not afraid of calling in the reserves when she knows she’s in over her head. I’ll get to this again in a second.
Flynn is also struggling in his own life. The rebels on Avon, called the Fianna, are divided; some want to find a way to bring about peace like Flynn, while others want to get angry and shoot things like the leader, McBride. Life with the rebels is, for Flynn, all he knows and yet not all he wants. His struggles with loyalty and his desire to discover what’s keeping Avon in the Dark Ages of evolution really endeared him to me.
Like I mentioned before, though, the steamy romance that Lilac and Tarver experienced in THESE BROKEN STARS doesn’t necessarily manifest itself with Lee and Flynn. They have too much ingrained baggage keeping them apart. But their growing closeness and feelings gives the story even more emotional heft than it already has from Lee and Flynn’s own stories, which were plenty sad on their own. They are two very wounded young people, and I was glad for them to have found one another.
What ties THIS SHATTERED WORLD to THESE BROKEN STARS is the continuation of the mystery and conspiracy and general WTF-ery of LaRoux Industries. Whatever monkey business they were up to in book 1 is still going on here, and so when Lee gets in over her head and needs some back up, she calls the only person whom she can count on: Tarver, who was her superior officer on Avon before he was transferred. Seeing Tarver again was excellent and it reminded me how much I love him. Getting some small glimpses into his and Lilac’s life made me so happy. I just love them. Plus I love that it brings the story together. Amie Kaufman and Megan Spooner are tying everything together in neat, uncomplicated ways that don’t seem forced at all.
In Amie Kaufman and Meagan Spooner’s Acknowledgements they mention the setting of book 3 and I’m STOKED. It’s the HOTBED of this world, and I can’t wait to see what’s going to go on there and how these stories are going to wrap up. I would read books about this world forever. It’s so compelling. THIS SHATTERED WORLD kept my interest, got me emotionally invested, confounded me with mysteries, and has me ready for more. A very solid sequel, friends.
I agree 100% with everything you’ve said about This Shattered World, Amy! I really enjoyed this sequel, particularly because it made the world bigger, introduced new characters to love AND just expanded the overall conflict even more. Can’t wait to read the next one!