Review: This Shattered World

THIS SHATTERED WORLD
Starbound #2
Amie Kaufman and Meagan Spooner
Young Adult/Sci-Fi
390 pages
Disney-Hyperion
Available December 23rd
Source: BEA

THE STORY (from Goodreads)
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.

MY THOUGHTS
This Shattered World takes us to a perpetually cloud-covered Avon, a planet on the brink of war as the restlessness of the native inhabitants edges toward a breaking point with the military personnel assigned to keep the peace. While we’re easily caught up in the tension between the two sides, in the back of our minds we can’t help but wonder how Lee and Flynn’s story is going to tie in with that of Lilac and Tarver's, straining a bit to remember just what happened to them when the Icarus crashed. It isn’t until about the halfway point when the two stories start to converge, and once they do, we simply cannot turn the pages fast enough to see how things are going to play out.

Lee is quite the departure from Lilac (at least the Lilac at the beginning of These Broken Stars), physically and mentally strong and always battle-ready, prepared for whatever threat is going to come her way. While Flynn does manage to overpower her in the opening chapters, she never stops fighting, even if that fight consists of a quiet defiance that brings a smile to our faces. Though she's constantly thinking of ways to escape Flynn and return to base, she’s not so singularly focused that she doesn’t realize things with the rebels are not entirely what they seem, and it doesn’t take her long before she starts to believe in Flynn and his theories that something more is going on with Avon than simple unrest.

Flynn is much like Lee, beautifully open to the possibility that what he thought he knew or what he’s been told is not the only side to the story, allowing himself to trust a young woman whose reputation for being cold and ruthless precedes her. His affection for her is understandably and thankfully slow in coming, their romance developing at the perfect pace given the level of distrust that exists between the military and the rebels. There are no declarations of love between them, just the simple development of a bond that has the potential to turn into love, and it’s nothing if not satisfying to watch it form in the midst of increasing hostility.

Overall, This Shattered World is a strong companion to These Broken Stars, taking just a little while to completely draw us in given the way our minds question the link between Lee and Flynn and Lilac and Tarver, but growing in intensity with every chapter. We end desperately wanting to wipe the utterly insincere grin from Roderick LaRoux’s face with a good hard smack, already counting the days until the next book releases and hoping against hope that he’ll get what he so rightfully deserves.

Rating: 4/5
 

Find Amie:

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Find Meagan:

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This book was given to me by the publisher at BEA free of charge for the purpose of a review. 

I received no other compensation and the above is my honest opinion.