This Shattered World - Review

This Shattered World (Starbound, # 2)

By: Aime Kaufman & Meagan Spooner

Expected Publication: December 23rd 2014 by Disney-Hyperion

400 pages

Genre: YA, Science Fiction, Dystopian

Source: Publisher via NetGalley (Thank you!!)

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Goodreads description--The second installment in our 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.

The stunning second novel in the Starbound trilogy is an unforgettable story of love and forgiveness in a world torn apart by war.

Can we just take a moment to appreciate how beautiful this book cover is? Lovely.

I remember These Broken Stars not really being what I expected it to be, and honestly, that’s kind of what happened with This Shattered World as well. Even after reading These Broken Stars and the description for This Shattered World I just wasn’t sure how I would feel about it. Here’s the thing, I really liked it.

The biggest thing I’d say is that what I expected the book to be took place in the first 50% of the book. That left a lot of “additional” stuff to happen in the 2nd half of the book. I knew that This Shattered World was a switch to new characters within the same Starbound world. I knew events would take place at a different location since the planet that Traver and Lilac were on in These Broken Stars was destroyed. But I guess I wasn’t expecting any particular kind of crossover with these two stories. Traver and Lilac were both present even though neither had a particularly large part to play. That was a nice surprise. Similarly, the villain is a crossover as well. Without giving anything away. That’s all I’ll say about that.

Jubilee and Flynn had such an interesting story—one that I didn’t feel like I could easily predict. Jubilee is a rules-follower. She’s a Captain in the military, and she’s used to people thinking that she has no soul. Her parents were killed in front of her as a child by rebel sympathizers and she was shipped off planet to an orphanage. These experiences have shaped her and changed her irrevocably. It’s created in her this need to establish peace and order wherever she goes. Flynn’s kind of the opposite. Even though he’s orphaned as well, the two don’t appear to have much in common. Flynn spends his time trying to talk down the other rebels on his home planet of Avon, where Jubilee happens to now be stationed, from seeking out violence as a means to getting what they want and instead seeking the outcome they want through more peaceful means. Yet he’s not exactly a rules-follower.

Flynn and Jubilee have a turbulent relationship. They’re fighting for different things, on opposing sides of the war. They’re constantly battling what they think they know of the other side with what they’re witnessing within each other. And more than anything, things are not as they appear. Jubilee and Flynn have to learn to trust what they feel deep inside over what they see with their eyes in order to survive and come out on the other side. I loved that their journey was not easy. I loved that even when they wanted to find a way to each other things weren’t always cut and dry. Even though brief moments of “for your own good” popped up, Jubilee and Flynn fought forward to a better Avon and a future where they might be able to give being together a chance.

I wasn’t always sure that Jubilee and/or Flynn was safe from harm and that was a good thing. It kept me on the edge of my seat while reading. I wasn’t freaking out because it looked like things might go south, but I wasn’t calm and at ease that things would work out easy-peasy for them either.

I will note that I’m a little concerned about book 3 in this series. It’s noted in the acknowledgements that book 3 will be about an entirely new planet—Corinth. And I’m assuming/hoping we’ll get some brand new characters with that story as well, but like This Shattered World have a crossover with Flynn and Jubilee and also with Traver and Lilac from These Broken Stars. But I’m concerned that book 3 might follow the path of Mockingjay and/or Allegiant--you know those books where you fall in love with the characters and the worlds in book 1 but by the time you get around to the last book in the series everything has turned political and the characters are fighting to overthrow the unique way of living that you fell in love with reading about in the first place. Yeah, so I guess time will tell with that.

I won’t say I “loved” This Shattered World, but I did really, really enjoy it. The world building was excellent. I could see Avon. I could totally imagine being in a small row boat in the middle of the swamps with no stars overhead because of the dense cloud cover. Being in the caves where the rebels hid. All of it. The characters were likable. And there was plenty of mystery concerning what was going on, what would happen, whether the characters I liked were going to make it or not. This Shattered World easily gets 4 Stars from me. Have you read This Shattered World? What did you think? Let me know!