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3.5 stars! This review will contain no spoilers for This Shattered World, but there will be spoilers from book one, if you have not read These Broken Stars.
Summary:
This Shattered World is the sequel to These Broken Stars by Amie Kaufman and Meagan Spooner. Though this book follows a different couple than These Broken stars, there are spoilers for These Broken Stars in this book. So This Shattered World is told from the point of views of two different people, Jubilee Chase (aka Captain Lee Chase) and Flynn Cormac. Captain Chase is part of the military that is supposed to be protecting the citizens of Avon from the rebellions that have be taking place for the past few generations. Flynn is the leader of the rebels on Avon. TerraDyn, the corporation that terraformed Avon, was supposed to be helping the planet become more hospitable for the colonists, but that has not happened. The rebels believe that TerraDyn and the military are purposefully slowing the evolution of the planet and are rebelling against them. When Jubilee and Flynn meet, Flynn manages to take Jubilee as a prisoner back to his base, but Jubilee is surprised to find that he has no violent intentions towards her and a story of star-crossed lovers ensues.
I liked this book way more than the first for many reasons. First, is that there was way more action in this book. Second, there was still a lot of mystery woven into the book, but the fact that This Shattered World had more action and more characters, made this book way more interesting and fun to read. I thought the characters in this book were a lot more reasonable, too, not annoying in any way like Lilac was in the beginning of These Broken Stars. There was more of a story here as well and in my opinion is mostly because Jubilee and the rebel weren’t the only two people present in this book. Because there are more people, both on the rebel side and the military side, the book is much more entertaining just seeing how everyone interacts with one another. Each side of the war has its own dynamic and reasons for why they are fighting for their side. Also, since there was a war going on, the two main characters seemed like a Romeo and Juliet (I assume is what the authors were going for). Thirdly, there was a definite purpose to the events in this book. While reading I could tell why the authors did this and made the characters do that (again unlike These Broken Stars, where I couldn’t figure out what was going on until the second half of the book).
Plot:
The world building in This Shattered World was done really well. I think thats the second best part of this book next to the action that takes place. Avon is such a weird planet that it’s hard to think that there’s anyway people could survive on it, yet there they are. Occasionally, this aspect of the book got a little boring, maybe, I’d say. Because of this, I didn’t think that the story really got be absorbed until about half way through. I also didn’t find myself emotionally invested in the main characters until about half way through when things really started heating up on both sides of the war.
The war isn’t even all this book is about. There’s the mystery of the “Fury” happening on Avon that seems to only affect the soldiers or off-worlders on the planet. The Fury causes people to change literally in the blink of an eye into a murder machine. No one knows the causes of this, and through Jubilee and Flynn, we find out why. So if These Broken Stars was step one in a five step mystery, This Shattered World was step two, but we were also introduced to steps three and four. By this I mean that, we’ve learned a little bit more about Mr. LaRoux’s part in the whole “other creatures being captured and tortured.” We’re given a direction in the how and why he plans to use the Whispers.
There’s a certain spot in the book where certain characters make an appearance and then things spiced up. This was the point where the plot picked up a lot of speed for me. Things just kept happening right after one another, bam bam bam and then it was over (but not really because book three of course). I was completely into the story for the whole last 100 pages. The ending was fantastic! If these books are good for any one thing, its their endings. I thought everything came together perfectly and left a good base for the next book to take off from even though I know it’s going to follow a whole different couple.
Characters:
What’s great about these characters, Jubilee and Flynn, is that we get to known so much about them. We get to know more about there histories and what brought them to Avon and to the positions that they are in meaning their side of war. Also, there are spacer pages between the chapters that refer to Jubilee. I would assume that they are flashbacks for the most part, so that more information about Jubilee that we get to see.
In This Shattered World, I want to say that I favor both characters equally, but I might like Jubilee more just because she’s a kick ass fighter. She’s also very logical and head-strong and sure of herself. When she’s in a situation, she’s constantly thinking of the best way to get out of it. And even though she’s on the military side of the war, she’s still able to show compassion and she’s not completely hardened by her training.
Flynn is such a sweetheart to me. Even though he’s sort of the leader of the rebellion, he’s a pacifist. He doesn’t want the people of Avon to go to war and lead to more bloodshed. This idea doesn’t sit well with all the rebels, but he's still very adamant about keeping the rebels out of war because he knows they’ll have almost no chance of winning.
The relationship between them, is not insta-lovey by the way. It may seem at first, but keep reading and you will see it’s not at all. It’s a tragic relationship full of many ups and downs. I liked how they worked through their obstacles.
Overall:
I might just pick up the last book in this series just because I want to know how this all ends up with Roderick LaRoux and the whole big mysterious plan he’s concocted. Though I don’t think I’ll be picking it up anytime soon. I liked This Shattered World much more than These Broken Stars, but I think that if I didn’t promise to read it, I wouldn’t have wanted to finished this trilogy. Not my fave, but I’ll continue anyway… Eventually.
Thank you for reading! :)