Book Review: This Shattered World (Starbound #2) by Amie Kaufman



This Shattered World by Amie Kaufman
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Publisher: Disney Hyperion


Summary:  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.

This was another 3.5 read for me. Like the first book, I'm really here for the world-building and insight to the universe these characters inhabit. The main characters of Jubilee and Flynn are much like Lilac and Tarver were for me in the first book, not terribly memorable and I'm glad I won't have to spend the next book with them as I feel they couldn't carry another book either. I know this is a YA series but I still had as hard a time getting into the "high ranked teenage solider" with Lee as I did with Tarver in the first book. I accept it but I'm still side-eyeing on the wish-fulfillment front. And speaking of wish-fulfillment, some credibility was lost when Flynn was described as being so beautiful as to "have been put together by an artist". Stop. As I said, I'm not in this for the romance, such as it is, I truly think the strengths of this series and this book, is in the environs & what's actually happening with the war and TerraDyn (corporations) and government/politics. I think the author could have done something great with an adult-centric story in this universe as I find that terribly interesting. It's still light scifi but the world is a scifi worthy one. And on that basis alone, I'll read the next.



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