Crash My Book Party

This Shattered World is everything I wanted These Broken Stars to be – and more. In the places that These Broken Stars didn’t deliver enough for me, This Shattered World far exceeded any expectations. One of those super big positives was that This Shattered World is not about Lilac and Tarver, though I was curious to know what had happened to them, I couldn’t deal with Lilac’s voice again. In This Shattered World we are on the planet Avon where we meet Captain Jubilee Chase, an absolute badass soldier leading her men to maintain the peace on Avon, which is far behind the other planets in terraforming and is also home to The Fury, which sends people crazy. When she crosses paths with Flynn Cormac, the leader of the peaceful rebellion known as the Fianna, he kidnaps her to find out about a secret facility that seems to have appeared overnight. Neither of them could have known what this would lead to, but it is just the beginning of a sequence of events that’s about to change the world they live on.

This Shattered World is a fast paced adventure that never drags with an awesome heroine and a sweet male lead who are both fighting for what they believe is right, Flynn with peaceful rebellion, Lee trying to protect her soldiers from The Fury and defend their planet. They both believe in peace and equality on Avon but it takes a kidnapping and some strange bonding and quick banter to work that out. I really enjoyed Lee and Flynn’s back and forth and though they have very different personalities neither of them annoyed me (big plus!) but I was surprised that Lee allowed herself to be kidnapped in the first place. Other than that minor detail, I enjoyed the flow, the twists and turns, the character development. I also love that this book is not all about the romance but the rebellion and the weird stuff happening on Avon, which ties into the weird stuff that happened in These Broken Stars.

So, yes, that does mean we get cameos from Tarver and Lilac. It’s good to see how it all fits together and it makes me look forward to seeing how the mystery resolves in the third book of the trilogy, but it means we get Tarver and Lilac. At first we have Tarver and not Lilac, but then we make contact with Lilac as well. It wasn’t quite as bad as I thought and they did add to the story, I begrudgingly admit. But what really stands out is how old and mature they seem, all of them – they’re still just teenagers and yet Tarver is a decorated war hero, now retired, and Lee’s a captain? How quickly did they advance through the ranks, and why are they considered adults at sixteen? It doesn’t at all make sense to me especially as there was no explanation. Speaking of explanations, while the world building itself was good, why did people live in space? Did they always live in space? I wanna know!

Despite those slight little annoyances, I loved this instalment to The Starbound Trilogy. Even if you weren’t impressed by the first book, I think this one is far more enjoyable, with better characters and a stronger storyline while still building on the set up from the previous book. The mystery thickens and I am looking forward to book 3, only I think I’ll be upset when it’s all over!