Review: This Shattered World by Amie Kaufman & Meagan Spooner

Title: This Shattered World (Starbound #2)
Author: Amie Kaufman & Meagan Spooner
Publisher: Disney-Hyperion
Release date:Disney-Hyperion
Source: Netgalley
Format: eARC

Rating: 4.5/5

Buy on:  Amazon | B&N | BookDepository

You can read my review of These Broken Stars - here

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 Shattered World is the second book in the Starbound trilogy, it can be read without reading the previous book, because it has new characters, a different story, but at some point the story of Jubilee and Flynn, intertwined with Lilac and Tarver´s story (main characters of These Broken Stars) and end up fighting the same enemy.

The story begins on the planet Avon, which is in a lull of a war that has lasted 10 years between rebels and militia; and this truce could be threatened when Flynn kidnaps captain Jubilee, something that he hadn´t planned, but he took the opportunity to question her about somethings that didn´t check on his planet, about the delaying terraforming and a mysterious base that might have something to do with its delayed development of it, but things do not happen as expected and he ends up helping her, against the wishes of the other rebels, which makes them form a connection between two people who are on different sides of a war.

For those that already read These Broken Stars, you will know what is happening to the planet Avon, and why soldiers lose their minds and start to attacking unprovoked to the settlers and the why of the strange lights, and if you haven´t read it this will be a great mystery, trying to find all the strange things happening in this world.

Something that struck me is that I saw many parallels with the story of Romeo and Juliet, not only because Jubilee called Flynn "Romeo" the first times that they interact, but there were several things that reminded me of the story, as the two main characters are on the wrong side of a war, both knowing that their connection can not be due of years of war between the two sides, one of the characters doing something unforgivable to the "family" of other, among other things.

This Shattered World is a great sci-fi book, action-packed, with a lot of mystery, romance, with strong and smart main characters, with great chemistry between them (is not instant love), and also has a very good and satisfying ending. I really really loved it very much!!! And I cannot wait to read the next book.