This Shattered World
The Starbound trilogy, Book 2
Amie Kaufman and Meagan Spooner
Hyperion
Fiction, YA Romance/Sci-Fi
DESCRIPTION: The planet Avon is a world of swamps and gray skies, a mire in more ways than one. For decades, the terraforming project that was supposed to transform it into a garden has inexplicably stalled out - leading to frustration and all-out rebellion. The more the military clamps down to keep the peace, the more rebels slip away into the uncharted swamps, where technology is useless and "will of the wisp" lights are rumored to lead trespassers to their doom. Despite a temporary ceasefire, tensions have never been higher, and it will only take one incident to send the whole colony sky-high.
Captain Jubilee "Lee" Chase is a legend among her peers. She, alone of all soldiers stationed on Avon, seems immune to the madness known as the Fury, which drives soldiers to fits of homicidal rage (and which has not helped relations with the locals, who seem immune.) Perhaps it is because she doesn't dream; her dreams died with her parents in the violence on the planet Verona. Then she is taken hostage by a young rebel, a boy babbling about hidden bases in the swamps and other insanity... but is he mad, or is there more to the Avon colony than she's been told?
Flynn Cormac's older sister was executed as a rebel when he was eight years old, and he's been on the run ever since. He's been trying to use his status among the Fianna rebel army to end the hostilities and find a path toward peace, maybe even find out why the terraforming has gone wrong, but it's hard to convince a people who have been kicked as hard and often as the Avon colonists to put down their guns, and he knows he's losing ground. He didn't actually intend to abduct the famed Captain Lee Chase when he snuck into the bar on the base, but he was desperate for answers about what he's seen in the swamp: a base where there should not be one, pointing to a presence even the army is unaware of - or a plot that will end the colony.
Lee and Flynn were sworn enemies on sight... so how can they be falling for each other? And how will either survive what they discover when they dig deeper into Flynn's hidden base?
REVIEW: The first Starbound book took a while to hook me. This one did not have that problem. It moves from the first few pages, creating a world less reliant on anachronistic tropes (save how it clearly and admittedly patterns itself on the Irish "Troubles", where occupation by a foreign power breeds generational resentment and entrenches violence and mistrust as a way of life.) Lee is a soldier's soldier, convinced she's on the right side and that she'll live and die in the uniform, while Flynn is equally committed to the cause of the Avon colonists, even if he tries to avoid open violence after what happened to his sister. It is not a fast or easy fall into love for either of them (no spoilers there; this is a romance, after all), with setbacks and misunderstandings and outside interference, not to mention betrayals and outbursts of violence. The peripheral characters aren't quite as shallow as they might seem at first (save one or two), each having a little more depth and justification to their actions than one might expect. The story could almost be a standalone, but as the plot progresses it ties into events in These Broken Stars, becoming part of the greater arc. Things build to a decently cathartic climax, with some threads left over for the third and final volume. Sometimes the emotions and angst get a little over the top, and one of the revelations at the end was borderline eye-rolling, but otherwise I enjoyed this story, and am looking forward to the final installment (which is in the To Be Read pile.)
You Might Also Enjoy:
These Broken Stars (Amie Kaufman and Meagan Spooner) - My Review
Starflight (Melissa Landers) - My Review
Cinder (Marissa Meyer) - My Review
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