The Booktique

This Shattered World (Starbound#2) by Amie Kaufman & Meagan Spooner

Publisher: Disney-Hyperion 

Publication date: December 23rd 2014 

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.

-Goodreads description.

Undecided. So, so , SO undecided. This is all I have been feeling since I ended this book and have been thinking about what I was going to say in this review. I have been having these wavering thoughts about almost every single aspect of "This Shattered World" : hesitation about the characters, uncertainty about their relationship, the plot.. Hell, I was even uncertain about buying this book and even READING it in the first place. Let's just say, I've been a stress ball for ..pretty much no reason. But anyway, the point is, I just can't even process my own feelings. In some ways, I guess this is good but in others...not so.

 Well, let me first start off with the plot. Jubilee 'Lee' Chase is the 'stone-faced' captain of one of Avon's platoons, a planet that has been waiting to pass the planetary review for approximately three decades now but to no avail. The local people, or the Fianna as they are called, are growing restless by the military's involvement on Avon. Flynn, the leader of the rebellion, advocates for peaceful negotiations and sets out to talk to Jubilee at a bar which is known to be frequented by the military. However, all doesn't go according to plan and Flynn ends up kidnapping Jubilee and bringing her back to the caves. As expected, her appearance is met with mistrust and violence ends up rising above all else. Having no other choice, Flynn lets her loose so that the inevitable outcome can be avoided. Despite this, this is not the last time that they meet and what that will bring is something no one will expect. 

As you can predict, this novel is filled with a bucket load of action. While that may be, I feel like while a lot of stuff did happen- trust me, there was a shit ton of stuff- there just wasn't ...enough, or at least, not enough of the GOOD stuff. I just had this perception that everything that happened seemed really insignificant on a larger scale. To give you a kind of idea about my feelings, let me compare it to the first book, "these broken stars" which, by the way, is amaze-balls. Reading that one, I felt so immersed in the world that everything that happened made a colossal impact on what was happening around them and the characters themselves. In this book, even by the end, I still didn't feel like I was quite part of the journey; I really did feel like a bystander, watching everything happen from afar. I think this comes from the lack of descriptive writing and story-building in the novel. I know that sounds terrible, ' no story-building in a novel about a new planet, wtf' but truly, it's not at bad as it sounds. Maybe, it's personal preference, but for me to genuinely experience a book, I need to be able to connect with the surroundings or with the characters of a deeper level and I just don't think...that this really made the cut. 

Another thing that I was disappointed with was the relationship between Flynn and Jubilee. When I heard that we would be moving on from the first set of characters, I was just like..no....no...you can't. It would be an understatement to say I was in denial. 

 It just wasn't consistent enough for me to enjoy and it didn't click in the way that it should have, for me personally. Ahhh, I just don't know what's wrong with my feelings.. they are so confused and it's so frustrating to know that you wanted to love the characters and then.. you didn't. 

One thing that t think would be the perfect way to sum up the style of this novel is logical and taking a logistical approach rather than an emotional one. While there were times when I felt myself getting a little bit sentimental, I just never encountered the heart wrenching palpitations that I was preparing myself for :( 

A great read for an action-junkie with a touch of romance but lacking in all it's other areas.
                                                                           -Alana xxx 

                                                               (But really, 3.5)