Avon – Christina de Vries

This Shattered World is the second novel in the Starbound trilogy. You can read my review of These Broken Stars (the first book) HERE 🙂 TSW_C_2-6-alt3

In the second book we meet Jubilee “Lee” Chase, captain in the forces that was sent to the terraformed planet Avon to keep the rebellious movement under control. Lee is different from the others who comes to Avon. She has her own personal reasons for fighting the rebels and for some reason she is still sane after staying on a planet that slowly drives so many others insane. We also meet Flynn Cormac, leader of the rebels. A man who wants to find peace for his home planet without having to resolve to violence and war.

Lee and Flynn were never supposed to meet, but when their paths cross one day Flynn does the only thing that makes sense to him. He takes her as a prisoner and brings her back to the rebel base hoping to exchange her for medicine and other valuables much needed, but instead he makes a decision that changes everything. When the rebels want to execute Lee to send a message, Flynn escapes the base together with her and suddenly they find themselves caught between two sides of a senseless war.

On the run they also discover that there’s something horribly wrong with Avon.

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The Writing:

I enjoyed the writing just as much in this one as in These Broken Stars. The fact that they shift between the perspectives of Flynn and Lee throughout the book gives us a good insight to two different sides of the same story. The short in-between chapters also adds to the mystery of the book, but felt kind of confusing in the beginning.

Kaufman and Spooner paints beautiful pictures in these books that makes you feel like you’re right there beside them on Avon.

The Characters:

Lee is a strong, independent and mysterious female lead. I enjoyed her sassiness and how she wanted to be in control of every situation that was thrown towards her. As we get to know her past and how she grew up, she really grows as a character.

Flynn had the classic rebel charm to him and I did not feel like there were as many surprises to his character as Lee’s, but I did like him a lot. He’s a rational thinker that wants peace and understanding.

They were both strong protagonists that worked well together in this story.

The Plot:

Let’s just air the frustration that so many had when we found out about the plot of This Shattered World:

No more Lilac and Tarver??!!?!?!

I was (as so many others) disappointed to read that the characters from the first novel would not be the lead characters in this one. I was very curious to find out what would happen next with them.

But do calm down, they are not left out of the trilogy even though they are not the lead characters of this novel.

The mystery of the planet I found very intriguing. Something is clearly wrong. And I was also very interested in finding out what made Jubilee different from everyone else. Why doesn’t she get the dreams that most do right before going insane? What happened to her as a child to make her into such a tough-hearted soldier?

I found the romance part of the novel to be a little too predictable. You kind of expect it from the very beginning of the story. But even though there’s a fair share of romance in This Shattered World it doesn’t have the same focus on romance and passion as These Broken Stars. This story is much crueler and harsher in comparison, but that also made it less predictable in some ways.

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All in all I really liked This Shattered World and I’m still very curious to see how they will wrap it all up in the third and last novel Their Fractured Light (expected publication: December 29th, 2015)

Still there was something about the second novel that did not take as strong a hold on me as the first one did. I can’t put my finger on exactly what it was, but I just didn’t LOVE this one as much, but still I would highly recommend it!