This Shattered World Review

This week I read This Shattered World by Amie Kaufman and Meagan Spooner.  This is the second book in the Starbound series, which is young adult sci-fi/romance.  The first book, These Broken Stars, was fantastic.  I'm not going to retroactively review that one (even though I should), but in short it ended up with plot points similar to Solaris, but with characters that had believable reactions to those plot points, which was my big (big big big) beef with Solaris.  There was also an amazing space ship crash.  The third book, Their Fractured Light, came out this month, but I have yet to read it.  Stay tuned.

This installment takes place on Avon, whose terraforming process has mysteriously stalled and is generations behind where it should be.  Instead of farmland, it's a big swamp with complete cloud cover that causes problems for all sorts of high tech systems: scans, communication, transportation.  Since they're so far behind on their terraforming, Avon does not have the same status as completed planets.  They don't have representation, they don't have schools outside of story time in a cave, they don't have communications equipment, they can't grow their own food and their supplies are strictly rationed.  This setup would be feasible if this was the state of things for the first round of colonists for a few decades while the terraforming progressed, but it's been generations and the colonists are getting restless.  They form a rebel faction, demanding rights, turning violent, and the military is called it to keep them in check.  On top of any normal tension that would exist when the military comes in, the soldiers keep succumbing to the Fury, a weird quirk of Avon, which makes them momentarily black out and attack anyone near by. 

The world building here is really interesting, and while Avon is flushed out as a fully realized environment hosting different cultures with different histories, motivations, and desires--none of which are black and white--you also get the sense of the greater universe.  Avon, despite its vibrancy (it's funny because it's the least colorful world ever), is a backwater world in the far corner of civilization.  

The different sides of the story are shown really well with two alternating points of view.  There's Flynn, who is one of the rebels, and Lee, who is a captain in the military stationed on Avon.  Not only do we see where their sides are coming from (and they both make such valid points that at times you despair they'll ever come to an agreement), but we also see the ways they disagree with the people on their side.  So it shows all sorts of facets of the situation.

The points of view are really well done in that both characters were equally engaging.  This probably has a lot to do with the non stop action in this book.  Every chapter, something explodes or someone is shot or a building catches fire or some other mayhem.  It really snaps along.

And despite all the action, the characters still managed to grieve, to feel fear, to doubt.  However, they weren't given enough time (what with the fires and explosions) for their emotions to turn melodramatic.

So if you like sci-fi and romance, and enjoy YA pacing, you should check out this series.