Great Sci fi Romance

Reading companion novels to a book you love can be a scary thing. Almost as scary as reading sequels, potentially worse. There’s the risk that you won’t love the new characters or the new story. You dream of cameo appearances or mentions of your beloved old characters but there’s no guarantee they’ll appear. The entire thing could destroy your expectations and hopes for the series.

These were definitely some of my fears going into THIS SHATTERED WORLD. Fortunately, it was a good follow up to THESE BROKEN STARS. Did I love it as much as Tarver and Lilac’s story? No, it didn’t quite connect to me well enough for that. This could be related to my difference in mood at the time I read the books, as I was certainly more tired and distracted when reading THIS SHATTERED WORLD. Whatever trapped me when reading THESE BROKEN STARS just wasn’t there. It still had the same great writing and characters and world, it just took me a while to become invested in it is all.

Jubilee and Flynn’s story takes place on Avon, a very different planet to the abandoned one Tarver and Lilac crashed on. It’s a place with a fair amount of military conflict and tension. Jubilee and Flynn are on opposing sides of a rebellion and neither are exactly what you’d expect. Which, of course, I loved. Lee is a very determined girl with plenty of military experience under her belt and a sad past. You expect her to be cold, heartless, but she cares a lot about the people around her. Flynn is the rebel leader and the type of character you’d expect to be cocky, angry, not good at thinking before he acts. In reality he’s someone who wants to solve his people’s problems with words, not violence.

THIS SHATTERED WORLD has a slow building plot, in the way I often describe as “like a steam train”. Little things occur at the start, little tense things here and there. Nothing too exciting. The world is explained, the characters struggles established, connections to THESE BROKEN STARS plot slowly revealed. time more and more events happen. The plot builds momentum until the climax, where things barely slow down. Seriously, the end was awesome.