Audiobook Review: This Shattered World (Starbound #2) by Amie Kaufman and Meagan Spooner

Title: This Shattered World
Author: Amie Kaufman and Meagan Spooner
Publish Date: December 23rd 2014

"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"



StoryLine: A war-torn, barren wasteland is barely hanging on its threads to the decade long cease fire between the militia and the rebels. A planet that isn't progressing through its terraforming stages at it should be, claims of buildings sprouting up over night, and then vanishing again the next day, the Fury that inevitably causes every military soldier stationed there to eventually snap and go homicidal on whoever happens to be near by, it's obviously that something is off on Avon, and Captain Jubilee Chase and Rebel Flynn Cormac form an unlikely partnership to get to the bottom of it.

We get to see in depth the devastation that the bloody war with the rebels causes in this book. While it's mentioned in These Broken Stars, in This Shattered World be get to see the vast destruction of it up close and personal. I loved seeing all of the world building here, to really see the tension coursing through both sides. We get to see more of the structure and society of this universe than we got to in TBS and it gives us a better understanding to the actions that characters take.

Characters: After reading These Broken Stars, I thought to myself: how could I ever love Jubilee and Flynn as much as I love Tarver and Lilac? The answer is simple: When you take two bad ass warriors, even more starcrossed than Tarver and Lilac, and make them both work toward the same goal. Jubilee and Flynn were both incredible characters and I loved the chemistry that sparked between them despite everything that should have made them mortal enemies. We got to see a pretty full cast of characters here, and while the secondary characters weren't entirely fleshed out, it gave more dimension to the story.

Audiobook Performance: This is only my second ever audiobook that I've ever listened to. I absolutely loved the narrator's for Jubilee and Flynn. They really gave life to the story and added that something extra to the story that made it that much more enjoyable. Speaking of that something extra, the whisper parts in between each chapter were phenomenal, and creepy, and just down right amazing. During these parts, in the background of the narration itself were whispers that were indecipherable and just so eerie. Those scenes alone I think are worth listening to the audiobook of this.

An amazing companion novel, I can not wait for Their Fractured Light comes out so I can see what kind of epic love story we get, and to see what finale we see with the issues of this universe.

5/5 Stars